better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

Crow Does… Playing

22 August 2010

Hello, I’m Crow and sometimes I turn up at Richard’s workshops, which is fun for me and gets some interesting reactions from people. I like to help humans develop their presentation skills, or challenge some of their thinking styles and if I squawk, well that’s just me being friendly, as I’m a happy sort of bird. Richard is taking a break for three weeks and has asked me to stand in and say something interesting. He claims that he’s in the garden ‘thinking great thoughts’, but personally I think he’s just asleep. Oh well, anyway, here goes my blog…

When did you last have some crowtime? You know, when you skipped off work and took an hour in the bird bath to fluff up your feathers and get rid of all the grit. Well, I ‘spose that as you’re a human you don’t need to keep your feathers in good shape do you? I mean it’s not like you can fly or anything is it?

But I was thinking about what to write this week and then I thought – no – I will go and play for a while. So I’ve sneaked Richard’s copy of ‘The Battle of Britain’ into the dvd player and have decided to avoid any work and will just stop and play today. And I’ve bet the stupid pigeon who lives on the roof that the British will win again! Caw! Pigeons are so ignorant.

So before I go off to watch the film and then collect my winnings I have a question for you:

What will you do to take care of your feathers this week?

How was that? I think I’m getting the hang of this, although my beak can’t take much more pounding on the keyboard for now. Next week I might write about ‘pigeons and why they’re so dumb they sleep in the road’, but then again I might not.

Tags: Crow, playtime

Playtime For All

19 December 2009

Christmas time can be a serious business, with mince pies to make, turkeys to stuff and massive amounts of small twinkly lights to hang outside, where we can’t see them. I’ve often wondered at the sense of spending all year diligently separating rubbish into different piles for recycling, buying eco-hessian bags at the supermarket, using energy saving bulbs and then turning your house into a crazy UFO for three weeks. There’s a house near to us on a main road that has so many lights NASA has asked them to turn a few off because they’re blinding their surveillance satellites. Mind you, I’m not entirely sure what they’re looking at in Norfolk…my best guess would be the pier at Cromer, but I’m open to suggestions.

Snowman

During this festive time, when life can get a bit too serious, it can be helpful to get a nudge in the ribs and be reminded that we can stop and play. A case in point: Yesterday I was about to leave the house and walk to my office (where I have installed myself, rather grandly, as ‘writer in residence’ at a local PR firm) when I realised that the children were all in the back garden playing in the snow. As this was a moment to be savoured, I joined them. We threw snowballs, built a snowman and rescued the tiny twins from snowdrifts, largey because they couldn’t bend in their snowsuits and laid on the ground like helpless starfish. It was a fun thing to bunk off work for a while and great to have some ‘Natural Child’ playtime.

Stop and Play

Natural Child is a term from Transactional Analysis and means when we’re in a playful state, having fun or being creative, without a Parent figure telling us what to do and how to behave. Just because we have turned into ‘grown ups’ doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy ourselves too.

So, when things get serious over Christmas and your stress levels start to boil; take a deep breath and stop. Then find something to play with and have fun, because five minutes of fun can put a smile back on our face and remind us that without some Natural Child time, life is really very dull.

 

A FREE gift to say: Thank You for Subscribing

Blogs need readers, so I would like to say thank you for subscribing to one of the feeds. If you have subscribed and would like a FREE gift then please use the contact form to tell me which pack from the shop you would like and I will email it to you directly. If you know of someone who might also like a pack then please forward this post to them. Thank you and have fun!

Tags: fun, Natural Child Ego State, playtime, tip