The purpose of life is to live it. To taste experience to the utmost. To reach out eagerly and without fear for new and richer experiences.
– Eleanor Roosevelt
For the last few years, my wife and I have participated in a 5K-a-Day program to help raise money for the Teaching Tree Early Childhood Learning Center in Fort Collins, CO.
There are a few really cool aspects to this challenge. First, it happens every June so the challenge pushes us outdoors at the exact time when being outdoors is just awesome. Second, it allows us to spend a lot of good time together walking, talking, and enjoying being outside together. Third, it raises money for a good cause we care about. And finally, it gives us an abundance of time to get caught up on audiobooks and podcasts (we try to limit those moments to the days we are unable to complete the challenge together).
Today, I was listening to the Ed Mylett podcasts. If you haven’t tried Ed Mylett’s podcast, I recommend it. He interviews some of the best and brightest, and all of his content will get you thinking about how you can be a better version of himself.
His guest this morning was a gentleman named Joseph Foster. Mr. Foster was the founder of Reebok. His story is interesting and entertaining, and worth a listen as he is a man who rose from humble beginnings to incredible success. But while that was all interesting, it was largely forgettable.
But it was something he said near the end of the episode that struck me.
Ed asked him, ”if you were to give any advice to a young entrepreneur just beginning his or her journey, what would it be?
Foster responded, ”have fun. Then, have more fun.”
Fun. So simple yet so elusive.
How often, really, do you allow yourself to have fun? How often do you seek fun? How often do you really even think about fun as a daily activity?
What struck me as I ended the podcast and reflected on those words at the end of my walk was that fun used to be so natural. As a child, we all sought fun as an everyday outcome. Whether it was riding bikes with buddies, going to the park to play some hoops, playing wiffle-ball and rag-ball in the church yard a few doors down, or pulling out the water slide and making an afternoon of it, we were always seeking fun.
But somewhere along the way, fun fell to the wayside.
It was replaced as an objective by providing, by caring for, by earning, by working, by grinding. It was replaced by living life and trying to be better, do better, and suck less.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot just how valuable fun is in my life.
I started this article with one of my favorite quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt. ”The purpose of life is to live it. To taste experience to the utmost. To reach out eagerly and without fear for new and richer experiences.”
If I had to summarize that entire quote, it would be something along the lines of ”remember to have fun.”
I’m not sure where the delineation is between fun, happiness, and joy. But I do know they are all related.
So how do we create more of that? How do we recapture what was so natural for us when we were younger?
One of my mentors, Garrett J. White, frequently refers to the Game of Life. That’s probably as good as a starting point as any. And frankly, it’s made all the difference to me. Since meeting Garrett four years or so ago, I have slowly and more consistently adopted this ”game” mentality.
What does that mean? It means you seek to improve, grow, and expand. You understand that their will be some wins and some losses, and both create opportunities to learn and improve. It’s seeking the growth, and taking time to appreciate it and be grateful for those opportunities that lend itself to the idea of fun.
Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, likes to say that we have five fucks to give a day. We can either give them intentionally or allow them to be stolen unintentionally.
If you’re looking for rules to the game, start there. Start being conscious about how you deploy your daily dose of fucks to give. Are you choosing your what, hows, and whys? Or are you pissing them all away unintentionally by letting the barking dog next door, the crying/needy kids, the snarky remark by your spouse, the aggressive driver on your way to work, or a million other little triggers, steal them before you’ve even begun your day.
What occurred to me as I wrapped up my walk is that fun is a choice. It’s tasting the experience to the utmost. It’s being present and letting some unnecessary shit roll of our backs. It’s appreciating the abundant beauty that surrounds us and not being so concerned and consumed with the ugliness that tries to steal our attention away from us.
A mindset of fun was naturally ingrained in all of us. You just have to give it some room to breath.
So go do that.
What are you waiting on?
And if you do, if you can allow that part of you to breath, your journey will be more complete and more fulfilling wherever it may take you.
