Why More Fun?

Sometimes fun gets a bad rap. Like, the things that are fun are considered childish or unprofessional. But in reality, fun refers to the things we all want, but either don’t feel like we deserve or don’t feel like we should want. We think we have to work hard before we can play hard. Or even suffer before we can “earn” a good time.

But who said life is just about fulfilling responsibilities and trudging through while ignoring all the things that really light us up?

I get really sad when I hear people say things like they’ve never had time to cross things off their bucket list. Or that they feel too (busy, broke, etc – fill in the blank) to do the things they really want to.

Recently I was part of some very intro level vision board meetings. Several of the people who attended had a very successful career and had never created a vision board before. And what really shocked me was that they let life slip by for a lot of years without really even thinking about what they wanted or learning how to show up for themselves outside of what they thought was expected of them. It blew my mind.

I can’t say I’ve never been in their place before. In fact, the only reason I know how important it is to set goals (especially those that allow more fun into your life) is because I lived in a place where I was just trying to meet expectations for far too long.

I felt like life was meant to be hard, that suffering was inevitable, and that I wasn’t doing things right & needed to wait for the other shoe to drop “to keep me humble” if I felt otherwise.

Now I understand that suffering is part of life, but it’s not the POINT of life. I really love thinking about how one of the names for the Plan of Salvation is the Great Plan of Happiness. Not only is it a Great plan. It’s also a means to lead us to eternal Happiness! What more can we ask for than that? And if we spend all of our time in this life focusing on the hardships and trials, why do we think we’ll suddenly know how to be happy in the next?

In reality, being happy takes intentionality. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to be happier. You have to actively keep inserting happiness into your thought process until it becomes your normal state of being. It’s easier for our brains to focus on the negative and get into what I like to call a “doom loop” where you stay focused on everything that could possibly go wrong so you’re prepared for it. This is on purpose because our brains are wired for survival. They want to keep us safe and to avoid imminent danger and death. We don’t live in a time when we have to focus on our survival much, so it takes training to get our brains used to looking for the good.

Missing the Turn Off to Fun

We don’t usually take the fun out of life intentionally, but a lot of times we do have something to do with it when it’s missing from our lives.

Responsibilities creep in and we get burdened and busy with the day-to-day. We’re taught not to daydream and to stick to what we know.

But the problem with that is we were made for more. I absolutely love the shift happening in our culture where people are stepping away from the constant grind of a 9-5 they don’t enjoy to find their passions. Very few people enjoy living their life in a cubicle with a long commute, only to hopefully reach the dangling carrot of enjoying their last 10-20 years after retirement.

And I know firsthand that it feels unnatural to follow the pull you feel to step away from the “security” of that life, but a lot of what once felt secure can start to feel like shackles when you begin following your intuition, learning what you really enjoy, and allowing yourself to find the fun.

Life can open up for you in unexpected ways. You start feeling alive & like yourself for the first time. You can see a new future ahead that you never knew could be yours.

It’s literally never too late to make a different choice. That’s what I’ve come to love about life. You’re not guaranteed a certain amount of time in this life, but every day is another chance to make a new choice.

Mindset Matters

And even if you keep your passion as a side project, you can create more fun in life when you realize that most of what happens in life stems from how you feel about things. There’s no right or wrong way to figure out what brings you joy.

I’m sure you’ve heard the quote “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it” by Charles Swindoll. It’s very true. People can go through the exact same situation and come out of it very differently, depending on their mindset. You can’t guarantee what situations you’ll face in this life, but what you can do is set yourself up to face things with clarity, knowing that happiness, peace, and joy have become your natural state.

When you learn to treat life like a game, you realize how much creative power is in your hands. You learn how to stop taking everything so seriously because the point of life is to create more and enjoy things along the way. Lessons don’t have to be learned the hard way. We’ve just decided we earn some sort of prize when they are.

And the more ways you learn to create fun in your life, the more you realize you can help create everything in your life. You start looking for ways to make better choices that lead to better outcomes. Just like you might be used to visualizing everything going wrong, you can actively create scenarios where things go right. The more you do this, the more you will create these positive scenarios in your reality. When you focus on how things in your life happen to go right, you create more space for additional things to go right. Your brain will multiply whatever you focus on and look for ways to expand it.

To wrap things up, fun is not the bad guy. It’s not childish or naive to want your life to be more fun. You are the key to unlocking more fun in your life. Fun and happiness go hand in hand. You can learn to take life less seriously and create whatever feels fun in a way that brings you lasting joy (and can even benefit others).

What feels so good about suffering that we’ve decided it’s great to stay there? We don’t gain anything from prolonging our suffering. Isn’t it time to bring more love, fun, joy, peace, happiness, etc. into the world so their effects can multiply and fill the world? I absolutely think so!

Message me to let me know where you can use more fun in your life OR how you’ve used these principles to create fun already.

Cheers to more love,

Sydney (In Bloom Coach)