Do Not Underestimate Fun
🌟Weekly Inspiration🌟
I’ve been thinking about how we’ve all been a bit fun-starved over the last two years…and how important fun is to enhance our moods and connections with each other. The most well-adjusted families enjoy each other’s company and have fun together. Often we feel that the experience of “fun” isn’t necessary—in fact, it can feel selfish, lofty, or not productive. It certainly has been relegated to a low priority during the pandemic/racial reckoning/political polarization that we’ve been living through--when life has become more serious.
This idea was inspired by a podcast interview with Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. She described fun as having elements of novelty, risk, rebellion, and delight. Fun makes people laugh, smile, feel liberated and free, feel energized, and feel nourished and refreshed. Fun encompasses less doing and more being. There is no goal in fun, just play. Catherine Price shares that “True fun isn’t the result of happiness, it’s the cause.” WOW. ❤️
It’s time that we start living again—as adults and with our children. I asked my kids this week what are some of our most fun family times…
Inner-tubing on the lake when Dad drives the boat really fast
Traveling to a new place
Doing an Escape Room
Halloween Booing—where the kids dress up so that they can’t be identified, we play loud music with the windows down, we knock on doors and deliver treats and then run away quickly, Dad zooms us away in the car
Poker Night for the Highschoolers during the pandemic—in the open air, dressed up in prom dresses and suits because they’d had no formals
Taking the kids TP-ing at a slumber party
Heated family tennis and pickleball games
Late-night waterslides on vacation
Disneyland
Think about your family list and how you can incorporate permission to have more fun. Think about ways to allow your kids to have good fun with their friends too, where you aren’t necessarily part of it but can encourage them to just play and enjoy, even with a little risk involved.
Ask yourself:
What are some of my favorite fun memories from my youth?
Did they have elements of novelty, risk, and a little rebellion?
Were my parents hovering or did they let me be free and have fun?
What are your favorite ways to lighten up and have fun as an adult?
Would you like to feel more alive?
Would you like to model having fun for your children—so that they grow up knowing that it is restorative and valuable to prioritize fun?
Click here to take a Fun Personality Type quiz: https://howtohavefun.com/