Play Your Way Out of Work Stress: When Adults Forget How to Play

When was the last time you genuinely played, not performed, not scrolled, not numbed out, but actually played? That is our genuine suggestion to you in this episode.

 We start there and quickly land on a surprising point: adult play is not a childish extra; it is one of the best practical ways to calm stress, clear brain fog, and get back to creative thinking when work feels like too much.

We talk with Zander, the “Z Play coach,” about reintroducing play in a way that feels safe and mature. That means building small triggers you can use in the moment: simple body cues, tiny movements, and tactile tools that remind your nervous system it can stand down. 

We also dig into why play and productivity are not enemies. When stress locks you into fight or flight, you lose flexibility, focus, and good judgement. A short pattern break can change your state fast enough to change your day.

Then we go into the real world problem: the office that starts cheerful and feels drained by 11am. Emotions are contagious, so we explore self regulation, finding a comrade, and what leaders can do to create a workplace culture where people do better work because the environment stays light.

You will also hear a story about a team that used five minutes of Nerf gun chaos to reset the whole room and get back to work smiling.

If you want practical stress relief, better focus, and more joy at work without pretending life is perfect, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who feels burned out, and leave a review with your favorite small “play cue” so we can try it too.

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. If you have a specific health concern or condition, please consult a qualified Healthcare professional for more details. Check out herguru dot uk forward slash disclaimers

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Hi, Carol here. When was the last time you genuinely played? I'm not talking about watching TV or scrolling through your phone. I mean actually playing because today Xander and I explore why this simple question

When Did You Last Play

SPEAKER_02 0:47

matters far more than most adults realise. Hope you enjoyed. Today I am here with Xander and Xander is known as the Z Play coach, and we're going to start off with some conversations about how us as adults can work in such a way that we kind of introduce back fun and curiosity back into

Meet The Z Play Coach

SPEAKER_02 1:18

our lives is in a way that feels right for us. So hi Xander, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Thanks, Yor. Good to be here. And that's funny the translation of Z play coach into English, Z play coach. It's a classic.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Zander, what I'm hoping today is that we can talk about how adults generally forget how to play and what that actually means. And for I appreciate that most adults generally have hobbies and they go out and they do things. I'm not talking about, I'm talking about how they can inject fun and play into their everyday lives. So when they're feeling stressed, especially in the a work stress or anxiety situation, they have something that they can move to. So but before we do that, can you explain what a Z play coach is?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Well, a Z play coach. My goal is to help people overcome brain fog or stress. Most of us work in a stressful environment, especially entrepreneurs. That's where kind of my focus is because I'm an entrepreneur and I get that workspace. So it's a way of reintroducing play. It's not something that you want to do or can do. It's something you

Why Play Is Not Optional

SPEAKER_01 2:41

have to do. It's something that in order to reset your brain and get yourself into that creative mode, that place where you're not feeling overwhelmed all the time, you gotta incorporate a little bit of play in your lifetime. So it's just a way of reintroducing that in some way that feels comfortable to you. And it's play is personal, it's individualized. So it's just a process of discovering your way of play and then bringing that into your lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Cool. So this may seem like a strange question because how can we do that? Introduce play without it feeling childish or in a way that will feel embarrassed or even irresponsible as an adult?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

That's a good question. Well, um, play is meant to be childish.

Subtle Play Triggers To Calm

SPEAKER_01 3:27

What we're trying to do is re-reawaken that inner child that's within all of us that we've stifled over the years of just you know conformity and just you know beating it down and feeling like it can't come out to play. But there are ways of doing it in a mature-ish way, so that we we we really what the eventual goal is to have little triggers that remind you of that playful state. So you it starts off slow, but then as you're building it up, it eventually just been like, oh, this is just a way of almost instantly getting you into that space. And there's small, subtle things like different movements that you can do with your lips, even like especially one that you see a lot of. I'm watching uh FIFA soccer media, a lot of a lot of players are doing this, they go, right? But what that does is it stimulates your vagus nerve and calms you down almost instantly. So you train yourself, like I train you how to do that. So you're doing that, you do that in bed first thing in the morning before you even get out of bed, so you're in a chill space. So if you're ever feeling stressed, you just can go and your body will associate that with being in a relaxed state in your bed, and automatically your whole system just calms down. But there are other various ways, different tools that you could use. Um, I I create these things which are called the ultimate play tool, and I teach people to have these in their hand with them all the time. It's just a squeeze it, and that's another way of just reminding you that everything is okay, and you can de-stress that way.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

What do you think most people when they think about play?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Um, what do you think most people think about well that's play has been turned into a negative thing in our modern society of productivity? Um, we associate it being the antithesis to work, and it's it's the exact opposite. Um, with play, the the more companies

Play As A Productivity Tool

SPEAKER_01 5:04

sort of are discovering the importance of play, and it equates to productivity. Um, it it cush associates with creativity and a ways of just thinking outside the box. So it's it's very important for us to when people think about it, they're you know, we've been taught childlike, you know, it's childish, and you know, in school systems we were just it was beaten out of us, basically. So it's a matter of just recognizing the importance of it and how you could just incorporate into your adult life in a way that that brings more productivity, gets you to be able to re-center quickly and re-reawaken your brain. I call it the play flow state, but it's a way just to get your brain just to stay focused and but but relax at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Okay. Now, for me, play is uh um different to entertainment or distractions or you know, scrolling on your phone or just collapsing at the end of the day. I I talk about um one of the concepts that I talk about a lot, I call it outrageous unconscious joy, and to

Outrageous Unconscious Joy Explained

SPEAKER_02 6:12

me, the reason why I call it outrageous is because you're right, we we've all play has almost been beaten out of us as adults, and I think we we sort of associate good feelings with a happy state, you know, and to me there's no such thing as happiness, truly, there isn't. Um there is joy, and the uh the way that I explain it is you can be in a state and you feel as if you're in in that joy state, but you're but the because we've been trained not to feel that we almost limit that joy state, whereas I see it as unlimited, we put the limit on the amount of joy that we bring into our lives, and that's why I call it outrageous unconscious joy. It's that type of joy where you're just radiating positive energy to everyone around you and they can feel it. Now, what do you what do you think to that?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

I love that, I love that concept. Um, you know, happiness is something that you could you're you know, the pursuit of happiness, but to achieve it is you know, I think joy joyful energy is is where we want to be at because that's a sense of you know the jubilation, the sense that it's oozing from you. It's not just a you know, happiness seems to me like uh I'm happy and whatever, but like a joyful joyous seems like a such more exuberant word for it. So I I totally love that concept, but yeah, yeah, and and I I believe 100% that as we radiate that that vibrational frequency, we change everybody around us, actually the the whole universe.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

So absolutely, absolutely, and I think and I think like you said, um because we we're in we put it this way, most people these days have to work, you know. There's there's there's you know, most normal people they have to do that. So to me, just because you have to work doesn't mean you can't be in a joyful state, and when I'm when I mean joyful joyful, I don't mean laughing or joking, I literally mean that positive energy that you feel with everything that you do and everything that you say because it's it's a win-win situation for everyone. So, with that in mind, because I know that some people they feel exhausted and they might be mildly allergic to the word play. What would be your number one thing for someone who feels oh, you guys, you're talking rubbish. There's

Winning Over The Play Skeptics

SPEAKER_02 8:55

no way that I can be at work um with all the stresses and strains of that that entails, and also be in a playful, joyful state.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

That's that's the that's the contradiction of our time, like that. The whole that that's a mindset that they've been raised under, you know what I mean? And and it's uh literally trying to break that mold. Uh people get stuck in their ways, people don't like to admit that they're wrong or anything like that. So it's hard to get somebody who's stuck in that mindset to really uh think outside the box. But what you can start to do is is to remind them about how do you feel when you're joyous? Are you in a better state? How do you feel when you're stressed right now? Are you are you at your best? You know, just you can you can logically get somebody to that point of just saying, Look, when you're stressed, you're not thinking clearly. Your whole body shuts down. Your brain literally tries to protect itself because you're in fight or flight mode. Um so by incorporating play and just subtly doing it, you can go with a thing of like, hey, try this simple, simple thing. How do you feel after this? Jump up and down for a second, like just shake your arms and jump up, jump up and down, just uh just go like that, shake it out, shake it out. Now, do that for 10 seconds. How do you feel right now? Just just feel it. If people don't feel something, then you know, then you gotta tell them to do it for 30 seconds. But you know, you should literally feel it, an almost immediate change up, the benefits of it, and then you can start building on that, you know, and then you eventually break down somebody's resistance when you're when people are under people don't want to be under stress, they just put themselves in that situation. They're constantly thinking their brain is going constantly activating the negative patterns and all things they have to do, and ah, you just get frustrated with it. So break the pattern up, find a way just showing it really quickly. Here's a little taste of what you can do. Now, do you want more of that good feeling? Now you incorporate different ways, you get different different angles on it, and then you're gonna read the results of that. You're gonna feel yourself being more creative, having less stress in your world, and get that course of the level course of the levels under control. That's what you want.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Cool. Now, this may seem like a strange question, so I apologize uh in advance if you can't answer it, but it just came into my head, right? Okay, so most people they go to work, they work in an office environment, they might, you know, office hours of nine till five or nine to five: thirty, they normally get in um

Fixing Draining Office Energy

SPEAKER_02 11:18

around eight o'clock so they can sort of sort themselves out, maybe have their breakfast at work. You know, people come in, they say good morning, and they're feeling you know, quite jolly um in the morning. Hello to everybody asking them what they did last night, and slowly but surely by 11 o'clock, literally, all the positive energy has been drawn out of that environment, and that person starts feeling low just because everybody's coming in and then you know, like oh morning, you know, that sort of thing, they're they're positive and they can almost feel that energy being drained out of them, and by 11 o'clock, they're desperate for coffee or they're desperate for some kind of stimulant um to kind of get them back into where they want to be. Yeah, how would you how because look, I'll be honest with you, I am completely and utterly nuts. It's the honestry. I will do pretty much anything and everything to give myself joy. I mean, I will I will walk around with headphones on and no music playing just so that I can dance, and everybody assumes that I have music on, and that's that's becoming a nuts I am. So I appreciate when people say to me, That's how you know, channel, that's how I feel. I feel as if I'm always on the back foot, and I I'm I'm in the morning, I'm a kind of morning person, I'm going and I'm ready to go, and you know, I'm there to you know try and jeer up my team. And like I said, by 11 o'clock, I just want to go home. I just want to be on my own because I just feel that way. What would you say to that particular person who feels that it's it's the every day that they find difficult?

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Yeah, well, the problem is that our our emotions are contagious, uh you know, we're we're emotionally contagious. So when we have one person feeling the it starts spreading to another person who's who's on the edge, and then when that person starts feeling bad, then it gets to another person who is by the time it gets to that person who starts off positive, all of a sudden they're in that mode of that whole environment, they they lean down and they go to negative. Being able to self-regulate is challenging, especially into a work environment where everyone tries is trying to take everything seriously. It really is a top-down type of scenario for what I'm what I try to do is I try and I try and reach out to people who are in the in the in the leadership roles of companies and stuff to be like, look, you can change your environment because you have somebody who's just a worker there trying to you know goof around and then everyone just gets bumped, the HR gets on them, hey, you're you're goofing around too much, you know what I mean? So they they they get stifled in that position. For that person, I would say find personal ways of doing it. Find ways to find find something you can do during the day that's gonna stimulate your activity in a fun way. Like, you know, I teach I personally teach juggling is the best way of getting your brain refocused, and you're not gonna be disturbing anybody, you're just gonna be doing your own juggling, that'll keep your brain in the in the non-cortisol state. Uh so that you whether it brings you joy or happiness, at least your brain's not not subsiding into yuck. But you know, there's other ways of doing it. Hopefully, you can get a comrade, you know, somebody who's on who thinks like you and is on the same boat with you, and then you guys can work together to try and switch the environment up in your in your office. But really, if you're a leader, you gotta recognize that your team works best at that play, and you gotta set up times every hour. Like, one really cool environment I was in, was it I was in a tech company in San Francisco with starting up when I was this is in 90 95, I was going in for an interview to lead up this tech company, and the boss was showing me around, and at one point, like he's like, just check this out. He goes, and he just yelled, shoot them up, and everyone pulled out Nerf guns and started just shooting them at each other, and like people were just running all over the office, getting on crazy angles, just bang, bang, bang, bang. The bullets are flying everywhere, right? And then, you know, it lasted for just like five minutes, a little bit less than that. But then at the right time, everyone just calmed down, everyone picked up all their bullets, and the whole atmosphere changed. People were laughing, people behind the computers, everyone was smiling, and then the boss just whispered, he goes, He goes, That what that one moment right there changes up the whole day, and now everyone's excited, everyone is excited to come to work here because we do things like this all the time. We keep the environment light, we keep it a place that people want to come to because they're in a in a positive, fun environment. So that's where the whole culture has to change. We have to start recognizing that power of play and bringing it back into our workplace in a place that everyone can agree is a fun place to do. But like I said, if you're an individual in that negative work environment, it is challenging. It is really challenging, but you can do individual ways of play, things that aren't going to fear with other people. You can't bundle up a ball and throw at somebody because some people get offended with that stuff. But paper battles are one of the best ways to do that. Like everyone just grab a sheet of paper and just start throwing them at each other. It just creates an environment of like nobody's gonna get hurt from a paper ball, but it creates that environment of playful activity that immediately changes up the whole thing and gets you energy just to totally shift almost instantly. So to the in to the lone player out there, I salute you and keep your keep your hopes up and dreams that you can you can do it right. So, but it's yeah, we got you, we got to change up the culture.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Cool. Well, Zonda, I want to thank you for joining me today. Um, and um we'll say bye for now.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Bye for now. Thank you, Charles. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

So for me, one of the most surprising things is when you're recovering from work stress.

Final Reflections And Goodbye

SPEAKER_02 17:28

It isn't always about adding another strategy. Sometimes it's about just giving yourself permission to reconnect with something you forgot. Curiosity, play, joy, why not outrageous unconscious joy? Anyway, bye for now.