Play Personalities

Play is one of our core needs. It’s an innate, indestructible aspect of our true nature.

Play is not the opposite of work, but rather an essential aspect of our best work.

I have been fortunate to study with Dr Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play.

Stuart taught me that: “When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity, the truest expression of our individuality”. And that “The road to mastery of any subject is guided by play. To become a master, the pupil has to go beyond what’s known.”

Through many decades of studying play, Stuart found that most people have one of eight dominant modes of play. He calls these “play personalities”.

Last week, I participated in an online book club for Gary Ware’s new book Playful Rebellion. In the session, Gary shared Stuart’s work on play personalities.

It was wonderful to refresh on the many different ways we can play.

Here they are*:

• The Collector: The thrill of play for the collector is to have and to hold an interesting collection of objects or experiences — coins, toy trains, antiques, wine, shoes, videos of race car crashes, or pieces of the crashed cars themselves. Collections of most anything can trigger this personality into a play state.
• The Competitor: Competitors access the euphoria and creativity of play by participating in a competitive game with specific rules. Competitors aren’t playing just for the game; they are playing to win. If games and keeping score are your thing, this may be your primary play personality.
• The Creator/Artist: For the creator/artist, joy is found in making things. Painting, printmaking, woodworking, pottery, and sculpture are well-known activities of creator/artists, but furniture making, knitting, sewing, and gardening are also in their purview. Creator/artists may show their creations to the world or may never show anyone what they make. The point is to make something — to make something beautiful, something functional, something goofy.
• The Director: Directors play by planning; they enjoy planning and executing scenes and events. Though many are unconscious of their motives and style of operating, they love the power to make things happen. They are born organizers. At their best, they are the party givers, the planners of great excursions, the dynamic centers of their social worlds. At worst, they are manipulators: All the world’s a stage, and the rest of us merely players in the director’s game.
• The Explorer: All of us start life driven to explore our world; some people never lose their enthusiasm for it. Exploration becomes their preferred path to a play state — their way of provoking the imagination. Exploring can be physical — literally going to new places — or emotional — searching for a new feeling or a deepening of the familiar through music or movement. Exploration can also be mental, such as researching a new subject or seeking out new points of view.
• The Joker: The most basic and extreme player throughout history is the joker. A joker’s play always revolves around some kind of foolishness. In school a joker might have found social acceptance by clowning around to make classmates laugh. Adult jokers carry on that social strategy in different ways.
• The Kinesthete: Kinesthetes are people who like to move; some even need to move in order to think. They are people who find themselves happiest moving as part of dance, swimming, or walking. Kinesthetes naturally want to push their bodies and feel the result.
• The Storyteller: For the storyteller, imagination is the key to the joys of play. Storytellers may be novelists, playwrights, cartoonists, or screenwriters, or they may find their greatest joy in reading the novels and watching the movies created by others. Storytellers feel engaged in stories, and experience the thoughts and emotions of characters in the story. Performers of all sorts are storytellers, creating an imaginative world through acting, dance, lectures, or magic tricks.

My play personality is ‘The Kinesthete’.

This means that I do my best thinking and feel most myself when I’m moving my body. I relish experiences that push my body to its limits, which explains why I have bungee jumped multiple times, sky-dived, and completed numerous marathons and triathlons.  I vividly remember the experience of feeling like my body was quite literally going to explode with fear while bungee jumping into a snowy, rocky ravine in Christchurch NZ in my early 20’s.  Perhaps this is the stuff of nightmares for some, but for me it was pure exhilaration.

Curious to better understand your play personality? Learn more here. I also dedicate a full chapter to play in my first book Self-Fidelity, and Dr Stuart Brown provided this kind endorsement: “The self-examination and awareness that is so deftly encouraged in Self-Fidelity leads to the discovery of your true, authentic self. This book provides the keys to unlocking a more engaged and fulfilling life.”