Whether in life, or brand building, relatability is a game changer. Add playfulness to it, and you’re all set to attract your ideal clients/audience into your world, and have fun and fulfilment along the way.

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“Aiyoo, these kids again!” I said to my husband

The usual after school shouting, playing all of that had started. We live in a cul-de-sac. Though it’s in the heart of the city, it’s tucked away unseen. Even though I’ve been living in Bangalore all my life, I didn’t know this place existed until we found this little apartment.

Most of the time we’re surrounded by silence, only to be broken by the sounds of birds – tweeting, cawing…It’s really peaceful here. Traffic sounds rarely ever reach us. And we’re not tucked very close to the neighbouring buildings, so we rarely ever hear TV or music being played in other people’s houses, so it’s fairly quiet.

Our building has very few flats, and just one kid lives here. In the evenings after school, he has friends over and they play downstairs in the garden and basement.

Now look, we’ve all played on the streets while growing up, filling the neighbourhood with our screams and laughter

So I won’t deny children their fun. They can play loudly outside late in the afternoons if that’s what they enjoy. And it’s so much better than them being stuck indoors in front of screens, just with their phones or iPads, or playing video games on TV. I’m all for a future where kids run around and play outside in nature with their friends. Well, as much nature as they can get access to in a city.

But when you’re quietly in a deep work state, only the tweeting of birds outside to keep you company, sudden high pitched shouting outside can be quite jarring!

My husband and I had been working on our own things

He was doing his work on the computer. I was doing some work on my phone (I promise it wasn’t Instagram, it was actual work haha).

Anyway, we were quietly doing our work, and we hadn’t even exchanged words with each other for quite some time. Then suddenly these kids started screaming! And the first words I said to him were, “Ah, these kids!” And before I could even complete the rest of the sentence, “They’re so noi…”, one of the kids broke into a familiar tune outside. Loudly.

“Tan Tan Tan Tan-TA-Tan Tan-TA-Tan Tan Tan Tan Tan-TA-Tan Tan-TA-Tan”

The Darth Vader theme from Star Wars. Haha

My frown just broke into a smile, and my husband and I, we just started laughing

I couldn’t help feeling a bit delighted listening to that tune, and suddenly all that screaming had become fun and delightful. And the kids seemed so cute to me. I even had this wishful thought that passed through my head, “oh, if I had a lightsaber and a Darth Vader helmet, I could wear them and go running to play outside with these children. Pretending to be Darth Vader, how fun would that be?!”

We all have playfulness in us, and we all want to be children again

I mean, come on, how wonderful would it be to be eight years old once more? Running around outside, screaming, playing with your friends, imagining things, pretending…so much fun!

The only problem in your life is exams, and to be honest, that also is somebody else’s problem. You know, your parents problem. They have to get you to study, to do the exams. It’s not your problem really to worry about it. So what a delightful life that would be!

It’s this feeling of relatability, and familiarity (with the Star Wars theme)

All of it mixed together and suddenly switched annoyance into joy, irritability into relatability. The kids suddenly became cute, and the noise they were making wasn’t so disturbing anymore. It was actually entertaining and delightful.

And this is it. When it comes to our own messaging, when we’re building a brand when we’re marketing, this is the difference. Do you want your marketing messages to be just another noisemaking thing? One more out there among everybody else’s messaging, just scream, scream, shout? Or do you want it to be relatable and enjoyable?

Maybe even a bit playful, so that others will actually want to read it, to listen to it, to buy from you, to order from you, to come and to support in whatever way they’re moved to do that, because you’re being so relatable to them.

Like I said, we all have playfulness in us. We enjoy playing.

But somewhere someone told us that adulting is serious business

“So most of the time you should take life seriously, you should take work seriously”. And then that’s what we ended up doing. But to be honest, we don’t have to take it that seriously!

Yes, we need to plan, organise, and be responsible when we’re running our own brand, our own business, whatever it is that we’re trying to build. But we don’t have to take it seriously, we can be playful with it.

Playfulness is one of the most relatable things to everybody around you – to your potential audience, clients, customers

When you start being playful, they feel like they can join you in the play. You know, like they can come and have fun with you, and enjoy the whole process. Tapping into your playful nature also makes you realise what things you want to do, and what things you don’t really want to do with your life.

There are so many things we want to pursue. Especially if you’re multi-passionate by nature, but also if you aren’t. You want to try new things. You want to learn new things, or create art, or read, or play.

There’s so much you can do, and there’s so much creativity you want in your life, but you don’t know exactly how to do it because there’s this one thing, or these two things, which are taking over your life, whether it’s your business or your home.

It’s important for us to make time to include all the things we want to do in our lives

It’s so important to include things which aren’t serious, which aren’t leading to something, stuff that we want to enjoy or just create for the sake of creating it.

Or maybe yes, even if we build it into a business or do something big with it, do it with very low stakes. Without worrying too much about it because you have multiple things running side by side. You don’t have to worry about one thing succeeding when all of them can move forward and grow and succeed in their own pace, own sweet time.

To be able to do this, you need to first of all embrace your playfulness, your multi-passionate-ness. Understand, “yes, these are all the things I want to do in my life.” And then, you need embrace time abundance. Know that there is actually a lot more time in your day than you believe.

Yes, maybe we can’t do every single thing we set out to, but for sure we can do a lot more than we think we can

We can experience a lot more variety in life on a day to day basis.

If you’d like to do this in a peaceful, joyful way, without worrying about time or growth or stressing much, because you have systems in place, because you’re so organised and planned that you don’t have to worry about running out of time or energy, then my course Harmonious Multi-Passionate Life is just for you.

It’s a course with a mastermind component. There’s a 10 min (or less) audio lesson every single day. You get that and you just have to listen to it. And 10 min is nothing right?

Then you have to spend another quarter to half an hour doing the work I tell you as a part of that lesson. You just implement an action step for that day. That’s all you need to worry about.

So you do this all month long. And once a week, we have a live call with the group where all of us can discuss things. That will have a teaching component, a discussion component, you can share your experiences, you can ask your questions to me. So then your doubts get cleared and you have accountability, because you’re watching others also do the work around you. You can share with each other what you’re going through, and that gives you more ideas.

You have this whole support system

And plus, all this is going to be accompanied by a Telegram group, a support group where all of us can continue to interact with each other throughout the cohort, throughout the course.

I did the first cohort of Harmonious Multi-Passionate Life in April earlier this year, and it was so beautiful! And so I was moved to do this once again because people were asking me for it.

I’m really looking forward to Cohort Two and working with the people who’re going to be a part of this course. If you’d like to sign up for the course, or even just get to know more about it and see if it is the right fit for you, go here. I really looking forward to having you as a part of Harmonious Multi-Passionate Life.

Even if you don’t join the course, here’s to you being more playful, more delightful, and tapping into that multi-passionate, enjoying, playful side of yours.

Talk to you again next week. Take care!

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