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I prioritize fun as one of my most important values. It’s something we strive for in our company and in the work we do with our clients, and I choose to live by it in all areas of my life. I want to have as much fun as I possibly can. And I’m very conscious when things start to feel too serious and heavy because life is just better when it’s fun.
However, a lot of people tell me that they love this idea, but they don’t know how, or they don’t think it’s possible. But did you know that your life can be as fun you want it to be? Well, that’s what I’m discussing on the show today, and I’m showing you how to stop getting in your own way when it comes to creating a fun-filled life.
Tune in this week to discover how to invite more fun into your life. I’m sharing why it’s possible to do this work in any area of your life that you currently don’t think is fulfilling the fun part of your personality, and how doing this work will change your whole life in the future, allowing you to step into the best version of yourself.
If you don’t currently have a life coach, I would be so honored to be yours. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. If you’re ready to take this work to the 10X level, click here to check it out!
Towards the end of this summer, I will be launching my business coaching program, Business Minded. To get on the interest list for when the doors open, click here.
What You’ll Learn on this Episode:
- What fun means to me and where in our lives I think fun is an important value.
- Why I’m way more effective and creative when I’m having fun, and why you will be too.
- How we get in our own way when it comes to creating a sense of fun, especially in certain areas of our life.
- Where to see how you could infuse more fun into your experience of life.
- How to create fun in any area of your life, no matter how serious it might seem right now.
Mentioned on the Show:
- When you’re ready to take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10X level, then come check out Be Bold.
- If you’re a coach who is already certified through The Life Coach School, I want to help you take your coaching to the next level. Interested? Get on the waitlist here.
- Follow me on Instagram!
- Grab the Podcast Roadmap!
- Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 314: Life Can be Fun.
Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.
Hello everybody, welcome to episode 314. We’re going to talk about my favorite subject today which is fun. I prioritize fun. It is one of my values. It’s one of the values we have in our company. It’s one of the values that we bring in to Be Bold and it’s just one of the values that I choose to live by. I want to maximize the amount of fun that I’m having in my life. And I’m very careful to be onto myself when things start feeling too serious and heavy because I know that not only is it more enjoyable when I’m having fun. But I’m way more effective at anything I’m trying to do.
I am more creative. I am easier for other people to be around. I’m easier to be around for myself. And I just have better ideas, more energy, better execution, more focus. All the things that I want to be happen easier when I’m having fun. And a lot of times people say to me that they love that idea, they can see the reality of that but they don’t know how. And that’s what I want to talk to you a little bit about today. I want to talk about this idea of fun. And I want to talk to you about some of my thoughts around why we get in our own way.
And then I want you to know that I have created a whole workshop around this that I’m teaching in Be Bold that you’re going to want to join me for because for the entire month of August we are going to be learning how to have more fun. I want to start by saying also that this is not just a light fluffy like wouldn’t it be nice if we were having more fun kind of thing. It’s easy to view it that way, but I think that the work that’s required, especially if it doesn’t come naturally to you.
If it’s challenging for you to do, if you feel like your life circumstances get in the way of you being able to have fun or you’re just not wired naturally in that way. then the process of learning how to evolve a little bit in this way, and I’m not saying it has to look any certain way. We don’t all have to be the class clown telling jokes all the time. I’m just saying choosing to change the way you think a little bit and change the way you view the world in order to invite more fun into your life is a process that will change you.
And that’s what I love about coaching. I was just listening this morning to a repeat of a coaching call that my coach Brooke Castillo did a long time ago. And one of the things she said that really struck me was the reason that coaching is so powerful is because you use the things that come along in your life. Either the things that are challenging or the people that are difficult, the relationships you’re struggling with or whatever it is, or a goal that you want to set.
Or just a way that you just want to change yourself in terms of your habits, you use that to become the youest version of yourself that you can be. And that is powerful. The evolution that’s required, the discomfort that’s required, the consciousness and awareness that’s required. And the intentional choosing of how you’re going to think and show up and who you’re going to become, that’s where our power lies. And I love that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because I think that is our purpose for being alive in the first place.
We’re trying to become more like our heavenly parents. That’s why they sent us here, to have experiences that will challenge us and opportunities put in front of us that we might think I kind of want to do that. I want to try that. I want to be more this way. I want to relax in this way. I want to change myself for the better, that’s what helps us. The process of changing ourselves is what helps us become more like our heavenly parents. And so, for that reason I want you to just really listen to this episode even if you think I don’t really care about having fun. That’s not my thing.
I don’t think that’s most of you. Most people tell me they really do want to have more fun. They just don’t know how. But this is legit stuff. So, we’re going to start out with a little bit of research that I did on this topic. I like learning about the idea of play because with four kids of my own, I watch how good kids are at playing and how good they are at having fun in general. It’s definitely a value for most kids. I have one child that it’s not as strong of a value for.
But for three of my four kids, they want to have fun. It’s the most important thing when you’re a kid. You can’t be bothered to stop playing long enough to go to the bathroom sometimes even. What, you had an accident? You have to stop playing when you feel that you need to go to the bathroom. They certainly can’t be bothered to stop playing for annoying things like taking a bath, or eating dinner, or things like that. They just want to play. And play can be in the backyard, play sometimes unfortunately is too long spent on an iPad, but they just want to play and have fun, it’s a really big driver.
Even I remember being in high school thinking what are we going to do on Friday night? I hope we’re going to do something fun. Fun is a very important driver and we’re pretty good at play. The other day I took my daughter and a few of her friends to Crumbl Cookie, which is about a 30 minute drive for us, but Macy knows if she wants a Crumbl Cookie, I’m the mom to ask because I’m always looking for an excuse to drive out to Crumbl. Don’t tell Brad Jensen.
But anyway, we drove out to Crumbl, so me and a bunch of teenage girls in the car. And I was like these girls are awesome at having fun. It’s kind of loud. Well, why? Like, they all have lots to say. They have lots of stories, they love to laugh. They love to listen to music. They know how to have fun. As a teenager I remember being that way too. Fun was a very important part of my life and I was very good at it. And then something happens at some point in our lives where we grow up and we forget how to have fun.
I get messages and questions all the time from people saying can you help me know how to have fun? And the good news is, I don’t think I have to help you know how. I think I just have to help you remember how because you were a child once. And you were a teenager once. And you probably were better at having fun at least, than maybe you are today. So, like I said, I did a little bit of research on this topic of play.
There’s a gentleman whose name I cannot pronounce but I will try, Johan Huizinga. And he wrote a book called Homo Ludens and it’s all about the study of play. And according to Johan, there are four things necessary for something to be considered play at least the way he defined it in the research that he did in this book. He said that number one it must be voluntary. Because if it’s not voluntary, if you’re forced into it, certainly if you’re threatened into it, if you feel like you have to or else there is a severe consequence, he does not count that as play.
Second thing he says is that it must occur in a space and time in which the rules are different from the rest of your life. So, if we think about traditional sports, a soccer game, a basketball game, a football game, a volleyball game. We can see that that is a type of play that’s occurring in a space and time in which the rules are different from real life. The objective is different. In fact, we even sometimes take a timeout in which we step out of that magical space and time momentarily before we step back in, is one of the components he says is necessary to define play.
The third thing is that it must be internally motivated as opposed to externally motivated. I was thinking about this with regards to some of the hobbies that we tend to have. Maybe you love to sew, that might be a form of play for you. But as soon as you start selling the things that you sew, people place orders, then he does not define that as play any longer. That is now externally motivated by money. He uses the example of college athletes are unusually still in play mode even though we might say, “Well, they get scholarships and so their education maybe is tied to this.”
He still says that in general they tend to stay in play mode. Once they move into becoming professional athletes who rely on their performance to make a living then they shift out of play.
And then the fourth component he says is that it must be fun. If it’s not fun, we don’t consider it play. So, here’s what I thought was interesting. I don’t know that I agree that all those things have to be present. I’m not saying that this is something that I necessarily want to debate. I think we could argue for his case and I could argue against some of these things. But what I found to be interesting as I was reading this is that it reminded me of my days in corporate America.
It reminded me of when at times I had leaders who understood we should have some fun. It would be ideal to have some fun and that would probably help us be more effective at our jobs. And so, what we did is we paused our work sometimes and then we went and had fun. So, we said “Hey we’re going to take the afternoon and instead of staying in the office working we’re going to go with whole team and we’re going to the bowling alley and we’re going to bowl and have pizza, and we are going to have some fun.”
And I’m all for that but what I find to be even more powerful is to be able to incorporate fun into what you already do. So, I live in Washington. I live in Spokane, Washington and on the other the other side of the state from us in Seattle is a place called Pikes Place Market. What’s it called? Pike Street Market? I don’t know, there’s a market over there, Pikes Market. I haven’t been for a while obviously. And I remember as kids and if you’ve been there, I’m sure you’ve seen this, if you’ve worked in corporate, you might have even seen the video that they made that’s all about fun.
But anyway, there’s a group of guys who work there at the fish – at one of the fish places I should say. You can buy fresh fish at lots of booths within Pikes Market. And the first one though, right when you walk in, the main one, the famous one. I remember as a kid going there just to watch them throw fish. We never bought any fish there, other people did. But we were coming from across the state so we didn’t really want to take fresh fish home in the car.
But we would still go because we wanted to watch them throw fish because they were having so much fun. At least it looked like it. If they were pretending, they were really good actors. Somebody would order a fish. One of the dudes would yell out the name of the fish and then he would throw it across their little booth to the other guy who would catch it in the butcher paper that he would wrap it up in. And it was pretty awesome to watch.
In fact, crowds of people would gather around to watch them call out the names of fish and throw fish back and forth and laugh and have a really good time. And occasionally they would not catch the fish, it would drop. And mostly they were pretty good at it. And it was just to watch these guys doing this, what could be a really boring job of just grabbing fish out of the cooler, wrapping it up, It’s a stinky job, let’s be honest. It does not smell good there.
They’re wrapping up fish, they’re covered in fish guts all day, these are raw fish that they’re handling and selling them. But they turned it into a game, they turned it into something fun which probably made it more enjoyable for them. It certainly also made it more enjoyable for all of the customers. And I realized that that’s where the real power is. I mean nothing wrong with saying, “Let’s pause what we’re doing and go play and have fun.”
But when you can have fun doing what it is you need to be doing, when you can have fun in the middle of your life, you don’t have to pause your life to go have fun. That’s when you really begin feeling the elevated level of creativity, and energy, and all the things I mentioned before which are the reasons I love to have fun.
Simon Sinek who I love, wrote a book this past year, I highly recommend called The Infinite Game. And he talks about the idea that there are finite games and there are infinite games. And again, this concept I was reminded of as I was preparing this topic for you guys. He says that in a finite game there are set rules, clear players, a clear starting and end point. So that would be again similar to a sports game.
In an infinite game there are no agreed upon rules by everyone, anyway, no clear objective even. Players can come and go at all times. And there’s no clear starting or ending point. So that’s like most of the rest of our lives are an infinite game. Our families, that’s an infinite game. Our marriages are infinite games. There’s nobody winning in a marriage or losing in a marriage. Our businesses are infinite games. Your health journey is an infinite game.
And one of the core principles of Simon Sinek’s book is when we take infinite games and we think of them like a finite game, we either create problems for ourselves, or at the least minimize our effectiveness in those areas. And I think having fun and play is one of the ways in which we do that, if we think of our lives like a finite game. If we think that we are winning or losing and I coach people all the time who use that wording. They talk about their marriages or their families as though my husband’s winning, I’m losing, or the kids are winning, I’m losing.
And whether they use those exact words or some other version of it, you can hear when their mindset starts to go to a finite game, when we make it a competition. If you’re comparing yourself to other people, you’re trying to create a finite game around something that is infinite. So, my point is that if we can learn to have fun in an infinite way, if we can keep the game an infinite game and have fun, then we gain so much leverage. We become an influence for good. We start enjoying our lives.
It doesn’t mean that life necessarily gets easier, it doesn’t mean we don’t have problems and challenges. And it also doesn’t mean, by the way, that we’re just laughing and happy all the time. I’m not talking about that you have to always to be having fun. I’m just talking about increasing the level of fun that you have in the infinite game portions of your life, which is the majority of your life.
I was a server for many years. Sometimes I think if this life coaching thing doesn’t work out, I could probably go wait tables at The Old Spaghetti Factory because I’m really good at that. And I would have no shame in doing that. I loved doing that actually. But my point is that when I was a server and I worked at many different restaurants I noticed that with servers you tend to attract a lot of people that like to have fun because it’s a fast paced busy, on your feet, always moving, interacting with lots of people type of job.
Not everybody likes to have fun but there were always a few at every restaurant I worked at. A few people who were really good at having fun. And I loved having those people around because they reminded the rest of us that we could just lighten up and have fun. There were a few people, sometimes I was that person, who were stressed out in the middle of the night, running around, smelling like meat sauce, forgetting people’s drinks. Having customers that are angry because their food is late, which you can’t control sometimes.
You’re covered in food, your bus person hasn’t cleaned the table off, whatever, hectic being a server. And in the middle of all that some people were good at cracking a joke. Some people were good at laughing at ourselves, at laughing at the ridiculousness that’s going on around us, at making light of what felt like heavy situations. Those people were having fun at least in moments while they were serving, while they were waiting tables.
My daughter talks about certain kids in her class at school and certain funny comments they make. She even has, I’ve got to share this example. So again, shout out to all the teachers. Thanks for making it through the last year and a half. I don’t know that we’re in the clear yet. I think it’s still going to be a little hectic this year but hopefully we are getting there. My point is that last year in the middle of the year, our kids went back to school part-time. So, they put them into groups and some of the kids were at home and others were at school.
So, this posed an interesting challenge for the teachers. It was, hey teachers, we need you to be teaching the kids that are in class and at the same time teaching the other kids who are at home on Zoom. Could you please create a lesson that is both an in person and a Zoom lesson and try to keep everybody engaged? Not easy. So, my kids would report that some of their teachers would say “Okay, class”, on the days they went to school, “Sit down and get out your computer and log into Zoom. And I’ll be right here in the front of the class teaching and you’ll be on Zoom watching me.”
That way they could teach the kids in class and they could teach the kids at home on Zoom. Then we had other teachers, like Mr. Armstrong for example, who is really good at having fun while he’s teaching. And he would project the Zoom class. The Zoom, what is it called? Screen with all the kids on it onto the whiteboard. So, all the kids sitting in class could see. And he had his computer or whatever set up in front of him so the kids at home could see him. And then he would teach class. And sometimes he would go up to the whiteboard and draw funny faces on the kids at home.
And he’d say, “Hey Tyler, move a little bit to the left”, as he tried to draw a mustache on him. And then he would say, “Hey, let’s play a game, let’s try to get Suzanna into the middle box.” Because if you shut your video off, it moves you in the boxes of all the people. So, they would play a game out of it. So, as he was teaching and he had this interesting terrible challenge of trying to teach kids in person and on Zoom, he made it fun. He had fun with it. And guess what? All the other kids had fun with it too.
And again, I don’t fault the other teachers who didn’t do that. I probably would have been one of the ones who was like, “Get out your computer and watch me on your computer in class.” It’s tough. I get it. If your head is not in the right space, you don’t have a way to come up with those ideas. But if you can, you add something so powerful to the world. You add permission to enjoy, permission to lighten up, permission to have fun as you go, as we do the things we have to do, the things that we want to do, the things that we need to do.
I want to say a couple other things about this topic which is that it’s a little bit different having fun in your life on the regular, is a little bit different than just entertainment. And entertainment can be a part of it. I’m all for entertainment. I love TV, You guys know I love comedy. I love music, add music to anything that’s going to be more fun. I love all of that. But here’s the interesting thing. Comedy, professional comedians, or comedians that are really good at what they do. They have the skill of writing and creating comedy. It’s a process just like anything else.
I’m sharing this to my own self as much as anyone else. I’m like, there’s just people who are funny. And those were the people probably who were doing standup comedy, well, maybe. But also, some of those people are just normal people in real life. They’re not the class clowns always cracking the jokes. They have learned and gotten really good at the skill of writing, and producing, and maybe acting out comedy.
And the only reason I point that out, that’s true with actors and musicians, too. You have actors who are good actors. It doesn’t mean that in real life they’re always light and having a good time. The only reason I point that out is because I’m not trying to turn you into a professional comedian, or actor, or musician. I’m trying to teach you how to rewire your brain so that you can enjoy your life more, so that you know how to have fun in the moment.
This is not about that you need to be the class clown. You don’t need to be an extrovert. You don’t need to be loud. I want you to be you. If you’re not any of those things, I don’t want to turn you into those things. But I am going to push you outside your comfort zone a little bit this month I’ll tell you that much. Because sometimes we’re afraid to just allow ourselves to have fun. We’re afraid of other people’s judgements. We’re afraid of feeling not like ourselves because if we’ve been serious and heavy for a long time it’s going to feel foreign to you.
So, I am going to push you in certain ways. But the goal is that we make you the most fun version of you, not that we turn you into me or anybody else. So, if you are not in Be Bold, you’ve got to come and join us because I’m having so much fun this year, creating all new workshops. I’ve never taught this subject before. I will not be teaching it again in this way ever. But even this topic won’t be coming up again for at least a year.
So, here’s the thing. If you want to come and try it out, it’s 49 bucks to join Be Bold and not only do you get to go through the workshop but you get tons of other coaching calls and content. And I’m not going to go into it on this podcast, but you can go to jodymoore.com/membership and learn all about it.
And here’s the other thing that I want to say. If you’re skeptical of membership, you should be because I am skeptical of memberships. Because I’ve signed up for so many things that say, “Yeah, this is a recurring payment, please click the box here.” And then when I go to try to cancel it, it’s super hard. They’re like, “No you have to come to our corporate office in person with a letter signed.” I mean maybe not quite that extreme. But sometimes I seriously have things that I’m paying for that I still can’t figure out how to get out of.
I’m like, I just want to cancel this thing, why is it so hard? And I want you to know that we do not do that in our membership. It is very easy. You go to the help page. It says right there at the bottom, how do I cancel my membership. It’s says click here and you submit your name and the email that you are signed up under and then we cancel it, done. We don’t even try to talk you into staying. We’re just like, we love you, we’re so sad that – you get a video that says, “We love you. We’re sad to see you go. But we get it. Have a nice life. We are right here if you need us in the future.”
So, I just want you to know that. If you just want to come try this out, you just want to take the fun class and then be done with it, you can. It’s very easy to do. It is a recurring payment because we want it to be convenient. And I’ll tell you that most of the people in our membership have been there for a very long time. We have a very, very low turnover rate because people come in and see the power of it in their lives. But if you do decide to leave, very easy because we’re not trying to trick you.
So even if you just want to come and take the How to Have More Fun course, you’ve got to sign up right now because the doors are open. But they will only be open for a few more days and then you’ll miss the class. So come to jodymoore.com/membership and I’ll see you there. Have a good one. Bye Bye.
Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.
We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.
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