This is often the time of year when people take some time off work to relax, visit friends and family, and hopefully have some fun.
I know though that this time of year isn’t fun for everyone. For some, it’s a matter of surviving the holidays.
I was re-reading The Happiness Project the other day. Rubin decided to become serious about fun and took a methodical approach to creating it. I have to admit finding it odd that fun has to be categorized. She talked about 3 kinds of fun: challenging fun, accomodating fun, and relaxing fun. Challenging fun is tiring, demanding, and can be frustrating while accomodating fun is having fun for someone else’s sake–like your child’s. Relaxing fun she described as easy.
Really? Why do we need to categorize fun? Is that fun? Have we lost the ability to know fun when we see it or feel it? Is forcing yourself to do boring things fun? Am I missing the point?
I do think life is hectic for lots of us. The issue really is making time for fun as a regular part of your life–not just something that happens only very occasionally. What’s fun for you and what’s fun for me may be different and that’s okay. You just need to try to have it in your life. As the saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!
Fun is a great antidote to stress. If you stop to think about it, it’s essential to your well-being!! It gives you the energy and the drive to be able to go back to work refreshed and focused, it helps you handle the inevitable ups and downs in life, and well, it just feels damn good!! See my blog: Are you Having Fun Yet? Getting Rid of Stress.
What do you do to make life fun? What do you do to make time for fun? Do you plan it, or does it spontaneously happen? Suppose you were to include in your goal plan for the year to have more fun. How would you make it happen? How would you ensure it is a priority in your life, regardless of what else is happening?
Suppose you brainstormed a list of all the fun things you’ve done in the past, and added onto it all the fun things you’d like to do, what difference do you think that might make to your motivation to have it? What if, for fun, you closed your eye, spun your index finger in a circle and plunked it somewhere on your list, and then did the thing you finger was on? How fun would that be?
Would your fun be solo fun or group fun? Rubin was right about getting serious about fun. It’s time people!!
Which of the quotes fits for you?
“Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.” ~Woody Allen
“Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.” ~Dr. Seuss
“We are driven for five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.” ~William Glasser
“If a man insisted on always being serious and never allowed himself a bit of fun or relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.” ~Herodotus
“We don’t stop playing because we turn old, but turn old because we stop playing.” ~Unknown
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they’re doing.” ~Dale Carnegie
“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” ~Katherine Hepburn
