This is Hello Freedom and I'm your host Terry Cole.

For almost two decades I've been a licensed psychotherapist and transformation coach, and on this show I will bring you simple strategies based on practical psychology, inspiring expert interviews, and my own insights and observations from my time on the front lines of the fascinating

worlds of entertainment, impairment, and mental health.

Now let's get going with today's episode. Well, hello and welcome to Hello Freedom. I'm your host Terry Cole.

I am as always grateful that you decided to spend a little bit of time with me here today.

I want to talk about the importance of playing in your life.

How often do you just play because it's fun? Think about when you

were younger, when our entire lives, right? When we're little kids, hopefully. So much of your life is about

play, is about make believe, is about making up games with your friends at many ages, right?

There wasn't this fear of making a mistake.

There wasn't this fear of sort of doing it wrong.

There was something so natural and innate about just playing.

Our imaginations were just there, just working, just coming up with these great ideas at least we thought they were great when we were five six seven eight

So I wonder in your adult life if you really think about it, how much do you play? Because the truth from a psychological

standpoint, from a brain standpoint, from a mental health standpoint, is that play is really not trivial.

There was a book that came out a bunch of years ago by Stuart Brown called Play,

How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, Inv it shapes the brain,

opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul.

Where it really talks about that play

is a basic biological drive as critical to our health

as sleep or food.

And that is, that's pretty critical.

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