Play: A Serious Tool for Transition
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PHOTO BY ChatGPT
There’s a peculiar kind of panic that arrives in adulthood when life stops making sense in the neat, linear way we were promised it would. You know the feeling. Your boss retires. Your industry shifts. Your marriage changes. Your children leave home. You lose your job. Or perhaps nothing catastrophic happens at all. You simply wake up one Tuesday morning, stare into your coffee, and realize the life you carefully built no longer fits.
If that’s you, you are probably not sitting on a swing smiling at—who is she smiling at?—while you journal your dreams for the next phase of your life. And the idea of play feels as useful as being told to "follow your passion" by someone with a trust fund.
In transition, what was is gone, and what is yet to be has not yet arrived. William Bridge’s (2004) change and transition model describes this phase as the neutral zone, full of both pain and possibility. I see this in my work on Capitol Hill. In an election year like this one, I help staffers in career transition. Some know their office is closing. Others suspect the work they built their identities around may soon disappear or transform beyond recognition. Almost all of them ask me some version of the same question: “What exactly should I do next?” Underneath that question, they want to know, “How can I know before I leap?” They want certainty. Don’t we all?
I know this personally because, a few years ago, my own imagined next chapter failed to materialize. What I thought was on its way never arrived. Grieving, that gap forced me to ask myself, “What do I actually want now?” And more unsettling still, “What if I don’t fully know yet?”
That ambiguity can feel unbearable to adults because we’ve been conditioned to believe mature people should know who they are and what they want. Children, meanwhile, are allowed astonishing freedom around identity. A child can announce they plan to become a marine biologist, astronaut, pastry chef, and velociraptor all before lunch. Adults chuckle and hand them dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. Somewhere along the way, playing with possibility stops looking charming and starts looking irresponsible.
But what if playfulness is not an escape from difficult transitions, but a surprisingly effective way through them? If the word “playfulness” makes you picture forced improv exercises and a coworker handing out novelty mustaches from a tote bag, stay with me. We’re talking about something far deeper and far more useful.
Play in both young animals and humans helps develop the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social capacities needed to adapt and thrive throughout life (Brown & Vaughan, 2009). Pretend play provides children with a low-stakes environment in which to try on roles, perspectives, and possible selves before committing to them in the real world (Lillard, 1993). As we mature, we are expected to decide on our identity and focus on building careers, raising families, and accomplishing important things. Seriousness gets the job done. Until it doesn’t.
Early research by McGhee (1999) posits that playfulness is the underlying mechanism for humor; finding something humorous requires cognitive flexibility, allowing us to see multiple perspectives and acknowledge absurdities. The VIA Strengths assessment categorizes humor and, by relations, playfulness under transcendence (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). To transcend means to be able to view reality from a larger vantage point, which helps us navigate an often confusing and frustrating world. This aligns with recent research that acknowledges playfulness as a cognitive reframing tool. One that can help us navigate life transitions with increased well-being, a sense of positivity, and the willingness to try new things (Shen, 2025).
Shen and Crawley (2025) described playfulness not as a simplistic and generalized way of seeing life through rose-colored glasses but rather as a “color spotlight” that we can direct toward challenges and opportunities. They found that those high in trait playfulness are equally accurate in their ability to assess the reality of negative situations as those with low trait playfulness. But those who are highly playful are more likely to envision positive future possibilities (Shen & Crawley, 2025). The good news is that, regardless of our natural level of playfulness, there are ways to engage it to temporarily loosen our rigid assumptions and perceive more possibilities. We can also choose to engage playfulness when it matters. And it matters enormously during major life transitions.
The problem is that transition itself often suppresses the curiosity, spontaneity, and openness that characterize playfulness (Bridges, 2004; Ibarra, 2003). Stress narrows attention. Identity threat creates rigidity. Financial pressure amplifies self-consciousness. Evaluation anxiety turns us into edited versions of ourselves. This creates a paradox where the very psychological state that would help us navigate uncertainty becomes harder to access precisely when uncertainty is highest. You can’t simply command yourself to “be playful” during a job interview when your mortgage is due. Playfulness must be engaged indirectly through small cognitive and behavioral shifts. Pay attention to your energy, allow yourself to not know and be curious instead, and try low-stakes experiments. The shift can be subtle but impactful.
Imagine two people attending the same networking event after losing long-term jobs. The first arrives psychologically clenched. Their goal is to prove they are still valuable, with every interaction a push towards finding a new job. They speak with subtle desperation. Their attention is narrowed on obtaining security as quickly as possible.
The second person, though equally uncertain, approaches the event differently. Earlier that day, they met a trusted friend for coffee and admitted how disoriented they felt. They laughed about the absurdity of being fifty years old and suddenly updating a resume like a confused intern. At the event, they become curious about people. They ask questions. They explore unfamiliar possibilities. They notice sparks of interest.
Same event. Same uncertainty. Completely different psychological posture. Playfulness does not remove reality. It changes our relationship to it. And those who would help us in our transition can feel the difference. Research shows that after the death of a family member, loved ones use the return of the bereaved’s humor and playfulness as a sign to re-engage with them (Vaillant, 2000). Despair and desperation, at least too much for too long, can drive away the very people who might help us on our journey.
“Playfulness does not remove reality. It changes our relationship to it. ”
Identity is often at stake during major transitions, with who we are and what we value in flux. It can feel difficult to engage in new activities and relationships if we cling tightly to the identity that may no longer be relevant to our future. In Working Identity, Ibarra (2003) argues that identity change requires a trying on of provisional selves. Play allows us to try on various versions of ourselves before fully committing to any of them.
But what if we’ve never imagined any other “self” than the one we currently identify with. That’s where Shen and colleagues’ (2014) work on two key qualities of playful people can help us create an iterative process to find our way forward. The first key quality of playful people is a fun-seeking orientation. Less of a Forced-Fun-Friday kind of thing and more of an inner compass that points toward what feels genuinely interesting and alive. (Also, Forced-Fun Friday would be a great band name.) Instead of choosing only paths that “make sense” within our current identity, paying attention to what feels fun can help us notice the quiet pull of possibilities we may have long suppressed.
The second key quality of playful people is uninhibitedness. This is the ability to try new things in a low-stakes way without demanding immediate certainty or success. Rather than demanding that every new endeavor justify itself as a possible future profession or identity, approaching opportunities experimentally can reduce pressure to feel competent immediately. Have conversations with interesting strangers on LinkedIn. Volunteer to test a new skill. Audition before you feel ready. Notice what resonates and what doesn’t. Because there are limits to what we can know intellectually from our current identity.
In Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff (2025) extols the virtues of making small steps towards big dreams. Taking small actions with curiosity lowers our expectations and allows us to take a growth mindset toward new skills and behaviors. Many people discover meaningful new directions not because they logically deduced them in advance, but because they accidentally wandered into them through curiosity. Once people have backed into their new identity, they look back and wonder why it took them so long.
My own story of transition continues. I still have uncertainty. I still overthink. I still occasionally attempt to solve existential questions through aggressive Googling. I often consult my kitchen magnet that says, “Why is ‘what the heck’ always the right question?” Seriousness is overrated. It’s had its moment. Playfulness helps me move. Because I no longer believe clarity always comes first. I follow what seems like it might be fun, prioritizing action and experimentation as a way towards clarity. After all, if I could completely figure out my future in advance, I’d be a deity, not a middle-aged woman standing in her kitchen thinking up possible band names. Maybe I’ll take drum lessons. . .
References and further reading
Bridges, W. (2004). Transitions: Making sense of life's changes (Rev. 25th anniversary ed.). Da Capo Press.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity. Crown.
Gilbert, D. T. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. Alfred A. Knopf.
Ibarra, H. (2003). Working identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Harvard Business School Press.
Le Cunff, A.-L. (2025). Tiny experiments: How to live freely in a goal-obsessed world. Avery.
Lillard, A. S. (1993). Pretend play skills and the child's theory of mind. Child Development, 64(2), 348–371.
McGhee, P. E. (1999). Health, healing and the amuse system: Humor as survival training (3rd ed.). Kendall/Hunt.
OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (GPT-5.5) Iterative prompt-development process involving multiple conceptual alternatives and refinements.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford University Press.
Proyer, R. T. (2012). Development and initial assessment of a short measure for adult playfulness: The SMAP. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(8), 989–994. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.07.018
Shen, X. (2025). How does playfulness (re)frame the world? Evidence for selective playful reframing effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, Article 1462980.
Shen, X., & Crawley, Z. (2025). How does playfulness (re)frame the world? Evidence for selective cognitive and behavioral redirecting in times of adversity. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1462980. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1462980
Shen, X. S., Chick, G., & Zinn, H. (2014). Playfulness in adulthood as a personality trait: A reconceptualization and a new measurement. Journal of Leisure Research, 46(1), 58–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.2014.11950313
Vaillant, G. E. (2002). Aging well: Surprising guideposts to a happier life from the landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development. Little, Brown.
About the author | Brandy Reece (C’14) is a speaker, learning strategist, and humorist whose work explores how people navigate uncertainty, identity shifts, and reinvention. Her capstone, Putting the Ha! in Aha!, examined humor as a pathway to insight and a means of bypassing psychological defenses.
At the United States Senate, Brandy works with individuals, leaders, and teams on strengths-based development, communication, and career transition. Over the years of helping people through both chosen and unchosen change, she has become fascinated by the role playfulness can serve during periods of uncertainty, especially when adults feel pressure to have everything figured out immediately.
Brandy's work blends positive psychology, humor, and deeply human storytelling to help people approach change with greater flexibility, self-awareness, and possibility.
