PLAY Polarities

This 👏 is why 👏 you teach 👏 kids 👏 IMPROV.

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This 12-minute meditation begins with an invitation to receive what arises with equanimity: that is, calmness and composure, especially in a difficult situation.

What a challenge, right?

We hear about the benefits of meditation and mindfulness all the time, but this is about the application. And Mindful.org is great about publishing science-backed practices.

So how do we cultivate a more mindful presence all the time and what does that feel like? How do we respond to unknowns and surprises or carry out our commitments in a mindful way?

That's what we're practicing with mindfulness. It's like building a calm space in your mind where you can go to get centered and aligned with yourself and your reality.

As you practice, that equanimity is easier to access and it comes more naturally.

Have a listen and try on some equanimity for size. What does it feel like to you?

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mindset

A Guided Meditation for Turning Awareness into Action - Mindful Explore a guided mindfulness meditation for strengthening our ability to be self-aware and self-determined as we co-create our emerging reality together.

How do we flip accountability talks into positive experiences?

Just like improv, it's all about the "Yes And."

How often do managers dump everything they have to say on an employee and then try to end the conversation as soon as possible? It’s not an “Accountability Talk” unless your employee talks too.

Hear out your employees or they’ll never take to heart what you have to say.

Use your "Yes And" to empathize with them and find out what positive outcomes they'd like to work toward with you.

We go over positive accountability talks in detail with client teams during the Full Self Leadership workshop. (Deep Space Nine references are optional!)

Get in touch with us to learn more.

https://zurl.co/yRRs

When you've got disengaged employees, the whole team feels it.

Conversations are short. Everyone's out of the office by 5:01. The vibe is OFF.

Managers are in a good position to re-energize and re-engage your people, but they'll need support to do the heavy lifting!

Read through our guide to empowering your managers (or yourself!) to be a "Best Boss" and give your team both the encouragement and accountability they need to do their best work.

Download it here and see what you can put into practice right away:

https://zurl.co/ZY3j

Sign-up link: https://zurl.co/4opc

Being a manager means you're often liaison to everyone, chief problem-solver and on-the-spot decision maker.

It's rare to see leaders provide the training and support their managers need to deliver great results--and yet you find a way to get it done.

So who's there when YOU need help?

Join us for a lunch hour discussion with other people managers who get what it's like to make the impossible happen every day. Maybe you'll come away with a new mentor, an accountability buddy, or a friend!

We're meeting on Zoom Wednesday, September 27 at 11A CST.

Hope to see you there!

At Play Polarities, we hold the Five Calls of Personal Leadership as the building blocks of a proactive life. Answering these calls is how we make meaningful decisions about the leader we want to be.

Most people don’t care about the questions we ask in these calls. They get up, do their jobs, go home to their families, and repeat over and over again. They would accuse us of “overthinking.” But we would suggest that lack of consciousness is “underthinking.”

Leadership says “While you may want to do X, our larger goals will be better achieved through Y.” That sense of strategy, of a larger game plan, of a purpose requires us to ask these deeper questions.

You don’t have to ask all of them. You don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) come up with definitive answers, never to be revisited. You don’t have to spend all your time thinking about them. But, answering the Five Calls in some form changes your relationship to the world and what you want from it.

We answer the Fifth Call by taking what we have learned and sharing it with others so they may join us as Leaders.

Would you like to learn more about the Call to Share and have fun doing it?

Playing With Purpose blends improv and personal development the weekend of 9/30 and 10/1 in Glenview, IL.

To learn more and register: https://zurl.co/LLU6

Thumbs up for bi pride month! If you know, you know 😉

PLAY Polarities is a proud member of the LGBT Chamber of Commerce Illinois.

There are so many ways to get better at the skills you need and use them to achieve your goals. How do you find a path through so much noise?

Our four-quadrant model of Pay Attention; Lean Toward; Accept, Adapt, Affect; and Yes And provides a simple, cyclical process for choosing your next move, taking action, connecting to others, and working together. It’s a Co-Human model, because we believe that all meaningful work happens through collaboration.

The Call to Create is your motivation to KEEP living out the choice you made in the Third Call, the Call to Choose.

This is how you find and do the work that makes you feel fully alive, and Matt will help you practice answering these calls in the Playing With Purpose workshop.

Would you like to learn more about the Call to Create and have fun doing it?

Playing With Purpose blends improv and personal development the weekend of 9/30 and 10/1 in Glenview, IL.

To learn more and register: https://zurl.co/Kcjl

Gallup's State of the Workforce Report for 2023 showed 47% are actively searching for a new job--and 71% think it's a good time to find one.

Your team's direct managers are the face of your company to employees. It takes a lot of support to be able to focus on relationship building along with all of their other responsibilities.

Do your managers have what they need to engage employees effectively?

Our free guide to strengthening manager/direct report relationships works all kinds of work environments.

Download it now and get some new ideas on getting your team refocused and becoming a BEST BOSS.

https://zurl.co/2LR9

We know a ton of EXCELLENT managers, and we love learning from the best!

Sign-up link: https://zurl.co/mqNK

We've been holding monthly mastermind sessions to provide a space where managers can bring their people challenges, talk through them with peers, and work toward a solution.

Are you wanting more professional development and mentorship than your leaders can provide? These conversations often lead to great insights, skill sharing, and high-value partnerships.

The best part? Manager Excellence Mastermind is FREE and you can tune in from anywhere!

RSVP and join us next Wednesday, September 27 at 11A CENTRAL.

When you come up against a difficult situation at work, how much mental space do you have to process what's going on and decide how to react?

Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Can you think of anyone who's great at taking action on the spur of the moment? Here's a hint: everything's made up and the points don't matter.

Improv games give you a safe space to practice letting your instincts do the talking. It can be challenging at first, but the magic really happens when people surprise themselves and create a scene that's wilder and more hilarious than anything they could have come up with through hours of "work."

We have some great opportunities coming up for individuals and teams to learn these Personal Leadership skills. (Yes, there will be games and plenty of laughs!)

Join us for the Playing With Purpose workshop at the end of September or check out more ways to work with us at https://zurl.co/5jQz

https://zurl.co/qe3g

Our answer to the Third Call of Personal Leadership is action--putting a stake in the ground to CHOOSE a direction--once we've considered the grand scheme of what's going on in the world and our place in it.

To do so, consider the three lenses of Clarity, Continuity, and Co-Humanity. When we look at traditional ideas of mission/purpose, vision, and values through those lenses we learn three things.

💚 Do we have deep understanding of what we’re choosing or does it just sound good?
💚 Are we choosing things that we will habitually act on or just talk about?
💚 Are we making choices that preserve room for other people to make choices of their own or are we thinking only of ourselves?

In the Third Call, we take our stand for what we believe in and elect it to the leadership of our lives.

We don't have to make this BIG choice: for most people, it's a gradual process. But if you're grappling with this call right now, you're not the only one.

Join us for Playing With Purpose, a 2-day workshop that blends improv and personal development the weekend of 9/30 and 10/1 in Glenview, IL.

To learn more and register: https://zurl.co/SCss