Pretend 'Real' Business

Why you should look at life's challenges with a more playful mindset.

Several years ago, I had an interesting professional experience that I want to tell you about.

I was leading a corporate website redesign and, as part of it, I had to source and onboard a few external agencies.

To cut a long story short, I had a lot of screening to do and then pitch whichever agency I thought was best to my boss.

And so I spent a lot of time on video calls, trying to get a sense of who I'd actually be working with.

To my surprise, most people I spoke with didn’t really give off a good vibe. They’d be pushy, or overtly keen or came across as inauthentic.

That was until I got on a call with Studio Rodrigo, a design agency based in New York.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but communication with them was so easy. And my instinct told me they'd be good to work with.

So I advocated to hire them.

Several weeks later and three people from Studio Rodrigo flew over for a week of in-house work.

It turns out that my instincts were right.

They were very professional, delivered on their promise and — perhaps most importantly — were great fun to work with.

Individually, they were interesting people and they were clearly passionate about their work.

Then, as a parting gift, they gave me this patch, which bore their company ethos.

PRETEND ‘REAL’ BUSINESS, it read.

I was surprised and a little confused.

They’d been so professional and communicative, so this motto seemed a little odd.

But as I thought about it more, the more it started to make sense.

They had been a joy to work with precisely because they didn't take themselves too seriously. There was a playfulness about them that was unmistakeable — and very invigorating.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because I believe there’s real value in approaching life’s challenges with a more playful mindset.

Life is hard

In a very real way, life is nothing other than a series of never-ending problems.

No matter how many you’ve dealt with in your life, there will always be another one brewing on the horizon. They are, by definition, endless.

And problems are dangerous.

If we're not careful, their incessant impact can start to erode our health and sense of joy. We run the all too real risk of burnout.

So what can we do about it?

We can strive to change our perceptions of them.

Instead of seeing them as ‘oh why is this is happening to me?’, we can try to see them as ‘this is a challenge I can deal with — hell, maybe even want to deal with!’.

We can go from feeling that we have zero control over the situation, which induces the worst kind of stress, to feeling that we have the power to do something about it, which is exciting.

This shift is life-affirming.

Even if we have very little control over the things that happen to us, retaining a sense of agency is enough to keep that spark alive within us.

That spark that tells us we can do something about the situations we find ourselves in.

That we’re more capable and resourceful than we think.

Growth is impossible without mistakes

To get to that belief though, we need to be willing to make mistakes.

This is because a mistake is nothing more than falling off the edge of what works. And the only way to know where that edge is is to make the mistake.

We grow in relation to the amount we push our boundaries.

So, the question is, how do we invite mistake-tolerance in a world of perfectionism?

We need to encourage a sense of play.

A sense that the point isn’t to be right, the best, the fastest or the strongest. But that it’s to be curious, to explore, to try and to trust.

Imagine a child learning to walk.

They don’t stand there worrying about making mistakes, about taking the perfect first step.

There’s no mistake in learning to walk.

There is only stepping and falling, and trying again until, one day, the child finds just enough balance to catch their fall.

The road to mastery is long and arduous

So why should any other skill acquisition be any different?

Any goal you have is nothing more than a series of overcoming obstacle after obstacle. If you take them too seriously — particularly your failures to them — you run the risk of throwing in the towel.

Counterintuitively, adopting a more playful mindset turns those same obstacles into challenges that ask of you to rise up to meet them.

In both cases, the obstacles will be the same, but you won’t be.

Life is a long road that you'll never start if you take yourself too seriously.

So try to have a little bit more fun.

Pretend ‘real’ business and you might just find yourself closer to where you want to be.

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Hi there 👋

Before you click away, I want to run something past you.

As you made it to the bottom of this post, you might be curious to know more about what I’m building here at Seeking Wisdom.

I wrote two posts over the new year — one about my reflections of 2024, and one about my vision for 2025 — about where I’m at.

Writing those posts has inspired me to share more about my experience of growing this newsletter.

So, my question to you is, are you interested to hear how Seeking Wisdom is going on a regular basis?

If you are, I’ll make sure to share updates — such as learnings, metrics and decisions — at the bottom of my future posts, just like this. (Think of this as my version of building in public).

Anyways, thanks for your input and for being here!

Till next time,

Ben

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