“Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.” – Henri Matisse
Yesterday we were driving to Parkour camp when Miss O said, “I really like Coach Kurt because he’s always teaching us about making good choices. Which is important in Parkour.” Then after a short pause she added, “I think it might be really important in life.”
Parkour derives its name from the French phrase meaning obstacle course. A year into the pandemic, I think I would have signed Miss O up for any in-person class that gave her an outlet to use all the extra energy building up from having to do online Kindergarten but I was fortunate enough to make the good choice of Parkour.
Watching the kids learn Parkour, it appears that they are just running, vaulting, climbing, and dodging. But what Coach Kurt as the founder of his Parkour training company and his other coaches seem to be emphasizing is that we have choices in how we navigate an environment. Social emotional learning shows up in most curricula for kids these days but as I digested Miss O’s statement, it struck me just how much she was learning… from play.
Thinking about this sent me to my copy of Gifts of Imperfection by author and researcher Brené Brown. She cites the work of psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Brown about the benefits of play as derived from his research and work in the fields of biology, neurology and psychology. “Brown explains that play shapes our brain, helps us foster empathy, helps us navigate complex social groups, and is at the core of creativity and innovation.”
More than that, Brené Brown’s entire book is on the choices we make in life and how cultivating the right things can help us to live more whole-heartedly, as she terms it. “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness.” It is all about making the right choices in life, to build on Miss O’s statement. Here are the ten guideposts that Brené offers:
Guidepost #1: Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think
Guidepost #2: Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism
Guidepost #3: Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness
Guidepost #4: Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark
Guidepost #5: Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty
Guidepost #6: Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison
Guidepost #7: Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth
Guidepost #8: Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle
Guidepost #9: Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and ‘Supposed To’
Guidepost #10: Cultivating Laughter, Song and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and ‘Always in Control’
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
(Anyone interested in these guideposts might want to take the assessment that Brené Brown offers for free on her website.)
Thinking about how we are always making choices on how to navigate this obstacle course of life, I think Miss O summed it up that it’s important to make good ones. Or at least the choices that are meaningful to us. So when I saw Coach Kurt at Parkour camp yesterday, I made the choice to pause and tell him what my daughter had learned from this company and curriculum he so thoughtfully has put together. With glittering eyes he thumped his hand to his heart a couple of times and then said, “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
(featured photo from Pexels)
Surprised By Joy 