How to Use Your Play History to Find Your New Year's Dreams

I'm the one with the "Princess Leia" hairdo

Instead of thinking about what I want to achieve in 2011, I'm focusing on how I want to play!

As regular readers know, I re-read Play by Stuart Brown over the holidays.  In the book, he talks about recording your play history:

"The primary purpose of the play history is to get us back in touch with the joy that we have all experienced at some point in our lives.  Find that joy from the past and you are halfway to learning how to create it again in your present life."

I decided to use my play history as a guideline for my dreams for 2011. It's a pretty simple process.  Brown has lots of prompts you can use, but the basic one is,

"Start this exercise by spending some time thinking about what you did as a child that really got you excited, that really gave you joy."

I brainstormed a big list of things that I enjoyed doing as a kid.  When I got stuck, I thought about how doing those things made me feel, and tried to think of other experiences that made me feel the same way as a child, or as an adult.

Then, I grouped the different ideas by theme.  For example, dancing, walking, hiking, biking, and running all fit under Movement.  Sewing, drawing, collage, painting, baking, and embroidery went under Creativity.

I ended up with 7 overarching themes, which I then used as guidelines for determining my dreams for the New Year.

If you try this process for yourself, let me know how it goes, and don't forget to download your free DreamTree worksheet to record how you're going to play this year (:

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