52 Weeks To A Freeplaylife: Week 1

Posted by Tiff in 52 Weeks to a Freeplaylife, Our freeplaylife | 14 comments

I’m not someone people look at and say, “Man, she’s super talented!” I’m OK with this. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t tried: 9 years of piano lessons and I can’t play a tune. A year of gymnastics and I can’t even do a handstand. 7 years of french and I can’t even order a croissant. However, what I lack in talent I make up for in sheer, unadulterated whimsy. If being whimsical and joyful were an olympic sport, I’d get the gold.

I’d never thought of this as a talent, but then people started offering to give me lots of money to take their kids and let them unschool with us. When I’d ask why they felt they couldn’t do it themselves, I’d hear stories full of fear, insecurity, and the heavy burden of being overwhelmed.

As much as I love money and kids and am tempted to create a little Freeplaylife Academy, I think it’s so much better if kids and parents, together, can learn to embrace life and explore all the amazingness it has to offer!

And so, I’m starting up a little weekly challenge for 2012 that will lead you towards a more freeplaylife. A life full of affirmation, resilience, confidence, security, laughter, joy, openness, connection and tons of pure fucking awesomeness! When you integrate these things into your life, it can’t help but rub off onto the people around you.

And so, to begin our first week….challenge #1!

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Speak your needs.
or, said another way…
Ask for what you want.

Remember when Priceline Negotiator helped me realize I had a fear of asking for what I wanted? Well, I kept at it. I Priceline negotiated the shit out of Colorado and Texas when we traveled through there. At one point, I got 67% off my stay at a Marriott…paying only 40$ a night…but only because I had the balls to ask for that price. It felt wicked good! So good in fact, that I started Priceline negotiating even when I wasn’t going through Priceline. I’d show up at hotels, they’d give me a price, and I’d cut it in half in my head and then tell them I really only wanted to pay “X” amount. And you know what? It totally worked. This has bled over into my normal life, too. Where once I was afraid to point out that a food order was wrong, or speak up, or draw attention to myself, or ask for something different that what someone wanted to give me…now I have very little problem doing any of that. It feels much better to respect my own needs rather than accommodating what someone else thinks my needs should be.

Every time you speak a need or verbalize a want, you are standing up for yourself. You are telling yourself that you are important, valuable…that you matter. No one can do this for you, because you are the only one who can look inside and know what it is you need. If you look inside and aren’t quite sure that you know what you want, then start small. In fact, start at Pinterest! You can “pin” things that you see all over the internet into little categories, like I’ve done on my page. Make one called “Things I Want” and fill it up with all sorts of things. Pictures of sunny skies, rainbows, smiling people, hands held tightly together, a little cottage, an old camera…this is what would be in mine. Once you know what you want, you can start asking for it.

There is a direct correlation between how much of your own needs you are fulfilling and how patient and tolerant you are to other people’s needs. The more fulfilled you are, the more patience you have for others.

And let’s face it, kids are the neediest bastards around town. They ask and need and ask and need and ask and need and whine and cry and need and need all the freaking day. And night, too. Parenting is a 24/7 job. Kids are experts at going balls to the wall to get their needs met. At one point, you were also good at it…until The Man took you down. We are socialized to stop being good advocates for ourselves with labels like “selfish”, “bratty”, “obnoxious”, and “too loud”.

When I start feeling impatient and annoyed with how much I have to do for them and everyone else, I know that I haven’t been listening to or acknowledging what I need. And when you are unhappy or have needs unmet, then that’s the energy you give out to your family. Whenever I hear people say to their kids “you can’t always get what you want” or “don’t be a brat” or “I’m going to tell you no once and you have to just be quiet about it”, then I know that they have a serious deficit and aren’t getting what they need out of life.

It’s easy to put yourself last when you have kids/job/spouse/friends all taking up your time and energy, so I know this challenge will take some serious effort. However, if you can balance you with the rest of the free world, then you gain a magical ability to be more patient and resilient with everyone else. Because you are meeting your needs then you are happy to help others meet theirs.

You will also be modeling a really valuable tool for your kids–how to make themselves a priority and be able to make themselves happy. The older they get, the more this enables them to be less dependent on you. win/win!
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I hope you’ll join along on this 52 week journey towards a freeplaylife, and share it with your friends/family who want a little more fucking awesome in their lives too. Then, instead of just me making a small Freeplaylife Academy with only a few kids in it, you can be a part of creating an entire community of happy, joyful, connected, playful, whimsical parents and kids living the shit out of life!

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