Parisa Fitz-Henley Instagram – Underrated mental health tool and cognitive booster: PLAY I’m serious! Google “science of play” and you’ll find references to studies proving all these amazing benefits that I inconveniently and constantly forget about! 🤡🎉 I’m working (hehe) on bringing more play into my life — whether in my occupation or in my free time. I know this might sound odd in the face of stereotypes about our work, but for a lot of artists (and scientists, and teachers, and healers, and entrepreneurs and and and), real free time can feel scarce. The side gigs a lot of us have are no joke (😜), but the fact that we’re always ‘on’, absorbing, contemplating, reassessing, optimizing, conceptualizing, balancing creation with paying the bills — even working with our literal dreams to see what they have to tell us — can mean we miss opportunities to be UN-intentional, silly, wild, naughty, messy and in the moment. Sharing this moment when I just let myself enjoy the absurdity of life. Because I’m writing about it I’m now remembering the beautiful bowling ball I recently received and how I need to schedule time to go bowl with it because it’s so much fun. 🎳💫 In the meantime I’m going to figure out how to feel playful while prepping a chicken for dinner…. Ok someone’s getting on my table tonight in a bikini and it’s not gonna be me!👙🍗 I’m feeling it! 🥳 My unsolicited advice for today: GO PLAY! Even if it’s the smallest thing! Even if it’s at work! Even if it’s doing something weird with a chicken… um……. Have fun! 🥳 XOXO, P. Image description: Slide 1: Close up of me, laughing big time toward camera. I have light brown skin, dark brown eyes and dark brown curly hair. I’m wearing my favorite white t shirt that is at this point basically Swiss cheese. Slide 2: A seasoned, roasted spatchcock chicken in a roasting pan. The chicken is wearing a bikini made of fresh cilantro. There’s another cilantro bikini underneath it but after baking it looked more like what a bikini might be covering so I refreshed it. 😜