37 Ways to Play—For Adults Who’ve Forgotten

And the science-based reasons adult play improves health, happiness, and relationships

How often do you play?

If not, consider the powerful boost play could give your emotional, mental, and physical well-being.

Most notably, play can:

• Relieve stress when endorphins, one of the body’s natural feel-good chemicals, are released. As an added bonus, endorphins can reduce pain too. Playfulness can also enhance your ability to cope with stress.
• Enhance brain function when you engage in cognitively challenging games like brain training game apps, puzzles, word games, memory games, or math games.
• Help you maintain a healthy weight, lower your risk for diseases like coronary heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and improve lung function when it involves physical activity.
• Boost your creativity and stimulate your imagination.
• Reduce social isolation, mitigate depression, and increase connection, trust, and intimacy, when you engage with others.
• Provide opportunities to improve your social skills.
• Make you more attractive to potential romantic partners.
• Improve overall well-being and life satisfaction.

Seems like play is just what we need, doesn’t it?

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” — George Bernard Shaw

What Is Play?

Play is considered a purposeless activity that brings about joy and pleasure.

That means you’re not engaged for the sole purpose of winning, accomplishing a goal, or improving your self. You’re simply immersed in the moment-to-moment experience of play with a childlike abandon.

“What all play has in common is that it offers a sense of engagement and pleasure, takes the player out of a sense of time and place, and the experience of doing it is more important than the outcome.”—Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play

37 Play Ideas for Adults

Many of us lose our ability to play as adults.

It’s easy to get bogged down in worries, work demands, and mental rumination. We may not realize how critical fun is to an adult’s health, happiness, and relationships.

Or maybe we were never good at play, even in childhood.

As a child, I didn’t have many friends and rarely engaged in physical play or group play activities. I preferred solitary activities like coloring, dressing my dolls, and reading. Those count as play, but don’t necessarily make for a well-rounded play experience.

I brought the same tendencies into my adult life. But no worries. Play deficient adults, like me, can learn to play.

Since I’m not adept at play, I asked people who follow my Always Well Within Facebook page to share some of the childlike activities that always make them feel good, even as adults.

The ideas they offered:

1. Coloring
2. Playing with building blocks
3. Water fight with my husband
4. Playing in the rain and snow
5. Sleeping
6. Swinging
7. Walking barefoot outside
8. Eating ice cream
9. Dancing around the house with my cat
10. Hula hooping
11. Backyard cricket
12. Blowing bubbles
13. Drawing with chalk
14. Singing silly songs
15. Using building toys to simply build with no plan and then knocking them over
16. Sand play
17. Running around a butterfly in the garden
18. Building a sand castle
19. Laying on a blanket and watching the clouds move during the day
20. Counting the stars at night
21. Skipping rocks in the river
22. Hanging out barefoot on the beach
23. Laughing without any reason with someone, clapping to increase the energy of laughter
24. Looking at the clouds and trying to find an Angel or a heart,
25. Looking for heart-shaped rocks on the beach.
26. When someone reads to me
27. Throwing a frisbee on the beach
28. Playing fetch with the dog
29. Dancing and hanging out with my friends
30. Watching cartoons
31. Listening and dancing to the vinyl classics
32. Tubing in the river
33. Group indoor games
34. Rolling down a grass covered hill
35. Sharing jokes
36. Building a snowman
37. Going for a bike ride with a friend, with no particular destination

“How we play is ‘as unique to an individual as a fingerprint’ and could mean collecting stamps, tossing a football, reading a book or climbing Mount Everest.” — Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play

If you’re not getting enough play, select one of these activities and make a commitment to try it out this week.

Find It Hard to Play? 6 Ways to Get Started

If you find it hard to play, like I do, use these ideas to get started and keep going.

1. Recall the types of play you enjoyed as a child. Try them out again and see if you enjoy them as an adult. I still love to color in coloring books.
2. Schedule time for play in your planner.
3. Set a day or afternoon aside each week for play.
4. Play with children.
5. Gather a few play items like a basketball for shooting hoops, puzzles, or coloring books. Or even a big trampoline. You’ll be more likely to play if you have easy access to your toys!
6. Set up play dates with your partner or with a friend. Find a friend who excels at play and learn from them.

Let Play Transform Your Life for the Better

You deserve to forget about your work, commitments, or troubles every once in a while, don’t you? That’s the point of adult play.

Please don’t look at this list, feel momentarily inspired, and then set it aside for a later time that never arrives. Sit down right now and decide how you’re going to incorporate more play into your life.

Make a list of the childlike activities that always make you feel good. Then schedule a few each week. Invite your friends over for a game night or take your partner out to throw a frisbee on the beach, go to an amusement park, or sing karaoke.

Have fun and let the power of play transform your life for the better.

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