Neoteny: A Key to Joyful Adulting

Imagine this. You're at a playground, standing near a brightly colored jungle gym. Kids are laughing, chasing each other, inventing wild games. One kid yells, I'm a dragon. While another shouts, I'm a pizza. And somehow their imaginary world makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, you're holding a coffee cup, scrolling emails, trying to suppress that little voice in your head saying, I really want to climb on that jungle gym, so why not climb it? Why not roar like a dragon or pretend to be a pizza? Today we're ditching the adulting for a bit and rediscovering the joy of play, curiosity and imagination. It's time to embrace neoteny youthful traits like fearlessness, energy and warmth that can make our adult lives richer and more fun. Climb like no one is judging. Roar like a dragon, like no one is listening. And be a pizza if you want, because today nobody is looking. I'm Curtis, my playful pal. Over there is Joe, and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Hello, Kirk.

Are you adulting today?

I try not to, dude. I'm not kidding. I try not to. Sometimes I get myself caught up in the adult world, but I remember my youngest daughter used to look at my wife and say, mom, do you realize you married a 12 year old? And I'm okay with that.

I thought you might be good at this topic. I think I've always not really goofed around a lot. Even when I was a kid, I was pretty serious. I think it kind of annoyed me when other kids did that. They did it in college. It annoyed me running around the halls acting like idiots. And that just always annoyed me. Hey, if you're gonna have grandkids, I know you do you find yourself acting like a kid around your grandkids?

Absolutely. I will ride all the rides. I'm like this. Anyway, you talk about I'm a pizza or dragon or whatever. That's definitely me. Be a dragon, grandpa. And that's me. Man, that kind of stuff is fun. It's funny that we're talking about being playful because I'm pretty playful at work. I'll have fits and spurts of dead seriousness, but most of the time I'm pretty playful. Just this week I have this little fidget spinner on my desk and I'm spinning the fidget spinner as we're talking and we're in a quick meeting in my office and I just stop in the middle of the meeting. I have this fidget spinner on my desk and I laid a dollar on the desk and I said, who wants to bet me when this fidget spinner will stop?

They're like, what?

I said, who wants to bet me when this fidget spinner will stop? And there are three people in the room. And one person says, 45 seconds. And I said, okay, I'll give you. I'll give you. Between what did I say, 35 and 55 seconds. And then I asked the first person, I said, do you want the over or the under? And he said, I don't know, 35 seconds. I'll take the over, Meaning that it has to be more than 55 seconds. Okay.

Right.

And I took the under, knowing I was going to lose at that point.

Right.

So we sat there and spun this fidget spinner. And people are looking in because there's a window in my office. People are looking at my office. What is going on there? And we're standing up all looking at this fidget spinner as I have a timer on. And that fidget spinner stopped at 52 seconds. Yes. No, no. Excuse me. 57 seconds. Because the second guy won. 57 seconds.

He got the over.

Because he got the over.

I thought it was going to be over, too.

And it's funny, Kurt. It's funny how two things happen. Number one, it lightens the mood and it disarms people a little bit. And they're like, well, that was weird.

Yeah. I had a manager who I would always say is probably the best manager I had in my career, and he had a lot of that kind of stuff going on in his office, and he was going pretty high up in the organization. I don't think he changed, which was a little awkward when he was with some of the suits of the company.

That's me. That's me. In fact, I could tell you a story after story. I am that guy. I do like to play. I do like to be a little immature. I think there's a difference, though, between humor being humorous and I don't want to say silly, but there's a word I'm looking for. It's not silly, but it's just. It's too much.

Yeah.

You can go too far with it.

Okay. Yeah, it's definitely in stressful jobs. I worked in a job in customer service when I first got out of college and worked in a bearing manufacturing. There was a lot of serious engineers going around, a lot of serious business people. But when they walked by the customer service department, we used to get complaints because we were loud and boisterous, but we had a lot of stress on us. All those customers beating us up day after day. It was just a way to release. And we had some characters. You had to be a character to put up with that job, I think.

Well, some people don't know how to handle that either. Some people don't know how to handle anything with being serious. And they think it's a work environment and he shouldn't act that way and so forth. And I said, I think, my gosh, we're here with each other 10 hours a day, nine hours a day, eight hours, whatever it is, we better have some fun.

Yeah, we try to do that. Well, this was inspired by a word I found in one of my readings, Neoteny. Did you ever hear that word?

No, not until just now.

Okay. Yeah, it was new to me, so I looked it up. Or he described it. He was talking about how important it is to be playful, even when you're an adult. The definition would be retaining a youthful appearance, you may see in the dictionary. But it's also part of just retaining those qualities that we associate with kids. Curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth and energy. Yeah, cool word. So it got me thinking, because I tend to be or can get serious, I can also goof off a little bit with the best of them. I like to break the mood sometimes.

Yeah, that's me. That's me. I'm big on making weird, quirky, strange remarks. Going over to somebody's desk who was working and all in a complete straight face. Now, this is the desk in the middle of a kind of a bullpen customer service area. And I come out of my office and walk over to somebody's desk, and I said, actually, I did this today. It's interesting. I said, hey, you don't have any sherbet ice cream on you, do you? What? What? I was just hoping somebody had some sherbet ice cream.

Where are these ideas coming your head?

I have no idea. I have no idea.

Well, we're worried about Joe, but what do you do? I love that. I love strange things. Strange people, different people that joke around and have a good time. I'll give you like 10 of these. We're going to talk about why these are important and some research that talks about how these characteristics are really important, especially as we get older. And examples. Maybe for some history examples and some actions we can take. Curiosity. I've always been a curious person, though. I think that's one thing I've never lost. And I have no problem acting like a kid when I'm in the mood for it. Asking questions. There's so Many possibilities all around us. This is what fuels invention, empathy and reinvention. We talked about creativity on our last episode. That's a big part of this. Also inspiring creativity. But curious people, they're open minded and resilient and they tend to live longer, just have more satisfying lives. I love that. Keep your mind busy, keep doing stuff. You talk about Leonardo da Vinci, he had notebooks brimmed with questions like, why is the sky blue? I think you talked about this in creativity. Like keeping a book of ideas.

Yeah. Stupid ideas or stupid idea. Yeah.

But yeah, this helped him to innovate. Man, he was so innovative in art and science and engineering. So a great example in history. So each day, yeah, write down some questions that puzzle you or think about things like that. Look at things in different ways. Maybe it's going to lead you somewhere unexpected. Keep your life interesting. So be curious. Don't lose that curiosity.

I do love being curious. And when you name off values, curiosity doesn't really get its fair shake. I think sometimes because we want honesty, integrity and all those other things. But I think curiosity should be right up there with it. I remember reading a little while back about some college or some university study that said that curiosity driven people who are curious and who live in a state of curiosity, they make stronger social connections and they're more empathetic and they tend to move forward through social circles quicker and more, more thoroughly. They make friends and they make good connections because they're interested in things and people and stuff and why and all of that. All of that. I just love being that way.

They all relate this to our grandkids. Mine, of course, has just turned a year. He's not talking yet, but he's curious. He's. He takes his finger and he looks at things and he stares at things. I know he's going to be a very curious to look inside my mouth and pluck at my teeth.

That's funny.

He gets an iPhone and he just keeps with the finger going through. Don't your grandkids say why, Grampy Joe?

Why? Why are you doing that? Why? And they're wearing me down, man.

We beat our young kids down though, don't we? We get disturbed with it. And that's why we lose this from getting beaten down as a kid, probably.

Yep. We adult too much to children.

Yeah. Let them be kids. Have fun.

Let them be kids. I always felt that way and I haven't always. I take that back. I haven't always felt this way. I haven't always acted this way. Let's put it that way. But I think kids, you should allow kids to maintain their innocence for as long as possible when it comes to like believing in Santa Claus, believing in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and the. Just the fantasy of life that, that we lose as adults as we grow older. I want kids to stay in that fantasy world and stay in that innocent state for as long as possible.

Yeah, we shouldn't. Yeah, we should just embrace it.

Yep.

Embracing playfulness. Play is not a break from adulting. It's the key to better adulting. You get more joy, spark new ideas, deepen relationships. Research from neuroscientists find that adults who regularly engage in playful behavior are more creative, adaptive, and emotionally balanced, I think. Adaptive. So great. I was giving my example of the customer service, just releasing stress that we had all the time. We were pretty adaptive because we took it day in and day out. Yeah, that little playfulness helped.

How do you play now? Do you. Do you think you embrace playfulness? I know we, we embrace childlike and, and innocence and all that, but playfulness specifically. Do you embrace playfulness and do you find yourself to be a playful person?

Probably not in the strictest sense. I think I could do more of that for sure. Yeah. One of the reasons why I wanted to tackle this topic, I go back.

To what my daughter said about me, to my wife, and so that's a question I might ask us right now. If somebody had to judge you by your mental age, by your mature age, by how playful you are, what age do you think they would call you? I'm not talking about your intelligence or position in life or anything, but how playful you are. If somebody had to. If somebody had to guess your age by how playful you are.

What do you think you know me?

I know you, but I know a playful Kurt. I know a guy that likes to joke around and have fun and not so seriously and tease and stuff like that. So I'd probably put you out a solid 16 on the edge. About to lose it. About to lose his playfulness, but hanging in there.

That's good. I like that. That's a good. I wouldn't say that's fair.

Yeah, we were.

Yeah. 16 year olds are pretty playful. Little kid stuff like I don't try to be a pizza or a roar like a dragon. Those are probably things little kids. But hey, I can learn, like I said, grandkids on the way. I'll have to lower my age limit a little bit.

Yeah, I like starting impromptu weird conversations and impromptu games just out of Nowhere. Yes, I do on that. And I don't know from what you know about me, if you had to judge my age by my playfulness, where would you put me?

Oh, you're younger than me. You're more than a 10, 9. 10 year old.

I'll take that.

Fair.

I'll take that. Man. That's funny. That's funny. Yeah, I agree. Let's embrace playfulness. It's good for us.

I like the way you used your ranking system there. That worked really well. They talk about Google, for instance, having a playful culture ball pits and innovation time. I think that's really fun. Have these kinds of structures or culture at work. You can build a playlist of five activities that will make you laugh or feel like. Choose one to do each week. We're going out for pizza tomorrow I'm going in to West Harford. My team's getting together for pizza. We'll have some playful times. We'll have fun. I like that. We do encourage that to get out and do some fun things. Eagerness to learn and grow. A learning mindset is a cognitive fuel. It sharpens our minds and expands what we believe is possible. I know you, Joe and I are really interested in keeping our mind sharp. I think we both have some history, a family history of Alzheimer's, dementia. I know I do in my family, so this is important. Lifelong learners have higher life satisfaction, better brain health, and more agile approach to challenges. Here's our friend Maya Angelou. She learned new languages, dance styles and professions throughout her life, proving growth has no age limit. I love seeing folks that are retired a little bit older who have that playfulness and are learning stuff. I remember going to college at night and there was a guy, I thought he was old. I don't know, maybe he's say he was 60 and I was in my 30s. I thought he was really old. I said, that's really cool. I want to be that person that'll take a college course when I'm older just for the fun of learning. Yeah.

I think about when we think about learning and growing, this is important to me, Kurt. And sometimes I can take too seriously the whole idea of personal development. And I wonder how often I just learn stuff to just something to be fun. Learn a new card game or a new board game or a new sport or a new activity. In fact, we just celebrated. And I'll tell you what, we celebrated here in a minute, but we just celebrated something in my family. And part of that celebration is we all went bowling. Yeah, Kurt, I'm A terrible bowler.

Yeah, me too.

I'm terrible.

My fingers swell too. The knuckles.

Yeah. But I have a friend of mine who wants to bowl, who loves. Who has a really good time bowling, but he won't go bowling because he doesn't feel like he's good enough. And I'm like, dude, come on, just go out there and be stupid.

Yeah.

Let it be what it is.

Make fun of.

Learn something new. Make fun of me. I'll make fun of you.

Improve.

Yeah.

So you can get better.

Yeah. Yeah. I do think that this eagerness to learn and grow, even though I am that way and I'm a lifelong learner and I know that you are Curtin. I think I can do better at learning fun stuff.

Yeah.

Enjoyable stuff that's not so serious and not so much in the personal development world. But talking about learning, there is a book that I've heard about called the 20 hour rule by Josh Kaufman. I want to look into this book before I might even mention as a resource if I read it. The premise behind the book is how you can get good enough at most things in just 20 hours.

Yeah. I like that.

Not great. Not expert, but good enough. Respectable.

Yeah.

Functional at most things in 20 hours. I'm intrigued by that, like, efficiency. And I want to get. And I want to learn stuff, so I might look into that book.

I like that idea. Yeah. You gotta be fearless and take risks too, if you're learning. I picked up playfulness. I picked up the PlayStation 5. Now, some people might think that's for kids and not like, I don't care. I went into it. My. My kids make. They kind of laugh at it, giggle at me a little bit because I'm kind of a beginner sometimes, although I'm having fun. But I'm having fun with my son Ben. He plays. He's been playing this game, the baseball game, the show, for years. He told me. I couldn't believe how long ago that game's been around. Just the improvements are amazing, the animations. I'm having so much fun. I'm a Yankee Stadium blasting grand slams to win games. Joe.

How cool is that?

I'm taking videos and sending it to them. I hit my 400th home run and I had one of those. You walk out of the. You get a standing ovation. You walk out. You tip your hat and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

I took a video of that and sent it to my son Ben. So. Having lots of fun with that. Why not? You gotta be a little bit fearless. You gotta take risk. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's the decision to move anyway. Taking smart risks is how we grow. Facing fears triggers dopamine and strengthens the brain's reward system, boosting confidence. That is so true. You can tackle something you're a little bit afraid of. It's so rewarding, and it will boost your confidence.

Here's the ultimate fear. When it comes to having fun, I think the ultimate fear is get over your fear of judgment and embarrassment. Get over the fear of being embarrassed. Do that. That'll. If you can get over that, man, you can do so much in life. You can do so many fun, silly things if you can just get over the fear of being embarrassed or the fear of being judged. I don't want to do that. I want to be embarrassed. You know what my. You know what my big fear is about? Being embarrassed. And I can't. I still don't. I don't do this very well, and I wish I. If I did it more often, I would get better. But I don't do it out of fear of embarrassment. For some reason. This is one thing that I can't take that playful attitude in. And do you know what that is? Oh, dancing.

Oh, yeah.

Let me tell you something about my rhythm, Kurt. When I'm in church or we're in a situation where we need to clap to a certain beat. Clap, rhythm.

Yeah.

I need to watch my wife or watch somebody else, so I know when to clap. I just can't. I. Something happens every once in a while. I'll get in the rhythm, but it doesn't last long. I wish I would get over the fearness of being ridiculed and judged and embarrassment when it comes to dancing, because you ever see people dance that are just out there dancing, man, they're having a good time.

Yeah, I used to be able to do that. I'm not that confident anymore. Or a little bit more fearful now.

Yeah.

When you're talking about that. My friend Tony Ann from my Disney community, and I teased her for a long time before we were getting ready to do karaoke at one of our meetups, and I told her, I want to do Meatloaf's paradise by the Dashboard light with her. So there's the karaoke.

Yeah.

Singing. And that's a performance. But she was really embarrassed. She thought it was going to be really inappropriate. Well, when the day finally came, I thought it was 50, 50. Whether she would do it or not. She put it. She came in, and we nailed it.

Nice.

It was fun.

So are you in all due humility. Are you a pretty good singer? No. Horrible. Yeah, me too.

I'm a belter. I scream. I'll do drunken rock songs.

Now karaoke is something that I'll do. It might take a little liquid courage, but I'll do it.

There you go.

But I'll do it.

But those are the times you remember that were really fun. Brene Brown's TED Talk on vulnerability went viral. Not because it was polished, but because she dared to be raw. So check out Renee Brown's TED Talk. You can make a bravery list of tiny risks. Speaking of trying a new outfit or pitching that wild idea, try this one day this week. Let's on pitching a wild idea. Yeah. Just to see what kind of reaction you get.

This is an overall comment about this subject, Kurt, and about people. Do you ever meet people that at certain age they preach being old? I'm just too old for that. I'm just an old man or I'm just an old woman. And nothing drives me crazy more than that when I'm interacting with somebody. I was. I was at Kings island last summer, and we were with the church youth group, and we're riding roller coasters, and the youth minister's mother came with us, and we were talking about riding rides and what rides we're all going to ride. And she goes, oh, I'm just going to stay here with the little kids, the babies that are in strollers that they had to bring. And she goes, I'll just stay back here and be a grandma. And so the funny thing about that is. And I'm like, she's. I'm like. She's grandmotherly. She's looks old, acts old, postures herself as old. And I came back and we were talking, found out she's five years younger than me. And I'm like, this is so weird. And I'm treating her like an older adult, like a senior. I'm treating her this way.

Yeah.

I don't know. And meanwhile, the teenagers are coming and jumping on my back and trying to knock me over. And.

Yeah, I. That annoys me, too. I was at a picnic party with a bunch of people about the same age, and I was listening to their conversation. Everything was about an ailment or a problem.

Yep.

Or a doctor has like, I gotta get away from you guys. I want to catch what you got.

Now, it's funny. I mix both. The best of both worlds when it comes to that. I have a group of friends, and I think we may have even done this a little bit. Kurt, I have a group of friends that whenever one of us gets the tests for the year or blood pressure and stuff like that, it's always a competition. Right now text everybody and tell them my blood pressure or tell them what my blood sugar was or my A1C or whatever tests are and rub it in that I'm either doing good or they're rubbing it in that I'm doing good. So mixing kind of some getting old and playfulness there at the same time, I guess.

Keanu Reeves is a low key icon of warmth. This is another topic we're going to talk about nurturing warmth in relationships. Warmth is not. Isn't just emotional, it's biological. It makes us feel safe, keen and human. People with warm social connections have lower inflammation, better sleep and longer life expendency. And I don't know why my example came up with Keanu Reeves. He's got kindness and he sets up anonymous donations. I guess he's pretty compassionate. That's pretty cool being a famous person like him that he does that. But yeah, you could just text someone to say something kind. No asks, no agenda, just be warm.

Yeah. And I'm not sure how warmth necessarily connects with being playful and childlike other than children have that general warmth about them. Right, exactly. They've not been tainted by the world yet and suspicious of life. And that's the kind of warmth I want to engage in with people. And I think Keanu Reeves is a great example. I'm glad you brought him up because I would have if you didn't.

Oh, really?

He is really one of the nice guys of Hollywood. In fact, I think culturally his kindness and how his kindness has shown up in the media has, has changed culturally, helped shift masculinity and empathy. And that guys can be both masculine and empathetic and kind. They don't have to be a jerk.

Yeah. You know what I'm thinking of as you're talking about another famous person is Adam Sandler. Gives me that.

Yeah. That vibe.

Vibe like yeah, he always has his buddies in all his movies.

It's as if he's definitely a very playful man. No doubt, no doubt.

You gotta love the comedians. Energizing your daily life energy isn't just physical, it's emotional and spiritual. Feeling alive fuels everything else. The World Health Organization recognizes movement as medicine. Active people are happier, more focused and more fulfilled. You know, Jane Fonda revolutionized fitness in her 40s, proving that energy can be built, not just born. Yeah. It's good to see again older folks getting out There and exercising in any way you can. So instead of forcing exercise, find what feels good, whether it's dancing in the kitchen like Joe does, or walking barefoot on the grass. I don't know if I want to say walk barefoot on the grass, because there could be who knows what in there. I was out today, and we walk my dog every night. The ticks are out. We saw them on him. We found, like, four ticks on him as we were walking them. And I was sitting here getting ready for this show, and I had a tick crawling on my face.

No kidding.

Yeah. So be careful out there right now. But definitely get out and energize your life.

You know what I think about when I imagine? Energizing and being childlike energy. Do you remember being a kid and running for no reason whatsoever? You just run from place to place for no reason. You're not in a hurry. You're just running, Just running to get there. Right. And do you remember testing new shoes when you get a new pair of shoes to see how fast you could run in your new shoes? And I always felt that I ran faster barefoot than anything else. It just felt like I ran faster. But do you remember running? Just running for no reason? Just running from the car to the house or running around, getting out of the car and running around the house just for no reason? When's the last time we did that?

Or just. Yeah, I see kids. They exhaust me when I'm out in places where you're walking a lot and kids running, like, oh, I don't know how they're doing it, but, yeah, they do.

When's the last time that you're pushing a grocery cart and you just push it as fast as you can and jump on it and ride it down the parking lot? As an adult, when's the last time you did something like that?

I'll do something. You know how they'll have someone at the end of the store where they're checking your receipt? I'll push my cart that's full right at the person and just let it roll at them and see what they're gonna do.

I don't know why that's funny. I don't know why I do. I. This reminded me of this. And this drives my wife crazy. I will. I'll be pushing my cart, and I will. It will not look like I'm stopping. I'm going right at some person at a pretty fast pace, and then I divert at the last second and go around them.

I do like to see what reaction I get. Out of strangers.

Oh, me too. That's part of playfulness. That's part of being playful, and that's part of getting a rise out of people. And yeah, I definitely like that. But when's the last time you just ran for no reason? Or when's the last time you ran in the parking lot with your cartoon and then, God forbid, like I said, jump up on the cart and ride it down the parking lot?

I can't run very far, Joe. I just know that. What do you do fostering creativity and imagination? Well, we spent a lot of time on this and the last episode gonna help you with problem solving, telling stories, and reimagining what's possible. Creative activity strengthens neural pathways and helps buffer against anxiety and depression. I love Nikolai Tesla. I'd like to. I never even knew who he was till that Tesla car company came out. But he visualized entire machines in his mind before ever building a prototype. Proof that imagination can be as powerful as execution. Keep a weird ideas journal like we said last time. Jot down fun and wild things that you think about each day. No filter.

The thing about creativity is it's a habit. It's a habit that we can build. It's a habit that we can foster. We can do something creative every single day and build on that and become more creative. And when I think about creativity and when you were talking there, I thought about this. When is the last time you doodled? Oh, yeah, just doodled on a piece of paper. Just let your mind wander. Draw weird shapes or little cartoons or houses or whatever it is. Just. When's the last time you doodled? I can't remember the last time I doodled.

No, I've never been good at it.

So there is no good at doodle. You should know that. Come on. You should know that. There's no good at.

I have a fear of doodling.

You just make scribbles on the page. That's it.

I could do a better doodle if I worked at it more.

I think doodling can be one of those creative exercises that when you do it, creativity unleashes.

Yeah, I like making lists. That's a good way to do seeing the world through fresh eyes. Wonder isn't just for kids. Rediscovering awe can reconnect us to purpose and perspective. Awe reduces stress, increases generosity, and expands our sense of time. A book I'm reading right now is about miracles. Like in the sense of biological, natural, world miracles. Sometimes you just forget everything that's going all around you and it's quite awesome if you really sit back and think about it. Astronauts report the overview of a shift in consciousness from seeing Earth as fragile and unified. I know they've had some people go up that weren't necessarily. They're just regular people going up as astronauts in the little spaceships. That's pretty cool. Spend 10 minutes outside without your phone. Notice five things you've never paid attention to before. That's so true. So much out there.

The first thing I think about when I hear this. Seeing the world through fresh eyes. And I'm glad I'm like this. And I think I'm intentionally like this because I didn't want to. I wanted to remain youthful and I didn't want to grow old. And I don't want to grow old in a traditional sense. Is. I'm glad I embrace new technology and emerging technologies. I've always been that way. I was an early adopter to the. In the computer world, the PC world. And I want to continue that. I'm an early adopter to AI and I want to continue that. I'm in one of the. Believe it or not, we feel like we've. We started late when we both started our early podcast. You've been doing geeking on WDW for a long time now. But we were early adopters in this world as well.

Yeah.

And I love seeing the world through fresh eyes. I love different perspectives and trying to understand new ways of thought and looking at things in a different way. Even weird objects or new or ordinary objects and turning it upside down or turning it on its side or wondering what it could be. I. That's something that I do a lot.

You're a really good super user. Meaning you go deep on stuff as a user.

Yeah.

Which is really cool because you find stuff I don't sometimes see. I'm not always a great user. I have a skill in logic when it comes to computers.

Yeah.

But I'm not always going real deep. But you do a real good job with that. I like that.

You understand playing with stuff. Right?

Yeah.

You're doing. Just playing with stuff.

Yeah.

Trying to break it. Let's go break something.

It's funny when people say I get this all the time. I'm just not really good with technology.

Come on now.

You're not really trying.

Yeah. It's all around you.

Balancing seriousness with lightheartedness. Maybe this is a point you were making earlier. Humor helps us survive the heaviness. Lightness is an escape. It's resilience in disguise. Laughter strengthens immunity, deepens memory and improves team dynamics. Jon Stewart brought levity to tough politics, making truth digestible and urgent. There's a lot of comedians I love. Boy, we take our politics way too seriously lately in this country. I think we need to have those comedians make fun of everybody. Save a mem folder or create a joy kit of things that always make you laugh. Use it when things feel too heavy.

Being hubris isn't being silly. I still at a certain level want to be taken seriously. But I want to. I want to be seen as somebody that can be taken seriously but doesn't take life so seriously. I like seeing the absurdity in things, the silliness in things. I like being on the edge of snarky. But there's a balance there. You can be lighthearted and still be serious. I think the two are not opposed to each other. You do need to know when enough's enough. But I think that we draw that line way too close to seriousness than humorous or fun or like. That line should be drawn way further on the fun side, man, I'll finish.

Up with inspiring, neotenic and others youthful traits aren't childish. They're essential for innovation, collaboration and culture shifting teams that nurture curiosity, openness and playfulness outperform those that don't. I got a great example which a private thing, so I'll probably tell you it's a little bit part of my win for the week. I'll try to be broad with it a little bit, but I could give you more detail in private. But yeah, I know some people that have teams that are not playful and yeah, they're not fun to work for either. There's too much serious going on there. You don't have a lot of. You'll lose a lot of employees in today's world. I think if you.

Here's where I think organizations go wrong when it comes to this contrived fun or mandatory fun, which I use a lot. Mandatory fun.

That doesn't sound right at all.

And it seems when people say over the lunch hour, we're going to have a Papa shot tournament from 1201 to 1215, right? And then they roll out the Papa Shot machine. Everybody takes their turn at it. 12:15, they roll it back into the conference room or into the storage room and there's your mandatory fun over from 12 o' clock to 12:15 over lunch. How about we just keep the Papa Shot out there and let people play with it whenever they want to play with it?

There you go.

Instead of having a Day that you get everybody together and go have fun. Which I believe in that. I believe it's a good team building activity and we all go to the Reds game or whatever it might be. But yeah, the organization itself has to culturally be fun and not take itself so serious and not take itself so those organizations thrive no matter what the business is.

Yeah. My example is from Pixar. Ed Catmull built a company where people were safe to play, fail and imagine and built a storytelling empire. Boy, in a space like that, so important you can learn from these other industries and bring them into corporate world, I think. And they still work. Host a creative jam session with friends and co workers. No agenda, just doodles, ideas and no, he don't debates.

How about that? I didn't even know that was coming.

There you have it, Joe. A new word for us. Neo Tenney. Let's go have some fun.

I'm gonna try to use that five times.

Stop being so serious.

You know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, Kurt at work? I'm gonna take. I'm gonna take five $1 bills to work and give a dollar to anybody that can define Neo Tenney. How about that?

Don't get me in trouble next week. Don't get me in trouble. I don't want anything to happen to you, Neo Tenney.

I'll be fine. I think this was a good conversation. Man, I like this. I like the idea of having fun and making sure we have fun and having a spirit of fun and childlike curiosity. I love what you've. Some of the things that you said here, some of the things that stand up, stand out to me is to embrace playfulness and taking risks and being fearless. But I really love the idea of energizing your life. Just do stuff energetically, with fervor and passion. Even if you're running around the house for no reason whatsoever. See what happens when people, they might call you a crazy old man or they might challenge you to a race.

I'll tell you, one time we were going to have a big corporate meeting and I wasn't part of the planning for that. The CO would have a team put together the topic. Well, guess what I did. I made a video emulating Rocky and that scene where the music, the whole training scene, I had my kids do the video. I showed you that video.

Yeah, yeah. I remember it from a while back.

I showed that in front of my entire workforce. Come on. That's fearless.

That's hilarious man. That's hilarious man.

That's putting yourself out there right that's good.

That's good.

It bothers me when people are afraid to do something. What are they afraid of? Come.

What's going to happen?

What could happen? I'm still there. I'm still working there.

If I can piggyback on what you just said is. I have a similar video that I didn't do on purpose, but I love to show it, and it's a little embarrassing. I made a video for my grandson when he first got a new bike, and it's a video of me congratulating him on getting a new bike as I was riding my bike. And the video is I'm holding the camera with my right hand on my phone with my right hand. I'm driving with my left hand. And as I'm videoing myself talking to him, I realize I've picked up a little bit of speed and I'm. I'm about to hit the end of a dead end street. A dead end street, not a cul de sac. A dead end street where just stops at a big grassy fence.

You're in danger now.

And now I'm in danger. So I immediately squeeze the. In the video, there's a video of this. I immediately squeeze the brake with my left hand, which is the front brake. I'm going at a pretty decent speed on the front brake. Videotaping my grandson, Videotaping me talking to my grandson. And on the video, you can see me just out of nowhere, flip over on my bike, and I can't believe I'm not told, but I have a video of me doing this, and I accidentally, when I was trying to send that video to my grandson, I accidentally sent it to somebody at work, and they went viral. And it went viral very quickly. And the funny thing is, this happened probably eight years ago.

No one's forgotten it. No, probably five years ago, no one's forgotten it.

And to this day, people ask me to show that video, and I show that video, and we laugh and cackle, and I'm so proud of that video now. So there we go.

It proves my point.

Being playful is a part of that. There's something that I didn't mean to do, but I accept the foibles and the failings of my own silliness. There we go.

Well, yeah, you're exactly. All right. I got to give you one other example. This came from my podcast. I'm walking and talking into my recorder. I'm walking into Animal Kingdom, and I feel something in my pants, and I can't. I'm like, what the Heck, there's something that's not supposed to be there, and I reach in, and it's a pair of extra underwear. Now I'm wearing your underwear. I didn't know at the time. My cargo pants. I feel this, and I'm talking about it, and I'm starting to, like, panic because I'm coming into security, and someone, right, and they are checking. They're patting people looking for stuff in their pockets, and I've got this big extra pair of underwear also.

You took out the underwear?

Not yet.

Okay.

I didn't take it out yet. I just left it there. And I'm like, oh, gosh, I got to get through security. And they're gonna, what if they pull this underwear? I'm gonna be so embarrassed.

Oh, my gosh.

And I'm talking live into my recorder this whole time, and I'm laughing at myself like, you know, a sock or something. But this is a pair of underwear. I find out underwear later because I get through, I put my ticket through, and my wife was. Comes up to me, and I'm telling her this story, and she's laughing, and she goes, were they clean or dirty? I don't know. Oh, my gosh. It was. It's been a classic scene from my podcast ever since. But everyone's always had, like, sock or something. You're like, what the heck is that in your feet?

That is funny. But underwear is a whole different.

Underwear was even funnier. All right, what's your win for the week?

Well, my win for the week is my daughter graduated college. She got her BA in psychology, and we went to the graduation ceremony over the weekend, and it was just awesome. There's a moment that everybody's waiting ceremony is about 10 minutes of speeches, and then an hour and 50 minutes of just listening to people's names being called. But here's the cool thing about that. Every name being called is a very significant moment for somebody. And so you got to witness that and got to see that and got to realize that every person walking across that aisle, although we may be bored, just waiting for your own kid's name to be called. That's a line in the sand, a flag planted, a. A significant moment in somebody's life as their name gets called. And it was just so cool. And when my daughter's name was called, you get this pride that goes over you. And I've been through it four times right now because we celebrated the BA and then we celebrated the. The. The associates, and we celebrated the Bachelor's. But the Bachelor's is something special. That's a full four year commitment. And you're like, wow, look at the work this person put in. And here we are. That's my kid there. I love it.

Yeah, I loved it.

What a fun time. What a fun time. Yep. Big time.

As you're saying that. Yeah, this is important. Like for me, it was the first person in my family ever to graduate college and there's tons of kids like that. It's a significant milestone. And you think of all the challenges you went through in those four years. I thought of that. When my kids graduate, they went through some serious problems and issues that they dealt with to get to that point. So you're thinking of those. The hard work. Yeah. The sleepless nights. I think you and I have talked about this. Sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night one thinking we didn't graduate because we didn't pass that last test.

Yep. I have that. I have that dream about four times a year.

So it's huge. Congratulations. Awesome. So awesome. Yeah. Yeah. We had a little family crisis this week and I'm putting it as a win for the week because it's not fun going through a family crisis when you're going through. Like my wife was saying, if you're going through hell, just keep on going.

That's. Yeah, that's. That's our buddy, Winston Churchill.

There's a song too. Someone country guy.

Yeah.

Wrote a song like that. And we had some long conversations throughout the weekend, but it all ended up as a happy ending. Got through it and came out on the other side looking pretty good. I'll tell you more details because it's someone I haven't. Doesn't really need to know the details. Yeah. But I mentioned to you this a little bit about this over the weekend and I can tell you the happy ending later.

Cool.

But yeah, I gotta tell you, I was really proud of how I handled it and I was helpful. My. My background and my life learning was helpful. And sometimes just having someone talk it through is really all the help you're doing. Let them get it off their chest and start talking through things that can be extremely helpful when you're going through a crisis.

In the limited coaching that I've done in my coaching business and the coaching that I've done at work and so forth, What I have found is the skill is letting somebody unfold. You're not trying to mold the result. You're not trying to mold their path. You just let them unfold and you're there to help them Just unfold.

Yeah. Give them suggestions. You give suggestions. You don't know.

Right.

Nobody knows what the solution might be sometimes in these situations, but encouragement. Absolutely listening.

Good for you, man. Happy for you.

Thanks. About your resource for the week.

Well, well, this is an interesting resource, and I don't think I've brought it up before in the past, but this. If this is a repeat, I apologize, but we take a big family vacation every year and we usually use a service that we can tell it where we're going and it'll give us all the places there and it'll give us. You can filter it by price, you can filter it by number of people, you can filter it by location. It's a really cool search engine for vacation rentals. And you can rent through the. You can safely rent through it as well. It's called Verbo VRBO Vacation Rentals. And there. I feel like I've talked about this before, and if it's a repeat, I apologize. But we were going through the vacation plans just this week, and we're looking up on vrbo verbo.com and realizing that, hey, we can. We have up until August to change or August to cancel. And very flexible. All the. All of the owners are vetted and you have some protection that you can buy if you're taking a vacation. Now, it's not a cheap resource. It's a premium resource. But you can find some really good deals on vrbo. Don't get me wrong, you can find some really good deals, but you can probably do it cheaper if you go directly with the owner, but you don't have the protections and the vetting and the payment processing and all that good stuff that you get with a. With an organization like vrbo. VRBO Vacation Rentals.

Did you book something?

Yeah, we are booked for September in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Awesome.

My wife and I are going for two weeks, and the last week my. My family's coming down.

I love it.

Yeah.

In September, maybe we're going to cross paths. I'm going to be in Florida in September. I'll have to trade notes if you are.

We're going to be there two weeks, so there's a 50%. There's a 50% chance we're going to make it, so we should definitely chat about that.

Yeah. You're only an hour from Disney World.

All right.

I could show you everything there is to know.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure you could.

My resource, many times, I hope, is going to be coming from my research in AI. I don't know What I was doing, I was trying to think of how I got here when I was in Chat GPT and I know to something new. On the left hand side menu there was something that said AI video maker with descript. Now I have descript. I don't know if anyone has heard me talk about this, but it's the software I use to edit my podcast. It's a text editor that can do the audio. It's AI inspired. There's lots of features there that I like. Like taking ums and ahs is how I got started there. But they built a plugin for ChatGPT. It was mother's Day and I'm thinking, oh, I'm gonna give this a try. And they had some practice prompts and they suggested I give them a script. And I told him, I want something Disney inspired for Mother's Day. And it wrote a nice little script and then it said, well, why don't you pick a visual style? They had watercolor and ink, whiteboard doodles, low polygon, 3D and plasticine, which I don't know what all four of those are, but I tried watercolor and ink. But my whole thought was, I'm going to take some of my community moms and replace whatever images they do, I'm going to put with my real images. And so when I brought this all into the AI video maker, I was able to produce this little video for Mother's Day. So instead of just doing a nice message for Mother Days to my community, I did a little video and it had the words transcript going across to the bottom. I think I said, did I send you a copy of that, Joe?

Yeah, you did, and it's really cool, dude. In fact, as you're talking here, I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. But you texted it to us and it's really neat. And I think you did that all through AI and you were able to create the images and put it all together. And it was just neat, just neat.

And I've not done a lot of video editing at all with the script. And this forced me to figure out how to put the images and swap the images out, resize them, how to put the words in the foreground instead of the background. So I had to do a lot of that kind of juggling around. So I learned a little bit about video editing. But the script was, boy, they nailed it. Pretty good first shot, I thought, I thought it was like, described my sentiment that I wanted to get for Mother's Day.

How neat.

So that was a cool resource that just showed up on Chat GPT. It was an AI video, probably because I have the script. I'm guessing it showed up for me.

Cool.

All right. What's your quote?

Well, this comes from George Bernard Shaw, and I love this quote. It speaks specifically to this subject. And I love what he says here. We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

That pretty much sums up what you and I were trying to say when you were talking about someone who's five years younger acting like they're old. If you act like you're old, guess what? You are old.

That's right. That's right.

Don't act like you're old, and you'll stay young all the time.

There are studies that show that, Kurt. And we talked about this a little bit. But even if we have a young mindset, and we continue to have a young mindset, and with that young mindset, creativity and all that stuff, playfulness, and all the stuff that we've just talked about, physically, we're more healthy. It not only has a mental effect, but a physiological effect, and I just don't want to lose that. We talked about it before, but this quote says that we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old, literally grow old, physically and mentally because we stop playing.

I agree. So good. I don't want to be that person. I don't want to grow up at all.

Me neither. We're still trying to decide what we want to be when we grow up, right?

Always working on it. Here's my quote from an old guy.

As a matter of fact, he's up there.

He's really old. You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. And that's from the people that had one word names back in the olden days. Plato.

Yeah. And this is true. I like this, too, Kurt. I like this. You can find out good, bad, ugly, right, About a person if you're playing something with them, how competitive they are, how much, whether that they're a sore winner or sore loser. Yeah, you can find out a lot about a person. But I would rather find out about a person by playing with them than just spending dull time with them.

Yeah. Like when companies do Icebreakers, and it is an hour of play. You never met someone before. You really get to know someone when you got the guard down and just having some fun.

Nice.

Take us home, Joe.

Good stuff. Well, our website, of course, is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com if you want to reach out to us, you can email us dudesudesinprogress.com let us know what you like to do for play. Let us know how playful you are and how seriously you take life. And some tips for playing and some tips for being creative and having a youthful mindset. We'd love to hear from you. Dudesudesinprogress.com and remember, play is is progress. Being youthful is progress. It's not regression, it's progress. Because progress is better than perfection. Keep moving forward.

Keep playing.

That's right. Talk to you soon, buddy. It.