Play Is Not the Opposite of High Performance—It’s Essential to It On International Day of Play: A Reminder About Joy, Performance, and How to Reclaim It

Last month, as we approached International Day of Play, I was a guest lecturer in a 4th-year neuroscience of wellness class at UBC. When I asked the students about play and creativity, something shifted in the room.

One by one, they admitted it: “I’ve lost touch with that.” “I used to be creative, but…” “I don’t know how to play anymore.” “Everything feels serious now.”

These weren’t burnt-out professionals or overwhelmed athletes. They were students in their early 20s, at the beginning of their careers, supposedly studying wellness. And they couldn’t remember the last time they truly played.

But here’s what struck me most: I hear this all the time from the successful leaders I coach.

The accomplished ones. The ones who have “made it.” The ones with the titles and the influence and the results. They say the same thing: “No time to play. It’s not important. There’s too much to do.”

And yet, the moment they give themselves permission to touch that part of themselves again—to play, to create, to explore without a predetermined outcome—something shifts. They soften. They light up. They remember why they started doing what they do in the first place.

This conversation has stayed with me, especially as we approach International Day of Play.

Because I’ve realized something: this isn’t a problem for students or the overwhelmed. This is a human problem. A cultural problem. And it’s affecting everyone from 22-year-olds to established C-suite leaders.

The problem is the same. The cost is the same. And the solution is the same.

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Why High Performers Need More Play

In my LEGO Serious Play workshops over the past months—workshops with executives, professional athletes, coaches, emerging and established leaders—I’ve heard the same admission again and again.

The moment we start building with LEGO, the moment people give themselves permission to play and explore without judgment, they name the same hunger: “I didn’t realize how much I missed this.”

This isn’t random. This is systemic.

We’ve built a high-performance culture that has trained us out of something essential: the willingness to play.

We talk a lot about building mental resilience in athletes. We coach emotional regulation, focus, and decision-making under pressure. But we’re missing something fundamental: the brain doesn’t learn or adapt in a state of constant seriousness.

The pressure to perform, to have it figured out, to be “on” all the time—it’s creating a generation of people who are effective but exhausted. Accomplished but disconnected. Successful but joyless.

And the irony? The very thing we’ve sacrificed—play—is the thing our brains need most to actually change and grow.

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The Neuroscience of What We’re Missing

Neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself and create new neural pathways—doesn’t happen through willpower alone. It happens through specific conditions that optimize how the brain learns, integrates information, and builds new patterns.

I work with a framework called The 7 Keys to Neuroplasticity, which maps the conditions that make learning and change possible:

1. Relationships – Learning happens in connection with others
2. Relevance – Information must matter to the learner
3. Novelty – The brain pays attention to what’s new and different
4. Focus – Attention is the gatekeeper to learning
5. Practice – Repetition builds neural highways
6. Play – Freedom, exploration, and low-stakes experimentation
7. Rest – Integration and consolidation happen in downtime

Look at that list. Most of our high-performance training focuses on Practice, Focus, and pushing through Rest. We’ve become obsessed with repetition and discipline.

But notice what we’ve almost completely eliminated?

Play.

This is the missing piece. And on International Day of Play, it’s worth asking: What are we losing by leaving it out?

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Why Play Is Actually the Secret Weapon

When we enter a state of play—genuine, unscripted exploration without judgment—something shifts in the brain.

The prefrontal cortex (your executive function center) stays engaged. Stress hormones lower. The brain becomes more flexible and creative. Instead of fighting or fleeing, the nervous system activates what neuroscientists call the “tend and befriend” response—connection and collaborative thinking become possible.

In other words: Play creates the exact conditions the brain needs to actually change.

But here’s the catch: true play requires something most high-performing people have trained themselves OUT of—the willingness to explore without a predetermined outcome. To tinker. To “fail” without consequence. To let creativity lead instead of control.

This is where most mental performance training breaks down. We tell athletes to “be mentally tough” and “control your thoughts,” but we rarely give them permission to play with those thoughts. To experiment. To explore different mental states without judgment.

That’s a mistake. And it’s exactly what the UBC students were describing—not a lack of capability, but a lack of permission.

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The Neuroscience of Play: How Your Brain Actually Changes

Play vs. Traditional Training
Let me be specific about what happens in your brain during play versus during training.

During traditional practice and training: Your goal is clear. You’re executing a known skill. Your brain activates goal-directed circuits—the prefrontal cortex is engaged in a focused, linear way. Simultaneously, your amygdala (threat detector) is often mildly activated because there’s something to prove, something at stake. This produces cortisol and adrenaline. Effective for drilling known patterns. But neuroplasticity—actual rewiring—is limited because the brain is operating in “execute what I know” mode.

During genuine play: Your brain lights up completely differently. The amygdala calms down because there’s no threat, no judgment, no predetermined “right answer.” Simultaneously, reward centers release dopamine—the neurochemical of motivation and learning. Dopamine makes memories stick; it literally tags experiences as “important, learn this.” Your exploratory networks activate—regions responsible for “what’s possible?” thinking. The prefrontal cortex stays online but in a different mode: flexible, creative problem-solving rather than executing a plan.

Here’s what makes this neurologically powerful: play engages both the creative and analytical brain regions simultaneously, while reducing threat. That combination is rare. And it’s exactly what neuroplasticity requires.

Additionally, when you play—especially in social play like LEGO Serious Play workshops—your brain releases oxytocin. This is the bonding neurochemical. It enhances trust, connection, and openness to new ideas. It literally makes your brain more receptive to change and integration of new patterns.

The contrast is striking:

Training often produces: High focus + Moderate threat + Linear learning pathway = Skill drilling (good for repetition, less effective for breakthrough)

Play produces: High focus + Low threat + Exploratory networks activated + Dopamine + Oxytocin = Neuroplasticity (actual rewiring, integration, breakthrough insights)

This is why elite performers across disciplines—musicians who breakthrough through improvisation, athletes who discover new moves through play, leaders who solve problems through creative exploration—report that their transformations didn’t come from grinding practice. They came from periods of genuine play.

The mechanism is neuroscience. When you play, you’re literally activating the brain conditions that allow it to rewire itself.

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Enter: LEGO Serious Play

How LEGO Serious Play Works
LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that sounds simple—you build with LEGO—but is profoundly powerful. Here’s how it works:

You’re given a challenge or question. The questions vary depending on context and what needs to shift:

For athletes: “Build a model of what courage looks like when you’re facing a difficult race” or “Show me what your creativity feels like right now.”

For executives working individually: “Build a model of what authentic leadership looks like for you” or “Show me what’s blocking you from the impact you want to have” or “Build what you actually want your role to be, not what you think it should be.”

For teams solving business problems together: “Build a model of what this organization needs to become to thrive” or “Show me what’s stopping collaboration on this team—what does the obstacle look like?” or “Build what world-class culture looks like for us” or “Create a model of the future we’re building together.”

You build silently with LEGO for several minutes. No talking. No planning. Just hands and intuition and the permission to explore.

Then you share your model and tell the story behind it. Not as an explanation, but as a narrative. An athlete might say: “This tower is shaky but tall—that’s what courage feels like. This piece here is my support system…” An executive might share: “I built this wall—and just realized I didn’t know I was carrying that. It’s all the expectations I’ve internalized.” A team might discover: “We all built separate pieces that don’t connect. That’s exactly what we do in meetings.”

What happens in those few minutes of silent building is remarkable.

The rational, controlling part of the brain steps back. The creative, intuitive part steps forward. Your hands access wisdom that your words can’t articulate. You build something that surprises you. And in sharing it, you discover what you actually believe or feel about the topic—not what you think you should believe.

And here’s what I’ve witnessed across workshops with athletes, executives, and leaders: the moment people give themselves permission to play, they reconnect with something they thought they’d lost.

One athlete said, after her first LEGO Serious Play session: “I didn’t realize I was so disconnected from my joy about cycling. I thought I was just tired. Turns out I just haven’t played with my sport in months.”

An executive who was struggling with burnout built his ideal role and realized: “I built my current role, and it was all sharp edges and pressure. Then I was asked to rebuild it—what I actually wanted it to be. The difference was striking. I need more play in my work.”

A senior leader in a team workshop said: “Building this forced me to stop intellectualizing leadership and actually show what I believe it should be. I built something I didn’t know I valued until my hands made it.”

A leadership team working on culture brought their individual models together and gasped: “We each built a different culture. No wonder we’re not aligned. But now I see what we’re each holding.” That one session shifted how they made decisions together.

A coach told me: “Watching my athletes build gave me permission to play too. I realized I’d made coaching so serious that we forgot why we started doing this.”

An executive team solving a collaboration problem built models of “what’s blocking us.” When they saw them all laid out—walls, towers, fragmented pieces—they had a visceral, non-verbal understanding of their actual problem that two hours of talking never would have surfaced.

This is play-based learning. And it hits multiple neuroplasticity keys at once:

• Novelty: Building with LEGO is unfamiliar territory for most adults
• Relevance: The question is deeply relevant to their performance or life
• Relationships: Sharing and being witnessed creates connection
• Focus: The tactile, creative process demands full attention
• Play: It’s low-stakes, permission-based exploration

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What I’m Seeing Across Contexts

Over the past months working with BTG cyclists, corporate teams, executives, and emerging leaders, I’ve watched what happens when we slow down and make space for play in training and development.

People who typically answer questions with “I should…” or “I have to…” start saying “I want to…” and “I notice…”

They access insights about their emotional baseline, their relationship to pressure, their actual values (not the values they think they should have) that don’t surface in traditional conversation.

They become more creative problem-solvers because play activates the exploratory mindset.

Athletes report back: “I’m making better split-second decisions in races. I think it’s because I’m more relaxed and creative, not fighting myself.”

Executives tell me: “I’m more collaborative. Less stuck in needing things to be ‘right.'”

Leaders share: “My team feels safer around me. I’m not so intense all the time.”

The pattern is consistent: when people give themselves permission to play, they don’t just feel better. They perform better.

Most importantly, across every context, people develop a different relationship with themselves. Instead of brains to control, they become brains to partner with. To listen to. To explore.

And paradoxically? This makes them perform better under pressure. Because they’re not fighting their own nervous system anymore. They’re working with it.

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The Resistance to Play (And Why We Need to Move Past It)

I know what the pushback will be: “This is nice for team building or executive retreats, but when the race gets hard, none of this matters. You need mental toughness, not creativity.”

I used to think that too.

But here’s what neuroscience shows us: the brain that has practiced flexibility, curiosity, and self-compassion performs differently under pressure than the brain that has only practiced control and discipline.

Control is exhausting. It requires constant vigilance and willpower. The moment pressure spikes or fatigue hits, the controlled brain crumbles.

Flexibility is resourceful. It means you have multiple mental states available to you. You can shift. You can adapt. You can find what works in the moment.

And that only develops if you’ve practiced accessing different states. If you’ve played with different ways of thinking and moving through challenge.

Think about the difference between a cyclist who has only trained hard and one who has also played—tried different lines, experimented with pace, explored what felt good in the moment. The second athlete has more resources available when it matters.

The same is true for the mind.

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Play as Rebellion (But in a Good Way)

In high-performance culture, play can feel like a luxury. Or a distraction. Or something you earn after you win.

I’m here to say it’s the opposite.

Play is foundational. It’s how the brain actually learns and adapts. It’s how you access creativity under pressure. It’s how you build resilience that doesn’t break.

Bringing LEGO Serious Play into mental performance coaching—or using play-based tools in your own training and life—is an act of honoring how your brain actually works. It’s saying: “I’m not just going to work harder. I’m going to work smarter. I’m going to create the conditions where my brain can actually change.”

It’s also an act of rebellion against a culture that has told us: Play is for children. Seriousness is for adults. Joy is a luxury.

That’s a lie the brain can’t support.

So on International Day of Play, I’m inviting you to rebel. To give yourself permission.

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What This Means For You (Whether You’re an Athlete, Coach, or Leader)

If you’re reading this and thinking, “That sounds nice, but where do I start?”—here are some questions to play with:

• What would your emotional baseline feel like if it were a physical structure? (Build it. Sketch it. Get tactile with it.)
• What does courage actually look like when you’re facing something hard? (Not what it should look like—what it actually looks like for you.)
• If your performance had a voice, what would it tell you right now? (Write it out. Get creative. No censoring.)
• When was the last time you played with something related to your craft? (And what would it take to do that again?)

These aren’t exercises to solve problems. They’re explorations to deepen understanding. They’re play.

The more space you create for this kind of exploration—whether through LEGO, journaling, sketching, movement, or any other creative medium—the more your brain has access to the flexibility and resilience that shows up when it matters most.

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The Invitation

If you’re ready to move beyond “toughness” training into actual neuroplasticity-based performance coaching, I’m here for it.

This is what I’m building with athletes at BTG and with leaders and teams across contexts: mental performance training that honors how the brain actually learns. That makes space for play alongside precision. That trusts that creativity and competition aren’t opposites—they’re partners.

If you’ve lost touch with your own play and creativity—whether you’re 22 or 42—there’s a path back. And it starts with permission.

Play is not the opposite of high performance. It’s essential to it.

And it’s time we started treating it that way. Especially on days like today—International Day of Play—when we’re reminded that what we’re missing matters.

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In Summary

The 7 Keys to Neuroplasticity remind us that learning and change happen through:

• Relationships, Relevance, Novelty, Focus, Practice, PLAY, and Rest

But here’s what I see almost daily in my coaching: My clients are caught on a hamster wheel. They’re doing more, performing more, trying to keep up—and they’ve convinced themselves that rest and play are luxuries they can’t afford.

They’re exhausted. They’re stuck. And they can’t figure out why their performance isn’t improving despite all their effort.

The irony? The two things they think they don’t have time for—rest and play—are exactly what would get them off the hamster wheel.

When you create space for genuine play and actual rest, your brain doesn’t just feel better. It performs better. You stop grinding and start flowing. You stop pushing and start adapting.

That’s what I witnessed in the UBC classroom when students admitted they’d lost touch with their creativity.

That’s what I see in every LEGO Serious Play workshop when people realize how much they’ve been missing.

And that’s what I’m seeing with athletes, leaders, and teams who are ready to get off the wheel and access a different kind of performance—one that’s sustainable, creative, and actually joyful.

The hamster wheel isn’t high performance. It’s exhaustion masquerading as commitment.

And it’s time we stopped calling it that.

This International Day of Play, what would change in your training, your coaching, or your life if you gave yourself permission to play?

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Sheri Jay works with Canadian athletes, emerging and established leaders, and high-performing teams on mental performance training, emotional regulation, and building the internal conditions for peak performance. The brain is the same whether you’re emerging or established—neuroplasticity principles apply to all of us. She specializes in neuroscience-based coaching and LEGO Serious Play facilitation.