Moving Into 2026: How Play, Failure, and Curiosity Accelerate Growth

Ep 132. Play is not the opposite of discipline — it is the fastest path to mastery.

From early childhood to elite performance, play is one of the most powerful learning mechanisms available to the human nervous system. When we play, explore, and experiment, we engage curiosity, creativity, and our brain’s natural learning architecture. Failure, in this context, is not a verdict on identity — it is data. It provides feedback, information, and direction, showing us what doesn’t work so we can refine what does.

Failure does not define who you are.
Failure informs how you grow.

Every mistake becomes a stepping stone in the next phase of skill acquisition. This is how mastery evolves — not through judgment, but through iteration. Play activates mirror neurons, accelerates pattern recognition, and shortens the learning curve when we model, emulate, or follow skilled mentors. It is one of the most underutilized tools for rapid learning, self-regulation, and personal development.

As we move into 2026, this becomes an essential question:
What have you learned through emulation, mentorship, and direct experience?
How much did you gain by following a guide — and how much did you discover on your own?

This is an invitation to move forward with adventure, curiosity, and wonder — not perfection. Growth does not require becoming someone new. It requires returning to the natural learning state you were born with.

Play. Explore. Learn. Evolve.
 Take care — and walk well.

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 132 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project Podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor and an adjunct professor at our local community college. And what we're going to be discussing today has to do with play. Play as learning and also

moving towards the new year, we want to be able to consider the fact that play isn't just for children and growth and learning often whenever we're happy campers tends to be easier whenever there's less of a threat to learning and whenever failure is allowed but it doesn't become an absolute in the sense I identify as a failure because I failed at doing something but also using that as a scaffolding as a step off into the new year. It's going to be

The first of January here very soon today is the 29th and the reason I want to talk about this is because there is much That I've done this past year and many years in the past looking back that have been stepped off into the next step the next level the next journey and the next goal And these are things that going into the new year people often wait to do a new year's resolution I personally don't believe in making new year's resolutions. Sometimes it's just a matter of

to do when it's time to do. Once you set a worthy goal or find out what it is that you want to do and starting with the end in mind so to speak, we don't worry about the middle. The steps work themselves out logically if we move in that direction with every step moving in that direction not unlike Socrates said, you will get to where you've got to go.

So how do you find Mount Olympus? Every step must move in the direction of Mount Olympus. How do we achieve a goal? Well, play is one way to get there and it will allow us to gain skill. We'll talk a little bit about neuropsychology and mirror neurons and how that kind of helps and plays along a very important role in how we develop and how that can help us make 2026 a wonderful year. To kick off this conversation, I want to start off with the idea of children and whenever children, infants,

armando (02:50.451)
And even babies neonates whenever they're freshly out of the womb rest let's say fresh out of the plastic and still got that new baby smell and We are always in the process of gaining information and learning and some very important neuronal structures that we have found is that of the mirror neuron that we recognize it has a lot to do with how we sense environment and perceive what it is that we're looking at largely and determining what an action is

that we can repeat that. I've mentioned this experiment that a person did on video many years back a psychologist who had a brand new baby and mama was still on the delivery table and baby was literally less than a minute old and he had a compatriot with a camera recording over his shoulder as he did the tongue sticking out action in front of baby and he was holding baby in the little cone head swaddling and everything and holding them in both hands and baby's

little eyes were open, but then baby started repeating the action. That means that baby learned the baby vicariously learned baby learned by observation and repeated behavior. This is powerful. Now this is something that we all do. And this is something that we do rather clumsily when we're like 12 and 13 and trying to fit in and dress like everyone else and belong and be part of the group. that's kind of an extrapolation of this idea and that we see people act a certain way. We hear people talk a certain way and use

And we try to find and shape that identity that we're going to be. So that's a function of this learning capacity is observational learning that has a very distinct social tie that gives us social value and gives us a sense of identity whenever we're trying to find who it is that we are as a person, not that we're looking at the identity of the sexual dimorphism, not that at all, but finding out who it is as a person that I am, what my likes are. Do I like these things?

preferences are, what my interests are, this sort of thing. Now the mirror neuronal structures, what they do is they give us a feel for what it is that a person is doing. You've probably seen people, whenever y'all were children, if you look back to whenever you were a kiddo, if you're an adult right now, or maybe if you are a kiddo and you see, and you see somebody skateboarding, or maybe they're riding a scooter, maybe they're doing a certain step over cart wheel without hands, this sort of thing. And those

armando (05:19.62)
are things that you want to emulate because they look cool and we tried to do those things. Cartwheels are fun.

And we might want to do something like skateboarding and it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but somebody doing that, we see the entirety of this picture in our mind of somebody gracefully riding the skateboard as I'm doing this. I'm actually miming my hands out and squatting downward while I'm doing that. Just thinking about it, trying to emulate the picture in my own mind, but thinking about how smooth and graceful they are whenever they're maneuvering that skateboard and hugging the curves of a sidewalk and that sort of thing.

we have a sense of affinity and There is a payoff there. There's some dopamine happening there and that we see and it's like that's exciting and then we want to do and there's this desire and some would actually dirty this idea of whenever we start saying, that's envious I want to have that and there's nothing wrong with having a healthy sense of envy or jealousy there's something wrong with that but often wanting to do what someone else does is normal to be able to not just have what someone else has and take from

them and leave them less. That's theft. But rather to emulate and acquire a skill that looks joyful. There's a sense of feel in a vicarious learning situation that was identified by psychologists and monkeys that were seeing, doing things and other monkeys were doing them. And then they saw what they were doing and they were able to emulate and do. And nobody said, Hey, don't do that. That's my action. Or that's my way of washing the sand off of sweet potatoes. Don't be doing that.

And then we even see that in the hundred monkey effect. That's a, a much more, I would say esoteric development having to do with transfer of information, but in a more practical sense, watching others do what they do helps us develop into the persons that we will become. And who knows, maybe we'll be naturally more talented at what it is that we're picking up, or maybe we may fall and fail a few times. And that's okay too. But, whenever we have this sense of vicarious learning observation,

armando (07:25.711)
learning. There is a good feel to that. And then we might even research a little further and find out all the minutiae about it in details. Some of us have to gather information before we do things. Some of us have to look at it from every angle before we try to get a sense or feel in quotes of what it is that's required before we venture our own body into the action of trying to copy or emulate that activity. Now, why is this important to learning? Because this has a lot to

with what occurs in play. Whenever we're little, when we're young, and it's a very powerful learning experience, you don't necessarily have to have a formal teacher to teach you how to do things in all skills. Now there are some skills that do require a teacher and you may be able to emulate a large degree of skill, but much of the understanding and minutiae and detail if you're doing something along the lines of ballet or even gymnastics that require virtuosity and amplitude of action and

control of certain muscles in certain orders to be able to get a said result. And there's an aesthetic that you want to get out of that. We may be able to emulate those things by kind of learning those things on our own, but not all of it. Now there is some that we do get skills from by

by just observing that we're able to either emulate it and get better and to use a martial arts example. Bruce Lee was known to have been a prodigy in learning that his top student that's currently still alive. That's Mr. Dan into in Osanto. And he was the one that has carried on the legacy of G Cundo Bruce Lee's development of the martial art. And Bruce Lee studied many things, but he's he was an academic studying very deeply into systems strategies, this sort of

but he was very physically talented in being able to emulate actions and often was shown one thing and he would work on it. The next time they reported that they would see them, they were not only as good as equal to the person that taught them, but in many cases better. He was able to figure these things out. So the neuronal structure, the mirror neuron can actually allow us a lot of skill in learning in a short period of time, one-shot learning and octopus learning is much like that as well. And that they learn in one shot.

armando (09:43.501)
often because of the size of their brains, but also the amount of neuronal structure that they have that allows them to take in information in large chunks that helps them pick up skills much more effectively, much more quickly than your average bear, so to speak. But back to the mirror neuronal structure and Bruce Lee, whenever he was learning, if he was able to emulate a skill and then do it better than you the next time, so to speak, that you saw him after having taught him.

then that means that he was learning at hyperspace speed, which is amazing and exciting, but not all skills are learned that quickly. Most people don't remember that whenever people have gone into his life, the details of him, he actually was very nearsighted and wore glasses because he could, he needed help with glass to be able to see what he was doing at a distance. He could read up close, but also he had one leg shorter than the other, a full inch shorter. That's why he leaned on using

that one leg for doing his powerful sidekick to the left, believe. But he didn't let those things limit him. There were also some things having to do with him having a case of mild epilepsy, one that would cause him to have a seizure that would cause him to blank out, but not necessarily in the grand mal sense. But many people didn't know this about him, but yet he overcame these details and what we would call shortcomings that many people have less of a limitation

but yet they still allow themselves to be limited in their learning and their skill gain. There many things that we do in a life and it doesn't have to be martial arts necessarily, but that was just a good example by the way, but that we can use the idea of scaffolding whenever we're learning, basically training wheels. It doesn't mean you're a baby when you're learning, but there are times whenever having support's okay. Whenever we start a new job, often you have an orientation that's supposed to provide you some

scaffolding or training wheels to be able to get around wherever it is that you're working And no procedures that sort of thing and then you have support Where somebody teaches you what it is that you need to do with the foundation of whatever education may be required for doing tech work for instance Or anything along the lines of mechanic work so you know that there's a certain way of doing things that they expect A level of quality. So there's a learning curve there, but the important thing

armando (12:06.406)
is that whenever we are learning if there is a sense of threat, it tends to shut down our higher brain in the sense that

We become very narrow minded in the sense that not that you don't believe anything that's being told of you, but we tend to grasp onto things like a steel trap and we tend to overhaul them. We don't hold on loosely in a flexible sense. We hold it tight and we may not let it go. And we take it as sacrosanct. We take it as a sanctified bit of knowledge handed down by the gods of the, of the electric wrench. And then they handed it to the mechanic that taught you this sort of thing. And that's not how things should be. We should be able to be flexible.

response, not only in physical sense, but also in a mental sense and how we problem solve. Not all things that we look at are failures or problems. Those have negative connotations, but they're challenges and obstacles sometimes to a goal, getting this car fixed, for instance. And if we see things as a puzzle,

or as a solution requiring an equation so that we know what's going on in the middle, then that's okay too. Sometimes we have to creatively look at things and sometimes just wondering, well, we'll see what we run into and being open to what we find and not being resolved to having the decision or an adjudication about something as being good, bad, or whatever, before we even start. Often, whenever there is fear, there's a fear of loss. We may have a fear of loss of stature or social

value and many times we will not allow ourselves to be creative in our response, creative in our seeking, in our searching, and we lose a sense of adventure, discovery, and wonder. And those are the things that drive our kiddos. Have you ever seen a little baby that is maybe a year and a half, two years old, and they look at everything and they ask questions once they're able to talk. And if not, they touch everything, they put things in their mouth, it's with their feet, their hands, their body, they put their tummies on.

armando (14:02.536)
they roll over and they're getting this sensorium, this overload of information to make sense of what it is that they're doing and whatever.

unstructured way we would call it of learning if we were looking at it in a regressive sense from you know where we're at now versus where I used to be and realize they're actually pretty efficient it's maybe not a regression but maybe a progression of learning because they're learning how to use more muscular control stand up walk around look around and they start getting the sense of depth and also a sense of time elapsed in the sense of it and what it feels like but not time on the clock I can tell time that's a mathematical linear

process, but rather getting that sense once again of what time feels like and waiting feels like and our demonstration of those things kids will do as we do before they'll ever do as we say. And even when they learn to speak and understand, they're probably going to do what we do versus what we tell them anyhow. So it's probably something we need to get used to. Doesn't mean that they're going to be belligerent, rude and consistently being obstinate. Some might be, but I laugh because that's not funny.

but rather it's curious because often, you know, we all have our obstinate states, wherever we get to a point, it's like, no, I don't want to do this. And sometimes it's too much information that's occurring. Maybe we don't have enough information. Often, if we have an emotional load, if we have a kiddo that's withdrawing, and let's think about this, maybe we have an adult that's withdrawn from communication. Higher energy, raising your voice and getting intense and bugging your eyes out, does not necessarily make your case better. And it doesn't mean that because you're saying things louder, that what you're

is more convincing. That's physical, physiological intimidation. That's environmental change that does not help your case. Sometimes whenever someone is shutting down, the best thing we can do is to mirror.

armando (15:53.494)
The mirror being, want to reflect what they're reflecting to us because they're showing us too much. And if we're showing them that we withdraw as they're withdrawing, it will give them space and sometimes letting them know, Hey, I'm here if you need me. And that's the scaffolding that they can step over to and the, or the training wheels. want to call it that to come over and use if they feel the need, but

Pushing the communication with things shut down doesn't always necessarily make for the best communication. Often understanding that whenever a kiddo is going high energy and dysregulated, we have to be the centered one. Not raising your voice, not being louder, not standing up and standing over them and being intimidating in that sense because you are. You don't want to be physically intimidating, but sometimes just talk to them calmly and you want to entrain them. You want them to get to follow what it is that you're doing. You're the lead.

Sometimes you have to arrive and be the center and this isn't only with children but sometimes with adults too. Somebody's raising their voice, staying calm and not looking down on them and look at them like you're judging them but rather confronting somebody does not require

you jumping in their face necessarily, but meeting them sounds better. It doesn't sound like a fight or the beginnings of a fight and talking to them in a tone that is one reassuring and arriving in a body language state that is one bladed to the edge and not necessarily facing your center to their center, especially if they're agitated. There are numbers of things that we have to do to help self-regulate and also encourage our chance of increasing

our successes and minimizing our failures. Sometimes when we run into people, we do these things and we do so in a hurry and we tend to forget that sometimes too much.

armando (17:41.12)
in a hurry is not a good thing. Too much information. If their brain is getting shut down and their heart rate's going up and we're asking too many questions that require thinking, that's probably not the best time. then we're going to overwhelm them. If we move into closely, that's probably going to overwhelm them. If we come in too loudly and doing all those other two things at the same time, we're probably going to overwhelm them and get an outcome we don't like. And they may strike out, get irritated, or they may elevate and escalate their state and get loud, or maybe even

armando (18:25.374)
on about what I'm doing and how I arrive in what my goals are and my strategy and what my end goal is going to be once I'm done with this presentation, but rather seeing and feeling what it is that I'm entering into environment, boardroom, classroom, or the

space that somebody else is occupying to communicate, let's say a bedroom that you want to talk to your children in, or maybe even a living room, whenever you're doing homework with them or wanting them to do homework, this sort of thing. And notice I'm kind of rambling at a tone and pace that is kind of like a chain that continues. And I'm doing that on purpose because I'm kind of demonstrating how sometimes the talk can entrain you and get you to follow as well without any specific stops and starts. Now,

Why did I do that? One is the mirror neural structures. Whenever we see somebody moving and talking, there are certain inflections that occur. We pay attention to that and those changes in what we would call relatively normal behavior don't have pauses between them whenever they're pressured. And I kind of demonstrated a little bit of what pressured speech might sound like without necessarily elevating my voice and also speed it up. Language delivery, which maybe is more about unloading all the information because there may be

anxiety building up and I'm trying to give you as much information as possible to help you understand because I might need help regulating this and I may be saying that with how my state is versus saying it intentionally because then I would be admitting failure or worse loss of control, loss of self-regulation. Now, why is this important? The important thing is that whenever we're moving forward into the new year, we have to realize that we've overcome a lot and we've learned a lot of things.

And my question to you, and this is a rhetorical question, want you to ask yourself, shh, quietly, don't tell anybody, ask yourself this. What have I done this year to improve my capacity to regulate myself, my emotions and how I arrive? What are those things? Have you been able to use self-regulatory skills to improve the quality of communication? Maybe from the quality of the work that I put out whenever I'm by myself, being able to regulate that sense of stress.

armando (20:36.314)
What goes on in my mind? Do I overstress myself because of the way I frame things in my mind? this is not going to turn out well. I'm terrible. I feel terrible. I don't want to do this. I don't have a sense for, or I'm not creative and I don't want to do this or that. And then we start to self-deprecate.

Have we stopped the self talk that is negative that we encourage ourselves to say, you know what? I don't feel like this today. And maybe even laughing on herself a little bit, not laughing at yourself because you're a laughing stock, but rather laugh and realize that, I've done this before and recognize that, you know, it's okay. It's okay to start over and you're not starting from zero. You starting from experience and starting from experience tells you, I've done this before. And last time this didn't work as well. Let me try this instead. And it starts from experience starts from not zero, but

a point of choice in the new moment moving forward and going into the new year what are you changing today what have you changed this past year that's going to help you glide into the new year in a more successful way in a way that you can gain more quality of life more quantity of life of quality things of course and happiness general sense of relaxation what have you done to help

manage your health in a sense that you carry less stress around that you perceive things in a way that They're not interpreted to the lens of stress or worry or fear Have you done things to help improve those things? And if so, what I'm telling you is that this podcast is amazing resource I do like the podcast myself that I even refer back to just to remind myself of these ideas and I practice now self-regulation skill

Something that I think that we can all benefit from and I will tell you that there are many people and this is the lament on the internet It's the lament on television is the lament in the communities that we hear that we have people always upset and they're arguing they don't get along then there are all these fears being mongered by Media out there that they want us to fear and worry and there's no resolution I was speaking to somebody today that even in entertainment in the

armando (22:44.734)
movies were supposed to enjoy the heroes don't emerge at the end of the movies there's very little hopeful story the way we used to see and hear in the movies during the 80s and that wasn't some sappy happy that all things are gonna turn out right all the time it was not like that but rather that there's this sense of lingering structured failure in the sense that we're always gonna be stuck with this downtrodden this sadness this upset and this challenge of something of that's unknown that we don't know what

it is but it's stressful to me and it could be dangerous to me or it could be bad or it's not good for sure and To leave something like that hanging is a suggestion Whenever you go to a movie, there's a lot of emotional charge, but there's a lot of potential to be entrained to be psychologically manipulated to kind of leave the sense of expectation open but not necessarily for good or for hopeful things So moving forward into the new year, let's become more aware of what we consume. Let's become more aware of the fact

that self-regulation skill if we have children start from where little by emulating those things by talking to our kiddos teaching those breathing exercises because they're fun they are fun to do whenever you do things make it silly make it fun make it playful but do it in a way that they learn how to use it whenever things are easy scaffolding and then wherever things get hard to remind them hey remember that breathing exercise it works here too and suggest to them don't tell them you have to do this but if you tell them and they like the coaching

And if you're teaching them like I've taught my sons whenever I've taught the martial art tell them this is when this works This is when this works and I let it go and what is funny is that years later? They tell me I remember I use this whenever this happens whenever I stress at work I've used this and this works and whenever they tell me you taught me this and sometimes I've forgotten the conversation that that rooted or seeded that within them, but yet they were able to repeat it to me and they've used that and Dr. Glenn Morris I mentioned him a lot the late dr. Glenn Morris

and monkey do and then whenever we're talking about our kiddos monkey sees and thinks about it so we seed things and we plant with hopes of germination and growth and those things will flower if you teach them good things sometimes the teaching isn't just the verbalization telling them but it's the modeling the vicarious learning and firing those mirror neurons in them so they get the feel of what it is we're demonstrating

armando (25:14.513)
and questions that way and when it's time to ask questions they will and whenever they start to differentiate and run away from dad and mom they know I don't want you and then later on when they really get older they come back they return and they will tell you the most wonderful things sometimes and those things are the things that you taught them because they were so important to you not because you wanted them to elevate you in some way but because you were teaching them survival skills you were teaching them how to make it out there whenever

Parents aren't going to be there to coddle them to give them scaffolding or to be their training wheels Whenever life was going to be difficult you gave them thinking skills and feeling skills and gave them a measure of regulating themselves So they do not get themselves from the frying pan into the fire So let's look back and think about how we were prepared and we may have had good preparation We may have had bad and we may have learned our preparation from somebody at school a teacher Where do we get our signals to learn how to be better and overcome?

Those are good questions to ask yourself and if you know that your kiddos are gonna go to a public school for instance And we can't control every interaction throughout their life What are we going to give them and seed in them? That's gonna help them become not only more flexible in response But more intelligent and more resilient generally and that way they don't fall and fail because of a sense of entitlement I've arrived pay me and then realize so the world doesn't work that way and they're not gonna pay you because you're good-looking or cute and I still remember my

parents ask me what do want me to do you think I'm buy this with my good looks and that always didn't make sense to me but that made sense to me much later realizing yeah I can't just arrive and just whip a smile out and there you go you're gonna give me merchandise it doesn't work that way but what I will tell you is that there is a large measure of preparation that we go through in life and that we've gone through in life whenever we're being prepared by those that were our parents or those that are parenting figures or maybe even our

coaches or even those mentors that we sought to learn from, especially learning a skill that we wanted and we wanted to emulate those things. And maybe we picked up good behaviors. We have to realize too, that we have to separate the information from the deliver of that information. A lot of people are great mentors, but they have terrible lives and terrible habits that we don't want. don't want to become an alcoholic or a drug addict because we emulate some musicians way of playing because they're amazing. They may be take the skill.

armando (27:44.133)
Yes Leave the addiction leave the the bad aspect. You don't have to take that to be a good guitarist So understanding where the knowledge is and separating it from the person. It's okay. Learning how to become great is okay But it doesn't mean you have to become a flaming dumpster fire wreck in your life. Don't have to do that wisdom is a good thing so

What I'm wanting to do is just really encourage you going into 2026. This is the end of 2025. I know I waited a little bit to put this out, but I also want to tell you thank you for listening all of 2025. And for those of you that have been listening since 2023, two and a half years ago, we're still moving. I know I had to kind of put the video interviews on a shelf for a little bit because I am working on finishing up the book and I certainly look forward to putting that out into print soon. And I will let you know when that happens, but what I'm going to tell you now,

is that I encourage you to do your best to regulate yourself and grow to learn as much as you can and Take in as much information as you need to do what you got to do Give yourself some grace when learning realize that failure isn't permanent and you are not a failure We don't identify by that that is merely the result of an activity and we don't learn without falling We don't learn without tripping. We don't learn without failing and failure is just a transient state just like an exhale and an inhale

And inhale is successful drawing in of oxygen an exhale is not a failure of oxygen because I couldn't keep it It's been a transformation to wherever we now are leaving Carbonic gas and letting it go and we need to do that. It's necessary so failure is very necessary to learning how to become much more successful to become much better at the things that we want to get good at and I encourage you to do as much and Encourage those loved ones that you have to learn pay attention to our kiddos. They're amazing

learning devices for parents but if you're a kid kiddo you are amazing and if you used to be one you're still amazing and I want to tell you thank you for your patronage and listening and please continue to share this podcast I want to see it grow and if you want to see this podcast on YouTube go to running man get skills project it is in YouTube it's on Amazon it's also on Spotify and I know this is running a little long will tell you if you have any kind of feedback send it to the email at

armando (30:06.909)
Running Man Get Skills Project at Gmail. I'd love to hear from you. And for now, learn well, walk well, take care.