263. Fun Creation

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy episode 263: Fun Creation.

Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m your host, Jody Moore. I’m a mother to four children. I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I’m a Master Certified Life Coach. I’m here to teach you how to manage your brain and manage your emotions so that you can create a life that’s even better than happy. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for your awesome amazing feedback on the iTunes reviews that you’ve been leaving. Thank you for sharing the episodes in your stories. Thank you for sharing with me the way it’s impacting your life. I love getting your messages about how you’ve applied it and how it’s helping you. It’s so fun to be here.

Today we’re going to talk about fun. Doesn’t that sound fun? So I did an episode a few episodes back on how to make achieving your goals easier. And one of the things that I recommended is that you just have fun with it. And I got a message from somebody afterwards saying that you really liked that idea and you wanted to hear more about how to make things fun, how to have fun with your goals, how to have more fun in life. And I said, “I’m all in.” Because those of you who know me know that one of my most favorite thoughts is this is going to be fun.

In fact it’s such a favorite thought of mine that a client one time had the cutest little necklace made for me, it’s got a little gold bar, imprinted on that necklace is the statement, ‘This is going to be fun.’ And I wear it all the time, and I’m so appreciative of the person who sent me that.

So here’s the thing, Covid-19 is still around, dang it. And in fact since we lifted a little bit of the social distancing measures around the country we’ve seen the numbers go up. And it’s not looking like we’re going to have a vaccine or a simple resolution to this pandemic any time real soon. It is middle of July when I am recording this, July of 2020, so I don’t know when you’re listening to it, but that’s where we’re at. We’ve been social distancing for, I guess, four months now, maybe a little longer. It’s not very fun anymore. I mean maybe it was never really fun.

But I feel like – I don’t know if you’re experiencing this, but it sort of feel like from my clients and my friends and family that there is this collective, “Really, when is this going to be over?” Especially since we’re halfway through summer, there is this question now about whether or not the kids are even going to be able to go back to school in the fall, which is sort of overwhelming for those of us that have kids at home.

And I don’t know, things are just sort of feeling even heavier. It always was heavy, but it’s a different kind of heavy now. It’s like a lingering like no end in sight. How much longer can we really do this kind of heavy? I feel like in the beginning there were a lot more like funny memes and little video clips and things that we were all passing around. And I’m seeing less of that and just more dragging.

So I think this is a good time for us to stop and ask this question. How can we create more fun? Now, I want to begin by explaining that human beings are naturally designed to play. It’s innate within us that we like to play. We like to have fun. So take a look at your children, notice how they like to play, they like to play so much that some of them don’t want to stop playing to eat. They don’t want to stop playing to take a bath or to sleep.

I don’t know about you, but I will stop just about anything to eat or take a bath or sleep, I love those three things. But as kids we don’t feel that way, we just want to explore, we want to play, we want to laugh, we want to run free, we want to experiment, we want to connect with one another. We at our most basic are designed for play.

Now, it’s natural for us to grow up and not behave the exact same way that kids do. But I do want to point out that at some point in life we start to become much more serious. We start to suddenly think that things that we didn’t think were important as kids are very important. We start to take life a little bit more seriously. And maybe we take ourselves a little more seriously. And again there is a natural explanation for this, it’s not that anything is wrong. But I like to pause and remind myself that that version of me that I was when I was a kid is still available and within me. And I can access her and sometimes it’s kind of fun to do so.

Sometimes stepping out of my adult brain that thinks that I need to take things seriously and I need to be responsible, and we need to worry and we need to, all these other heavy things, it’s not really necessary. Again, you look in the middle of Covid, you look at how a young child feels about it and many of them anyway, not all of them, but many of them are not worried at all. They’re just like, well, what are we going to do today? Let’s go in the backyard and turn the sprinkler on and run around.

Another thing that we believe as human beings is we tend to think that there are certain things that are fun or there are things that are not fun. And so I want to begin by explaining that that is not the case. Things and people and events are not fun. Anything that exists outside of us cannot be fun or not fun, they just are things outside of us. We either have fun or we don’t. Fun is an experience that either we create for ourselves or we don’t. If the thing outside of us created that experience then we would all have the same experience of all things, and all people, and all places, but we don’t.

Let’s take water slide parks for example, who loves a water slide? I do, I like those big water slides, my mom tells me the story about being a little girl when I couldn’t – I was too short to even ride the water slide by myself. I had to sit on her lap or my dad’s lap and they would take me down the water slide at the park. And I would laugh the whole way because I thought it was so much fun.

Now, not everybody enjoys a water slide. Some people think the water’s so dirty there, there’s so many people there. Or maybe they don’t enjoy being in a swimsuit or maybe they find the water slide to be kind of scary. If water slide parks were fun we would all have the same experience when we go there. But some people don’t, some don’t go there at all.

How about haunted houses? Some of you like to go to haunted houses. I do not, I do not find them to be fun. Or scary movies, same thing, I don’t find it fun to be scared, even when I know it’s fabricated by a fake haunted house or a movie or something, I still don’t enjoy it. But some people do. How about a roller coaster? Not everybody thinks roller coasters are fun, some people think that they’re terrible.

At my kids’ school they have a little club called Math is Fun. And I’m like, “Really?” I beg to differ. But my oldest son is very good at math, and I think he might even say that math is fun. But math is not fun, it’s just some people enjoy math based on their experience that they create of it. And others of us don’t enjoy math because we have different thoughts and we create an entirely different experience.

So fun is an experience that we have the ability to create for ourselves, of course there are certain circumstances that are much easier for us to create fun in than others.

But today I want to give you six things you can try out to make things more fun. Anything you’re doing, maybe this is just the daily routine of feeding kids and picking up the house and whatever it is that you’re doing in your day or your job. Maybe it’s a big goal that you’re working on, something you’re trying to achieve in your life. You can apply this really to any area, even challenges, even trials that you’re trying to get through. You can apply these six things and make it more fun. And I highly recommend that you do.

Okay, so first thing you can try out is to do your best whenever possible to be working in your fun zone. Now, I like this term ‘fun zone.’ We have one of those – it’s sort of like an inner tube but it’s not really a tube, it has like three seats that people can sit in, but otherwise it’s a big inflatable tube type thing that you pull behind the boat. I think they sell them at Costco and probably everywhere else.

Anyway, my kids like to ride on that, and it has this little line on the front that says, ‘fun zone.’ And what they mean is you need to be sitting behind this line, you need to stay behind this line when you’re being pulled behind the boat, you need to stay in the fun zone. But I decided I really like that term and I like to tell my kids, “Hey, come on over here, this is the fun zone,” which they don’t like. But let me tell you what I mean by that. I don’t mean sitting on a certain part of the tube.

When I think about the fun zone for myself, with anything I’m trying to do, I’m trying to work in the space that is not too hard for me but also not too easy for me. There is this sweet spot, and it’s different for all of us, and it’s different based on different tasks and different things that you’re doing.

But there is a spot at which it’s too hard, if it’s too hard you’re probably not going to have fun, because it’s going to require too much of your brain. You’re going to start getting overwhelmed. You might start doubting your abilities. You might start becoming confused and your brain will just go, “You know what, I don’t want to do this, it’s too hard, it’s not fun for us.”

Now, the same is true if it’s too easy. If the task is too easy and too mundane and it doesn’t require much of us, it doesn’t challenge us. It doesn’t give us the opportunity to learn things and grow in certain ways, and increase our skills in certain ways, or to apply skills that we are just kind of able to do but not super good at yet. If it’s too easy it’s also not going to be fun.

So what are the things you do that are just too easy? Maybe we’re like, I’ve got a full laundry again. It’s not that doing laundry is too hard, it’s really not, it’s actually very easy, it’s just so mundane, it doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t allow you to access your best skills. It’s not something that you can keep learning and lighting up the brain as you learn about. You already know how to do the laundry really well. So it’s not that fun, it’s actually too easy, even though there might be a lot of it to keep up on.

So the ideal way is to work in your fun zone. Now, we don’t always get to do that all the time, sometimes we just need to do the laundry. Or sometimes we need to figure out something that’s really hard for us and we don’t have the ability to work in the fun zone. But many times you do. And that is what I recommend is that you just ask yourself, how can I make this easier if it feels too hard? Or how can I challenge myself if it’s too easy? Because the more you can get into that fun zone the more you’re going to enjoy whatever the thing is that you’re doing.

Okay, so I’ve probably given this example before but I have to give it again because it’s one of my most favorite ones. So giving a talk is relatively fun for me, but I talk a lot, I speak a lot, I teach a lot. And so it’s not as challenging as it could be, especially back when I worked in corporate and I was a corporate trainer and we would go on these roadshows and visit different campus buildings where we had employees. And we would give the same message every time.

So on the one hand there’s always like a little bit of nerves when you’re speaking in the front of a group. But on the other hand it was the same message we’d already given over, and over, and over again. And so we start to fall out of the fun zone and just start feeling like it’s kind of mundane, kind of routine, I’m repeating the same message.

So to make it more fun we would challenge each other with a sentence or a word or a phrase and say, “Try to work that into your talk this time.” Of course we would pick the most random thing that had nothing to do with what you were talking about, like muscle burns fat or something, when I was talking about new hire training.

We would just pick a random phrase or something and we would challenge each other, like, “Let’s see if you can fit this in?” And you have to make it natural, you have to make it not obvious. You don’t want everyone listening to realize that it’s really off. That was the goal. So we just made it more fun by making it a little bit more challenging, a little bit more complicated.

There’s other goals in my life that feel really hard already. And the best way to get in my fun zone is again to ask myself how can I make this easier? There’s usually always a way to make it easier. Often it’s YouTube or Google, or going to an expert who is good at whatever the thing is that I’m struggling with. If it’s math, I go to someone who’s good at math, somebody who’s good at numbers. And I’m like, “Can you help me? Can you help me take on the really hard part so I can make this part easier?” So that’s number one, try to work in your fun zone.

Number two. Be willing to bring in some self-deprecation. Now, I’ve got to explain this one because self-deprecation, I’ve looked it up to see is that even the right term. And I don’t know if it is. It basically says online that self-deprecation is modesty about, or criticism of one’s self. So I’m not saying that you should criticize yourself, I don’t really like that word.

But I think of the term self-deprecation often when I see a comedian that I really like. A lot of comedians who are really funny are able to be self-deprecating. They’re able to laugh at themselves a little bit. And I think that that makes life more fun. When I cannot become defensive of my faults or shortcomings, and not think that I have to hide them from everyone, and not think that they’re a problem, I can kind of laugh at them, which helps me embrace all of it.

We all have shortcomings, we all have things we’re not good at, or things we mess up, or things we do wrong. And if we have to hide them, or compensate for them, or justify them in some way I feel like that’s a really exhausting way to live. I like to just be modest about my shortcomings and sort of laugh at them.

So this helps me have more fun as a mom, because I used to tell myself that I needed to be a really good mother, and I needed to be more consistent in my parenting and all these things that I wasn’t doing well. And I put all this pressure on myself, which didn’t make me a better mother, it just made me recognize how terrible of a job I was doing. And now I am just a little self-deprecating about it.

My sister has a really good sense of humor and she’s this way too and we were just at the lake spending lots of time together as a family. She has the cutest little boy who has really blond hair and we’d been swimming at my brother’s pool, so his hair turned a little green from the chlorine. And she’s like, “Yeah, that’s my kid, the one with the green hair and the not brushed teeth, and the whatever, that’s my boy.” So she’s just kind of laughing about it, it’s not that she’s not going to wash his hair and brush his teeth and all of that.

But when we shame ourselves and notice our faults and then beat ourselves up for it, that doesn’t change anything, that doesn’t help us improve. What helps us improve is to be able to laugh at it a little bit, lighten up a little bit, own it. And then step in and do better if we want to. It’s much more available when you’re having fun and you embrace yourself. So, self-deprecation, not self-loathing, not self-criticism, it’s like, yeah, never good at that thing or I fell short in that area and I love me anyway, it’s all good.

Alright, number three. Make it a game. This is one of my favorite things, you guys, that makes things more fun for me. Whatever it is I’m doing my brain naturally goes to how do I make this a game? How do I make it more fun? If I’m cleaning the house, if I’m going to be working on a goal in my business or if I’m trying to lose weight, whatever it is, I’m always like, “How do I make this more of a game?” Because games are fun. We like to play games. Here’s what I love about games, we know that they’re just for fun and yet we still take them really seriously.

Again, back when I was a corporate trainer I had a couple of points in my training when I would bring in a game. So after I had taught the employees some things for a few days to kind of mix it up, I’d be like, “Okay, we’re going to have a game now.” And I’d divide them into two teams, and I had this game that my mother-in-law taught me called Melt the Snowman, where I’d put it on the board. And it was basically part luck, part skill. I used the same game as a primary teacher. It’s an amazing simple game, I’ll share it with you one day.

But at any rate, as soon as I brought out the game, these people who sometimes had been really quiet and reserved came out of their shells, people get so competitive, they want to win this game. And like I said, this particular game is based a lot on luck and just a little bit on skill. And yet people were still so passionate about wanting to win. And at the same time if we don’t win, we don’t beat ourselves up, we don’t tell ourselves that we’re worthless and we’re never going to succeed, and who do we think we are? We might be disappointed but we have fun with it.

It’s fun to win a game, but it’s fun to play a game, so I like to ask myself how can I make this more of a game? Making it a game removes some of the seriousness around the end result. If I win the game or not it doesn’t define me, it’s just more fun to win.

So I have been working with Brad Jensen of Key Nutrition. He’s been coaching me on my nutrition goals. And it’s been so much fun because the way Brad is advising me and the strategy that I’m using, makes it like a game. So there’s less heaviness for me around what the scale says or whether or not my body looks how I want, or if my weight is coming off quickly enough. It’s just really more of a game because I am counting macros, I plug into my little app on my phone, what I’m eating.

And I usually plan out, okay, I know this is what we’re going to have for dinner, so that’s going to affect my macros in this way. And then what do I want to have for lunch and breakfast? And am I going to have a snack or not? And it’s sort of like – I was telling Brad, it’s like I’m playing a video game every day and I’m just trying to pass the level. I’m trying to eat the right amount of protein, and carbs, and fat, and calories to ideally feed and fuel my body, which is again, what Brad helps me figure out. We just keep adjusting it till we figure it out.

But there’s times when I’m like I really kind of want to eat a donut but I know I’m going to lose the level today if I eat that donut and I don’t want to lose the level. I want to win this game. Okay, so again, whatever it is the goal that you’re working on, how do you make it more of a game? Games are fun and yet we take games pretty seriously. But if I do lose the level, it’s okay, I start again tomorrow. But it’s super fun and super motivating for me to try to win the level.

Alright, number four. Nothing has to be heavy or serious. I’ve been talking a little bit about this through each of them, but I notice in people that I see trying to build businesses. I try to assess why was I able to move past that hurdle that they’re stuck in? What was different about my mindset than their mindset so that I can better help them? And one of the things I notice over and over again is that I really never, and I still never do take myself too seriously or my business too seriously.

I always get worried when people are like, “I just want to hit this goal in my business so that I can believe that I’m good enough, so that I can prove that I can do it and I can finally show my husband and my mother and whatever, that I’m enough.” This is feeling very heavy, this is not as much fun as I want it to be.

Sometimes again, it’s people that are like, “If I don’t make this work, I’m not going to be able to pay my bills and so I’ve got to do it.” Now, that might seem like useful energy because it feels like a heavy commitment. But what I find is that we’re lacking in the fun and that may or may not go well. So I always try to coach my clients to a place of like no, we don’t have to do this, there’s a lot of ways to pay your bills. And we don’t have to prove anything to anyone, and certainly not through this.

Let’s not use your business as the way to build your confidence. Let’s just build your confidence first, let’s make peace first with of course we’re going to be able to pay our bills and we’re going to create whatever money we want to, and there’s a lot of ways to do that. Let’s just build your business because it would be so much fun. Wouldn’t it be awesome? So be careful when you have this heaviness or serious.

This is the same thing we do with our weight. As soon as you’re thinking if I don’t lose this weight, I’m never going to be able to live my life the way I want. I’m not going to have the energy to play with my kids, I’m not going to, whatever. We’ve got to clean all that up. The truth is, you don’t have to lose any more weight to have the most amazing life, you really don’t. Let’s just lighten it up. Nothing has to be heavy or serious.

You guys, this is even true when you’re going through major trials. I know it doesn’t feel that way, I know your brain thinks this is big, we have to be serious and heavy about this. And if you want to be, that’s okay, but you don’t have to be. And maybe you need to give yourself a little time and space to process first. Maybe you need a little time for it to feel heavy.

But ultimately if we can get you to a place of, listen, this is going to be fun, let’s go all in on this, then I promise you, you will be 10 times more effective because the energy that that brings, the creativity that that brings, the commitment and drive that that brings is so much more useful than the heavy seriousness of stress and worry and anxiety.

Alright, number five. Engage all of your senses. This is one that I think is kind of fun to play with. So as human beings in our physical states, one of the amazing things about our physicality is the opportunity to engage our senses. We can taste, touch, smell, see and hear. And the more of our senses we can engage oftentimes the more pleasurable, the more fun an experience can become. There’s a lot of research around this in the world of psychology about the benefits of engaging all of your senses.

I remember a psychology student teaching at a Relief Society meeting about scripture study. And she said, “One of the things that is beneficial about reading your scriptures from an actual book versus on a device is it engages more of your senses.” So you feel the page as you turn the page, you hear the sound of the crinkling paper. You even maybe have a smell that comes from the book. And that engaging more senses like that tends to help us be more engaged in the activity and maybe remember or get more out of it, kind of interesting.

So I try to think about that again with things that I’m doing that I want to make more fun. If I’m going to have a day doing something hard, like I just wrapped up writing a book, it’s in the editing phase right now. And writing that book was not my favorite thing to do, I’ll be honest. Sitting down at a computer and writing was challenging. So I would think, how do I engage more of my senses? So I have this candle that I love the smell of and I just would light it every time I went to write, so I got to smell that beautiful smell.

I would make sure and put on my favorite perfume that day too. I put on perfume, by the way, every night after I wash my face before I go to bed, because I’m just like why not, I want to engage my sense of smell, why can’t I smell pretty when I go to bed? I can. So engage your sense of smell in whatever way you can.

Your sense of taste, now, we’re all pretty good at that one. We’re like you know what would make this better, a snack. So be careful not to allow any of these to move into the territory of now where you’re sabotaging your long term goals. But there’s lots of ways you can do this that are healthy. I like to have a coconut flavored La Croix sparkling water when I’m doing something that isn’t going to be my most favorite task.

Music is another good one, music makes things instantly more fun for me. If I’m going for a jog and I don’t really feel like it that day, I just remind myself, yeah, I’m going to listen to some great music and that makes it more fun. Or going on a drive, or cleaning my house, again I always have my AirPods in if I want to make something more fun and I’m often listening to music, or a podcast, or a book. But music for me really kind of engages more of my senses that really make it more fun. Alright, so use your physicality, engage your senses.

Number six. Final thing I recommend is remember to be the fun. You be the fun. I learned this way back in coach training from Brooke Castillo, she said that, “There’s nothing better than having fun, there’s no reason you can’t make everything fun, especially if you remember that you are the fun.” Okay, so I was never the person who was super funny. I’m not the class clown. I’m not the most fascinating person. But I ever since coach training decided that if I wanted to, I could be the fun.

And I don’t do that every time, sometimes I don’t have the energy to. But if I want to, I can go and make it fun. And I make it fun by being really interested in other people, by being willing to be vulnerable and open, by telling the truth, by again, not taking anything too heavy or seriously. In my mind it’s sort of like being an emphasized version of me, because those are all things that I am.

But sometimes I hold them in and I hold myself back and I tell myself to play small. And that’s okay sometimes, but when I just really allow myself to be all me, to own all of me I have to clean up my thoughts about what other people are going to think of me or any of that. And I just be me, that is super fun to me, and often it’s fun for others too. We’re drawn to people who are authentic, who are really themselves. Okay, so be the fun.

My kids know this, I talk to them a lot about fun, because it’s really easy, I still catch myself doing it when they come home from a youth activity or a friend’s house to say, “Did you have fun, was it fun?” But I try to catch myself and remind myself and remind them too, that it’s not ever fun, either you make it fun or you don’t. So I’ve said that to them a couple of times and now they say it to each other. If they come home and say, “It wasn’t fun,” the other one will say, “Yeah, because it’s not fun, you either make it fun, or you don’t.”

And it’s okay to not always be good at making things fun, but I would challenge you to try on creating some fun for yourself any time you want to, especially right now we could use a little more fun in our lives. Let me know how it goes. You can communicate with me on Instagram, I’m Jody Moore Coaching on Instagram, or on Facebook. If you’re in Be Bold you have lots of ways to get a hold of me, so I want to hear how it goes.

Thanks for listening you guys, have a beautiful amazing rest of your week and I’ll see you next time.

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.