3 Elements of True Fun — and How to Have More of It | Catherine Price | TED

54,880 views ・ 2023-03-16

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:03
Catherine Price: Hi, David.
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David Biello: Hello.
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CP: And hello, everyone.
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DB: I think we need to start with the question
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that some of them may have seen on their screen already:
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what is fun?
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CP: You might think that we all know what fun is,
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but I found it really interesting in my research to realize
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that the way we use fun in our everyday speech,
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which at least in English, is very casual,
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we kind of toss around this word.
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It's really different from the feeling you get from people
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if you ask them about a memory from their own lives
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in which they had the most fun.
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And as part of the research for my book, I did that.
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I asked people from all around the world,
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I see we have a ton of people from all around the world,
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even in this webinar.
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So the answers I got were very international.
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And it was really interesting
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because even though obviously people's individual experiences were different,
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there was this energy running through them that was very much the same.
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And when I read through these answers, and I’ve got thousands of these by now,
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I found myself smiling but also almost tearing up a lot of times.
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There was something really powerful about what people were sharing with me
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that went way beyond this lighthearted pleasure sense
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with which we often use the word.
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So I ended up coming up with a definition
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based on these stories people were sharing with me
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and then running it by them to see if it accurately described
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what they had told me.
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So I tried to validate it.
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And it is that when we have these moments of what I think of as “true” fun,
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it's the confluence of three states.
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And those are playfulness,
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connection and flow.
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And so if you think of a Venn diagram with three circles in the center,
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you have true fun, and then playfulness, connection and flow.
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And just to clarify, because people can freak out in particular about playfulness,
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adults really get uncomfortable with playfulness.
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It means just having a lighthearted attitude.
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You can just be lighthearted,
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not care too much about the outcome of what you're doing.
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Let go of your perfectionism.
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Connection refers to having a special shared experience,
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and I do think some people can have fun on their own, as I say in my TED Talk.
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But it was really interesting
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because most of the stories people told me involved other people.
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And when I asked people, "What surprised you about what you just told me?"
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A number of people said something along the lines of “I’m an introvert,
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but everything I just told you involved other people."
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So in the majority of situations, another person is involved.
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And then flow is this psychological state
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where we get so wrapped up in what we're doing,
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actively engaged in what we're doing that we can lose track of time.
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So an athlete playing a game is the most quintessential example.
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All three of those states are great on their own
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but I believe when you experience all three at once,
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that’s what I call true fun.
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DB: So to the adult question of why we lose playfulness, well,
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I think some of it is because fun can seem maybe frivolous
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in a very serious world,
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and the world is quite serious.
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But why is it important to have fun?
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CP: Thanks for asking that question, David,
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because that is a common misperception people have about fun
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is that it is frivolous or that, you know,
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there are so many serious things going on in the world,
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how can we possibly think about fun?
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So a couple of things I would say to that.
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First of all, life is not zero-sum.
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I don't see why you can't be someone
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who cares about the serious issues in the world
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and also cares about fun.
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And also,
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a lot of what we do when we say we're "caring about serious issues"
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is really kind of meaningless and just torturing ourselves.
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If you read the same news article that makes you upset six times in an hour,
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you haven't actually helped anybody.
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And the same thing if you've posted a rant on social media
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or gotten into an argument or just worked yourself up
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or essentially yelled at someone on Twitter.
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That didn’t actually help anybody.
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And it's very draining.
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So what I find about fun is that when we actually have fun --
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my point being here is that fun can actually help us
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work to solve some of those problems.
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And the reason I say that is that, first of all,
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when you have enough fun yourself, it actually fills up your own reserves,
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it builds your resilience and your energy.
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And that will give you the energy to do something more productive
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than just yell at people via your phones, social media accounts.
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But then also, if you actually have fun with other people
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and you've connected with them as human beings,
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so if we're able to have fun with each other,
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we can connect in a way that then helps us work together
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to actually solve some of those problems.
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And then I would also say fun isn't frivolous.
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Even if the world was great and there weren't any problems,
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fun itself is not frivolous --
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and I'm happy to go into more detail if anyone wants more detail,
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but is actually really important not just for our mental health,
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but also for our physical health
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because of the way it reduces our stress levels
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and also provides us with a sense of social connection.
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DB: Yeah, fun is good for your health.
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I think that's the important thing to remember.
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But as you pointed out,
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we shouldn't get to wrapped up maybe in anxiety
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about whether we're having enough fun.
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You also talk about something called “fake” fun.
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What's that?
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CP: So fake fun is a term I came up with to describe products and services
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that are marketed to us as fun but that aren't actually fun
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in the sense that they don't actually produce playfulness, connection or flow.
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The biggest culprit here is definitely social media and kind of --
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or passive consumption past the point of enjoyment.
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So if you're watching your favorite show for a couple episodes, great.
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But if you're like, in that zone where you're actually completely hypnotized
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and seven hours have past
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and you feel disgusting about yourself and your life,
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you've fallen into the trap of fake fun.
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So I see it as there being actually three categories.
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You’ve got true fun, the playful connected flow.
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You’ve got fake fun,
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which is essentially the junk food of our leisure time.
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It’s very appealing,
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but it leaves us feeling disgusting about ourselves.
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There's a big middle category of stuff that's truly enjoyable,
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but that wouldn't necessarily qualify as true fun
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by the definition I've proposed.
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And that would be things like reading, you know,
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or like taking a bath
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or watching your favorite TV show
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up to the point where it's still enjoyable.
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To me, those are all legitimate great uses of your leisure time,
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even if they're not fun
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because you know you actually enjoy them.
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And the reason I think it's important to think so intellectually about fun
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is that it helps us become much more intentional
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about how we use our leisure time.
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So if you're able to identify sources of fake fun in your life,
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it's actually really easy to eliminate those
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once you've kind of cognitively recognized that you know it's a waste of time.
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And if you're like, "Oh yeah, this is actually enjoyable,"
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go for it.
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And then if it's likely to generate true fun,
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I would suggest putting it on the top of your priority list
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because it's such a wonderfully nourishing state.
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DB: TED Member Don and Stephania are, you know,
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feel slightly overwhelmed by their lives
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and have trouble even thinking of what fun feels like.
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If you've forgotten what fun feels like, how do you find it again?
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CP: One of the things I recommend people do to start
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is to think back on a moment of true fun from your own life,
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a moment that you describe as "so fun."
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That was the term I came up with when I was asking people this question.
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Don't worry, it can actually take a little bit of time
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to tune in to those experiences, but I can assure you we've all had them.
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They don't need to be dramatic.
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This is another misconception we have about fun,
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that it only can happen in exotic locales
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or when you're somehow outside of your "normal life"
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or that it costs a lot of money.
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None of that is true.
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If you define it as playful connected flow,
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you'll start to recognize that you can have even tiny moments of fun
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all the time.
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And the reason you want to call to mind one of these experiences
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is that, as you begin to think of more of them,
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so I encourage you to try to think of more than one,
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and it will become easier as you start thinking of them,
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to call out some themes
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and see are there any particular people who are often involved?
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Are there any activities that are involved?
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Are there any settings that seem conducive to fun?
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Because if you’ve seen my TED Talk,
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you know that I believe that fun is a feeling and it’s not an activity.
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By which I mean that, I think too often we start to think,
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like, if I asked you guys what's fun,
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just at the beginning of this conversation,
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you might start to give me a list of activities that you enjoy.
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Cooking's fun or reading or whatever,
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but the activity itself is not fun.
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It's the feeling of fun.
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Like, you can love dinner parties
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and have the exact same group of people over for dinner
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and eat the exact same thing.
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And one night it's going to be really fun and one night it's not.
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So it's the feeling that results.
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So the point of calling out these settings and these people and activities
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that are often associated with fun for you
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is not to guarantee that you can have fun if you're with them,
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but to set the scene for it
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to make it more likely that fun will occur in result.
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I think about it like romance, like you can set the scene for it,
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but if you try too hard, it's going to run away, right?
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So we’re trying to light candles for fun.
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But I call the settings and the people and the activities our fun magnets,
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and each of us has a collection that is unique to us, you know.
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My husband's fun magnets are not necessarily the same as mine.
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We have some that we share, some that are different.
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And the point is just to become more cognizant of what those things are
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so again, you can become more intentional
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about how you choose to spend your leisure time.
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I also created a whole acronym in the book and a framework that's called SPARK,
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which I'm happy to go through,
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but I'll just end up talking straight for half an hour if I go down that route.
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But I'd start with that,
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try to identify past memories of fun,
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look for themes and then prioritize those people and activities and settings.
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DB: Well, let's talk about SPARK a little bit,
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because in looking through the chat,
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I mean, that's why we ask for the moments of delight.
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It's a moment for people to reflect
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and think about something that was probably pretty fun.
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If it delighted you, it was probably pretty fun.
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So tell us a little bit more about the importance of noticing
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and this whole SPARK method.
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CP: So the first step in SPARK, the S,
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actually stands for "make space"
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because we do need to clear out some space for fun.
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If you're feeling constantly overwhelmed,
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you're probably going to feel like you can't even begin this process.
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What I recommend that people start with in terms of clearing space
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is to begin with the biggest source of distraction
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for most of us these days,
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which is our phones and our digital devices.
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Before the pandemic,
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the average person in America was spending
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upwards of four hours a day just on their phones.
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So not their tablets, not their computers, not their TVs, just their phones,
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which is a quarter of your waking life,
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and it adds up to 60 full days a year.
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When you think about it that way, sure,
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some of that time is useful and productive and perhaps essential,
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but there's also a lot of it that's just a kind of, frittering away of time,
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the fake fun that we're talking about.
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And if you're able to create better boundaries with your devices
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and more of what I call screen-life balance,
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you're going to end up with more free time
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that you then can devote towards pursuing fun.
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So another way to create space
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is actually to think about your commitments
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and see which ones you could say no to.
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Like, for example, I used to volunteer in my daughter's preschool board
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and then at some point I'm like,
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the school's fine, I'm not adding to it,
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and I'm not enjoying the meetings and so I quit
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and it cleared up a lot of space.
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Also, giving yourself a permission slip is huge in terms of making space.
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A lot of people think that they don't deserve fun,
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that there are too many other priorities,
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they're taking care of other people,
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their needs are at the bottom of the list.
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I've actually had people say
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that they have written out an actual permission slip for themselves
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and signed it.
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So if that's your deal, do it.
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I think it's actually really important whether it's a literal permission slip
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or a mental one.
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Then the P is to pursue passions and hobbies and interests.
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The more interests you have and the more skills and knowledge you have,
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the more interesting your life will be, first of all,
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but also the more portals into playful connected flow you'll find.
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And the thing that sparked that idea for me
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was the book "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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who was the psychologist who coined the term flow.
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And in his book he made this comment that really stood out to me,
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which was that to someone who doesn't play chess,
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a chess board is just a board with some carved figurines.
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Honestly, that's what it still is to me.
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But if you know how to play chess,
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if you put in the work to learn to play chess,
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it becomes a portal into flow.
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And I would argue, into fun.
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But the idea is just get out there,
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try something new, do something new,
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get up off your couch, you know.
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It might take a bit to get over your inertia at first, but it is worth it.
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So that's the P, is to pursue passions.
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The A of spark is for attract fun
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because you probably have noticed there are certain people in your life
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who just seem to have more fun than you
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and you might not know why -- you have fun, too, David.
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This guy, just look at him having lots of fun.
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But when I asked people in my research, I straight up asked them,
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“Describe someone in your life whom you consider a ‘fun person,’
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and then tell me like, what about them makes them fun?"
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And even I thought that I’d get a lot of really stereotypical responses:
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"they're extroverts" or "they're the lives of the party"
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or "they're the class clowns."
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There were some of those.
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But it was so interesting because a lot of people said things like,
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“They make everyone feel very comfortable in their presence.”
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Or “They laugh very easily at other people’s jokes or stories.”
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Or “They go along with things, they go with the flow.”
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And it really stood out to me because the traits they were describing
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were not necessarily associated with extroversion.
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So you can be an introvert and make someone feel comfortable.
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I think in some cases introverts are better at tuning into that.
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And also a lot of them were trainable.
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You can get better at those skills.
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So I got really interested in the idea
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of how do we become people who attract more fun,
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and I think what I just described are three ways to do so.
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Another is to switch yourself into what I think of as a fun mindset,
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which is a fun-oriented twist on Carol Dweck's growth mindset.
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And the idea there is that our default mode,
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our brain's default mode,
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is naturally going to be to focus on things that cause us anxiety and fear
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for the simple reason that that's evolutionarily how we avoid threats.
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You want to be scanning the horizon for threats,
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otherwise you could get killed or eaten or something.
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So it actually takes work to switch yourself to focus on the positive.
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And I think that the more you do so,
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the more likely you are to notice the moments of playful connected flow
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and to create more opportunities for it.
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So if you can start to begin to deliberately pay more attention
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to the delight in the world,
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instead of going with the natural tendency to focus on sources of anxiety and fear,
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it really will get you into a mindset that's much more conducive.
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The R in SPARK may be my favorite.
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It is for rebel.
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DB: Yes! Yes!
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CP: (Laughs)
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Not like "get yourself in jail" rebellion, to clarify.
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But when I was reading through people's anecdotes,
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there was this repeated theme of playful deviance is what I'll call it,
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of breaking the rules, just like, a little bit, you know.
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I mean skinny dipping would be an example of that.
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But even someone who said that they had snuck into a pool, you know,
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at night, I think fully clothed,
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with like, a laundry basket and some pool noodles.
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I don’t know, and like, they’d had a great time.
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Or really anything,
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like if you normally listen to educational podcasts,
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maybe you can drive around in your car and turn off the podcast and the news
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and just like blast the song you loved when you were 17 and sing along.
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You know, or just take a little break from your workday
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to do something that will bring you a sense of delight.
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So rebellion.
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And if you can't think of a way to do that,
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I think it's also kind of fun to think about ways to do something delightful
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for somebody else,
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a way to do something that's going to surprise them.
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So maybe this is a little bit separate,
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but I find that that can be a way if you're still thinking,
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I can't think of something to do in my own life,
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do something to delight someone else.
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And then lastly, the K of SPARK is keep at it,
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which basically means that fun is much like exercise,
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like, you're not going to do it once and then that's it, you're done.
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You actually have to keep prioritizing it
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because life is going to keep throwing like, not fun things your way.
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And unless you're working to keep that as a priority,
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it's not going to be a priority.
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And the way that I personally think about approaching that
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is in terms of what I call microdoses and then booster shots.
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So if you know that there's something small,
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a little microdose that you could work into your schedule regularly
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that you enjoy, that might lead to playful connected flow,
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like a regular coffee date or a walk with a friend
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who you've realized is a fun magnet for you.
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Or in my case, like, my weekly guitar class
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is definitely regular microdoses.
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Build that into your schedule, carve out the time for it.
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And then a booster shot would be something that takes more time,
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more energy, maybe more money.
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Although again, fun doesn't necessarily require money.
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But, you know, if you know that every time you get together
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with this particular group of friends,
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it's just outrageously fun,
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then, like, actually go to the work of organizing
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and figuring out how to get childcare and whatever
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so you can spend time with them.
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And I think that if you can sprinkle these microdoses
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and booster shots into your life regularly,
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you will build the framework for a life that is conducive to fun.
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DB: So one of the things that I found fun in your book
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is that you called for a fun audit.
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CP: You thought that sounded fun, David, I think that sounds incredibly unfun.
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DB: Well, I'm saying it sounds like an oxymoron, right?
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But actually,
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a fun audit can be a good thing to do if you're feeling stuck.
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So tell us about a fun audit.
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CP: The fun audit involves looking,
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reviewing your own life and just noticing how much fun you are
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or are not having,
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scanning through your leisure activities
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and identifying those sources of fake fun that we're talking about
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so that you can begin to reduce or eliminate them.
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And then very importantly,
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figuring out some activities or something to do
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to replace the time that you were spending on the time-sucking fake fun.
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DB: But, you know, it is a struggle for some folks.
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And Kat wants to know how we can create fun while grappling with things
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like climate change or nuclear war or all the other, you know,
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frankly, existential threats that are out there in the world.
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CP: I think it's really important.
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I think a lot of people feel that way and that we do get consumed.
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And the media landscape is designed to make us feel that way.
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That's another thing to acknowledge,
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is that not only are our brains naturally primed to notice those things,
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but you know, there's an expression in journalism: if it bleeds, it leads.
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Like, you never open up your favorite newspaper
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and see an article about how there's a real explosion in puppies,
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like, that doesn't happen.
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So I think also being more judicious about what you allow into your brain
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because, I mean, any time you pick up your phone,
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I think of it as a Pandora's box of emotions.
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It's going to result in an emotion.
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What emotion is that going to be,
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and do you want that in your brain?
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If you check the news,
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it’s going to have an impact on your mental state.
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18:01
If you check your email, if you check social media.
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18:04
I'm not saying I know what that reaction is going to be for you,
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18:07
but there is going to be one.
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So as an example,
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I used to have the news app on my phone,
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18:12
and I would find myself reading the same articles again and again,
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18:15
hoping something would have changed,
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which it didn't.
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Then I realized, I'm not going to have the news app on my phone.
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Think about notifications as interruptions
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because that's really what they're doing.
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And then I would suggest asking yourself what you want to be interrupted for.
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Because notifications are there
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for the benefit of the people making the app
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that sent you the notification, it's not for you.
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18:36
And I think that many of us feel very, very trapped
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in this feeling that the world is dark and horrible
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and that we're powerless.
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And that's a horrible place to be.
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And I think it takes a lot of work to bring yourself out of that.
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But it's worth it.
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And it actually is good for trying to address some of those things.
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DB: I think fun is probably best shared, as you noted earlier.
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Any tips on how to share fun with the folks in our lives?
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I think Jim wanted to know that.
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CP: Well, I think picking the right people is important.
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There’s certain people that really are not conducive to fun,
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and hopefully you can help them to change, right?
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But as a first step,
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if you have the choice between hanging out with someone
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who consistently makes you feel comfortable
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and you enjoyed being in the presence of
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and generates fun,
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versus someone who's a wet blanket,
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pick that one, right?
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Again, I talked about doing things together.
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I think that things like cooking a meal together
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or trying something new together
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or seeing if your friends want to go to a class together or, you know,
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all those things are very conducive to opening people up
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in a way that helps people have fun.
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I think also trying to find people who are already having fun
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and joining that group.
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DB: I want to thank all the members for coming.
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I also want to apologize for not getting to all of your questions,
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but the time just kind of flew by because, you know, we were having fun.
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So thank you.
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Thank you very much for joining us today,
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and go have some fun.
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CP: Thanks, David, you too.
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