In this season of the podcast I am chatting about habits and I think sometimes we get so bogged down in the whole scheme of seeking after habits… that we forget that one of the keys to well being, health and happiness and so on, is actual fun. We want to exercise more, sleep better, eat better… and we forget that the purpose of all of this is to live better. What I am trying to say is that in the quest for better living we can quite forget that the purpose of life is not meant to be the road of drudgery and well… boredom.
In the scheme of life we need to do better at having fun, think about it, when last did you do something whimsical – just because. We live near the seaside but we don’t often walk on the beach at dawn to watch the sunrise… but why not!!! If I went away on holiday, nothing would stop me from seeing the sunrise, but it is not part of our every day… The thing is we need to remember to add fun into our lives… real fun. And that’s a tricky one… because you can’t write FUN on the calendar and hope you have a wonderful day. Fun times need a certain amount of spontaneity and joy de vivre. And while holidays are fun they aren’t good for us all the time… the trick is, finding pockets of fun in your day. And understanding the your idea of fun might not be other folks’ idea of fun. My best day out would be a day on the beach an extremely long swim, a picnic in the sun, and then a whole lot more swimming… my husband would hate that, he isn’t a beach person at all… and that’s fine. We all have different ideas of fun.
The question is where can we find pockets of fun, to lighten our spirits and help us get on with our days… because a little break from work and a little time to let our minds wander does actually help us to focus more, it does help us to work harder when we are working and it makes us generally happier. Creating happiness habits are really useful… because we forget, we forget to take care of ourselves, we forget to connect with our friends, in the business of getting dinner on the table yet again, we forget that we could make it fun. So how do I incorporate fun into every my days…
One time I dropped my kids off at an activity with an extremely active educator and I asked how he was still able to jump around like a kid and on and off the trampoline and generally move around… and his answer struck me: “He said, most people stop being able to move fluidly when they stop playing.” Think about that… when we stop playing. We need that element of playfulness in our days… no one has to tell a six year old how to skip… they keep on trying till they get it right and for weeks, that is all that they will do. One of my greatest achievements of lockdown was to learn how to skip with a skipping rope again… I tell you the truth… it took hours an hours of concentrated effort… and clearly I had forgotten how to play.
There was a season when homeschoolers all over the world would write out lists of what they would want their kids to do in a day… spend some time reading, play a board game, potter about outdoors, have a little nature walk and create something everyday. Something like that… it sounded wonderful to me, and exactly what I wanted to do with my day… I think at the time of that specific popularity, moms were meant to be in the kitchen preparing healthy snacks while there kids got on with things… well I was the mom that wanted a list of lovely things to get through in a day – and to be honest, my kids were the ones that wanted to create the snacks in the kitchen…
And so I set myself up… I have reading slots in my day, that I mentioned in the second episode of this season. If I don’t get to play a board game with my kids, in the name of school, then I will make sure that sometime in the day I will jump onto my phone and play a game of scrabble… it’s good for my brain, it requires my attention and I find it fun. I am not on my phone playing mind numbing games that require you to stare at your screen and dodge bullets, whisk past floating planets, avoid flying trams, for several hours at a time. Scrabble is a quick game it takes about ten minutes… it’s meant to be a pocket of fun, not half a day of fun!!!
I do feel after a morning spent at the kitchen table that I need to get outdoors, and I will step outdoors for a potter in the garden… and when I haven’t had enough fresh air… well I am quite happy to drag the school table outside and do our work there then. I think a whole lot of fun is when things are a novelty… if you do something the same way every single day… change it up… have dinner outside, take your school reading to a coffee shop. Just because we homeschool doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.
Call a friend, step out of your house and have an actual coffee… I know we have all lived in this bubble for the past two years, and friendships have really become “Are you okay?” “Yeah, we are fine thanks, and you…” But we can do better, the reason these people are our friends is because they are fun to be around… stop waiting for birthdays to celebrate, stop waiting for all the big occasions… grab a coffee and settle down for a catch up chat. It’s way past time and even if your idea of fun is camping on a deserted island for several years… trust me a catch up chat and coffee with a friend is good for the soul… it doesn’t have to be a scheduled thing, it does have to be a novelty… something different to our everyday.
Have one night in the week when you try a new recipe, something your family has never had before. If you only do puzzles at Christmas time, try working on one with a great audible book, and make sure it’s a fun one… not all audible books have to be life changing productivity books… loads of them are just pure fun… and good for the soul. If you walk your dogs the same way every evening, then try something new… it’s novelty that our minds crave and novelty that makes things fun. Go on a course and learn something… if attending a class is your thing, then go for it sign up… but if there is one great thing that has come out of lockdown, it is online learning it… you can sign up for anything and everything, and loads of courses are free. Udemy, Futurelearn, Craftsy… you can literally learn anything online. If you always wanted to be a detective, do a course in forensics, you love traveling, do a course on travel journaling… the world is your oyster… and the worst that will happen is you won’t like it, then quit and find something you do like. Get yourself a shiny notebook sign up for a course and go for it.
We are so desperate to create fun for our kids, we spend days and hours and weeks scheming and thinking of fun things to do with our kids, trust me if we spent half as much time creating pockets of fun in our own lives, we would have a springier spring in our steps, we would be a lot more fun to be around and we would spontaneously spread the fun factor, especially to those people around us, without having to work so hard at it.
Previous Podcasts in this Series on Habits
- Habit 1: Sustainable Sleep
- Habit 2: Relaxing Reading
- Habit 3: Healthy Eating