There is a version of rest that never arrives. You will relax once the list is done, except the list is never done. Gary Ware has a name for that, and it is not laziness.
He calls it living on a proving ground. It is what happens when play drains out of a life. The people around you stop being people you enjoy and start being competition, and work turns into something you have to earn by proving you are worthy of it. Plenty of us have lived that way so long we stopped noticing it was a way of living at all.
Gary Ware is the founder of Breakthrough Play. He is a facilitator, a keynote speaker, a coach, and the author of Playful Rebellion: Maximize Workplace Success Through The Power of Play. He is not a clinician. What he works with is applied improv, practical tools, and his own experience.
He was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia at twenty six, after six straight hours of testing, and he has said that day was the worst day of his life. That is not how anybody tells you a diagnosis is supposed to feel.
We get into the night he nearly fell asleep at the wheel driving home from an agency job, and what made him pull over. We get into the company that quietly took the word fun out of its stated values and replaced it with excellence, and how nobody ever said out loud what was being given up. People just stopped going to lunch.
And we get into what actually helps. Taking a play history. The one question that opens it up. A five minute move you can make this week that costs nothing and asks nobody's permission.
Gary also flipped the microphone around and asked me his own questions. That part is not in the public episode. It lives in the Subscriber Hub.
CONNECT WITH GARY
Website: https://www.breakthroughplay.com
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Ky is a mental health advocate speaking from lived experience. He is not a clinician, and this content is not medical advice.
Much love. Good vibes. - Ky
