Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I remember in your podcast you were saying, like I'm
Speaker 2: a fun person, but I don't really have that much fun.
Speaker 1: This is listener Natalie Robinson.
Speaker 2: When the kids were little, it was so easy to
Speaker 2: have fun, like you take them to the zoo, you
Speaker 2: take them in the water park.
Speaker 1: She was inspired by an old episode of The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab in which I tried to inject fun and playfulness
Speaker 1: back into my life. Natalie also felt that she was
Speaker 1: lacking fun.
Speaker 3: Are we fun?
Speaker 2: Like do we even have fun anymore?
Speaker 1: Like, let's have more fun. So she took the lessons
Speaker 1: she heard in the podcast and encouraged the women in
Speaker 1: her running group to add fun interventions or fun interventions
Speaker 1: into their diaries.
Speaker 2: Scavenger Hunt was definitely a lot of playfulness, like because
Speaker 2: we engaged with the public like we had to, like
Speaker 2: I remember like one of them was like pretending you're
Speaker 2: a duck and you have to cluck around people.
Speaker 3: That was the most playful.
Speaker 1: In a recent show, we talked to Natalie and her
Speaker 1: friends about how their lives had been improved by getting
Speaker 1: serious about having fun. Go back and listen if you
Speaker 1: missed it. We also played the first episode in our
Speaker 1: two part show that inspired them. What follows now is
Speaker 1: the conclusion of my very personal journey to regain some
Speaker 1: of the playfulness of my childhood. I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3: First all, I just have so many questions to ask
Speaker 3: you about what you've been up to for this past month.
Speaker 1: This is Catherine Price. Over the last few weeks, she's
Speaker 1: become my new guru. I need a guru because I'm
Speaker 1: on a mission, a mission to have fun. As a kid,
Speaker 1: I used to have fun all the time. I spent
Speaker 1: all day playing with friends, goofing around and just doing
Speaker 1: lots of random activities that I enjoyed. But as an adult,
Speaker 1: not so much. That's why I've turned to Catherine. You see,
Speaker 1: Catherine is the author of a new book called The
Speaker 1: Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again, and I've
Speaker 1: asked her to use her expertise to give me an
Speaker 1: emergency fun intervention or funter vention for sure. So far,
Speaker 1: Catherine's taught me that fun, by definition, requires a combination
Speaker 1: of playful, connected flow, and that those three parts of
Speaker 1: an experience are wrecked when you're feeling distracted. So my
Speaker 1: homework was to train my brain to focus better by
Speaker 1: finding delights those funny, beautiful, delightful things that are out
Speaker 1: there all the time but we tend not to notice.
Speaker 1: But today I'll be tackling a different problem. Embarrassingly enough,
Speaker 1: even when I have time to focus and be present,
Speaker 1: I often just can't think of anything fun to do.
Speaker 1: I've sort of forgotten the kinds of things I like
Speaker 1: and enjoy. Plus I'm often so exhausted these days that
Speaker 1: a lot of the time I kind of just want
Speaker 1: to vege on the couch. So today I'll be rediscovering
Speaker 1: what feels fun and learning, as Catherine puts it, to
Speaker 1: feel alive again. But even though that's the goal, I'm
Speaker 1: worried there's a decent chance that my attempts at finding
Speaker 1: fun might actually kill me.
Speaker 3: What's the worst that can happen? Well, I guess you
Speaker 3: could get each actually something.
Speaker 1: No no, I think, like getting concussed or dying, but
Speaker 1: bring well that's no. Yeah, or at the very least
Speaker 1: might kill my voice.
Speaker 3: To do the hard and your tube blame Ugi blob
Speaker 3: a bad name, bad name from my heart.
Speaker 4: And you play.
Speaker 1: So with those slight spoilers out there, welcome to Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos's Extreme Funtervention, Part two. Our minds are constantly
Speaker 1: telling us what to do to be happy. But what
Speaker 1: if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are
Speaker 1: lying to us, leading us away from what will really
Speaker 1: make us happy. The good news is that understanding the
Speaker 1: science of the mind can join us all back in
Speaker 1: the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab for
Speaker 1: doctor Laurie Santeves.
Speaker 3: I live in Philadelphia, relatively close to the School River,
Speaker 3: which is a famous rowing river. And I had a
Speaker 3: neighbor who had been telling me how she'd been taking
Speaker 3: rowing lessons and they were baby turtles in the river,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, well, that sounds interesting. So a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago I decided to try to learn to row, and.
Speaker 1: Her quest to have fun, Catherine joined guitar classes, drum practices,
Speaker 1: and swing dancing workshops. She's an expert on pushing her
Speaker 1: boundaries in order to experience more fun, and getting out
Speaker 1: on the water was her most recent attempt.
Speaker 3: So I spent a summer biking up to Boat House
Speaker 3: Row every Thursday morning and taking lessons from this guy
Speaker 3: named Brian, who was this very funny rowing coach, very
Speaker 3: playfully sarcastic.
Speaker 1: Those mornings out on the water were full of playfulness
Speaker 1: and connection, with coach Brian constantly joking with her through
Speaker 1: a ridiculous megaphone.
Speaker 3: Selling about the megaphone like I just loved it.
Speaker 1: Rowing also gave Catherine lots of flow. She was consistently
Speaker 1: present on the water, paying attention to her movements so
Speaker 1: she didn't tip over. With these three elements of playfulness,
Speaker 1: connection and flow in place, rowing was fun, but don't
Speaker 1: be fooled. Fun isn't always about bright skies and perfect sailing. Consider,
Speaker 1: for example, the time Catherine went ahead with a row
Speaker 1: despite the dark clouds forming.
Speaker 3: Which was a dumb move. There was nobody else on
Speaker 3: this river.
Speaker 1: A torrential downpour started, but Catherine kept heading over to
Speaker 1: the spot where her beloved baby turtles hung out.
Speaker 3: But there were no turtles that day, because they're not idiots.
Speaker 1: Her oars were extra slippery that day, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden she tipped over.
Speaker 3: One of those things where you know it's happening and
Speaker 3: you cannot do anything about it, And I was like,
Speaker 3: I am going into the schoogle, which side note is
Speaker 3: like not a river you really want to swim in,
Speaker 3: Like lots of questionable things flowing into the occasional body
Speaker 3: fished out of this thing. It's not ideal.
Speaker 1: Taking a front somersault, fully clothed into very cold, filthy
Speaker 1: water in the middle of a huge storm sounds like
Speaker 1: my absolute nightmare.
Speaker 3: But the thing was I actually was having fun. Like
Speaker 3: in retrospect, I'm like, I was just giddy when we
Speaker 3: got back to the dock and I started announcing to
Speaker 3: everyone that I had fallen into the river.
Speaker 1: As I cringed at the idea of looking stupid in
Speaker 1: front of complete strangers, Catherine got to the moral of story.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of moments in life where if you
Speaker 3: can embrace the absurdity of the objectively unpleasant situation, it's
Speaker 3: actually pretty fun.
Speaker 1: For the next step of my fun prevention, Catherine wanted
Speaker 1: me to follow her lead and try out a new hobby,
Speaker 1: ideally one that I'd be reasonably bad at, in order
Speaker 1: to ensure that I experience those juicy moments of absurd unpleasantness.
Speaker 1: And I reacted to this suggestion with terror. As a
Speaker 1: busy adult, I haven't tried out something completely new and
Speaker 1: challenging in a very, very long time. And I'm guessing
Speaker 1: I'm not alone here. But I also tend to beat
Speaker 1: myself up when I'm not immediately good at something. Turns out,
Speaker 1: this combination of terror and self criticism is yet another
Speaker 1: fun killer.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're self conscious, you can't let yourself go,
Speaker 3: and you can't really be playful, and it's harder to
Speaker 3: be connected.
Speaker 1: But the biggest way our self judgment can impede fun
Speaker 1: is by reducing our flow. Negative self talk clogs up
Speaker 1: our brains, inner monologues, with all those rapid fire thoughts
Speaker 1: of oh my god, I suck so badly at this.
Speaker 3: That's going to not make it possible for you to
Speaker 3: be present. And again, if you're not present, you can't
Speaker 3: be in flow, and if you're not in flow, you
Speaker 3: can't have fun.
Speaker 1: I did want to have more fun, so I reluctantly
Speaker 1: agreed to Catherine's challenge. But I needed a way to
Speaker 1: overcome all my angst about starting a new hobby from scratch,
Speaker 1: So I decided to tag in a different kind of expert,
Speaker 1: someone who's a pro at being a beginner.
Speaker 5: This frightening email comes over from the elementary school. We're
Speaker 5: having a parent talent day. You know, can you come
Speaker 5: in and do something.
Speaker 1: One fateful day journalist Tom Vanderbilt got a request that
Speaker 1: changed his whole approach to life. What you need talent?
Speaker 1: Could you show off to a room of twenty five
Speaker 1: first graders at his daughter's school. He was a best
Speaker 1: selling author.
Speaker 5: But I couldn't really go in and write a paragraph
Speaker 5: in front of a bunch of kids in a class.
Speaker 5: We all have our job resumes, But if you step
Speaker 5: away from just your career achievements, as important as they are,
Speaker 5: you know what else are you doing in your life?
Speaker 5: And might felt a little bit a little bit sparse.
Speaker 1: One had the painful realization that he hadn't learned anything
Speaker 1: new in a long time, which was ironic since Tom
Speaker 1: spent a lot of his time chauffeuring his daughter from
Speaker 1: chess class to swim practice and then piano lessons. While
Speaker 1: she was off having fun and building new skills, Tom
Speaker 1: sat there waiting for her class to finish, feeling bored
Speaker 1: and mostly screwing around on his laptop.
Speaker 5: Here I was taking her to all these sorts of lessons,
Speaker 5: instilling in her you know how important it was I
Speaker 5: thought to learn new things, to be as wide raging
Speaker 5: as you can. And in my own life I had
Speaker 5: kind of frozen in terms of learning these ambitious new skills.
Speaker 5: You know sometime many decades ago, you know, sort of
Speaker 5: too late. Why bother, I'm never going to be that great.
Speaker 5: Sort of felt like it was a bit hypocritical of
Speaker 5: me to be telling her this and not doing it myself.
Speaker 1: Tom realized that, like many of us, he was suffering
Speaker 1: from what Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert calls the end of
Speaker 1: history illusion.
Speaker 5: I think people often think they are the finished person
Speaker 5: they are going to be at any moment.
Speaker 1: Gilbert and his colleagues found that if you ask people, well, hey,
Speaker 1: how much do you think your personality, your preferences, and
Speaker 1: your core values are going to change in the next
Speaker 1: ten years, most people say they're not going to change
Speaker 1: all that much. They assume all these really core things
Speaker 1: about their identity are fixed, that their history in a
Speaker 1: sense has ended. But if you ask the same people, hey,
Speaker 1: if you look back at yourself ten years ago, how
Speaker 1: much have your values, personality, and preferences changed, people usually
Speaker 1: admit that they're really different than they were a decade ago,
Speaker 1: that they've changed a lot. This is the end of
Speaker 1: history illusion. We don't think we're going to change and
Speaker 1: grow much, but we're wrong.
Speaker 5: I don't have to be stuck as this person that
Speaker 5: doesn't know how to do X, Y and Z. I
Speaker 5: can start to try to do those things, even though
Speaker 5: I'm middle aged.
Speaker 1: That's why Tom decided to devote the next few years
Speaker 1: to becoming a professional beginner, to picking up all the
Speaker 1: tricky new skills he never got around to learning before.
Speaker 1: It's also why he's going to try to convince me
Speaker 1: that face planting into the water over and over again
Speaker 1: just be the thing I need for the next step
Speaker 1: of my funtervention.
Speaker 5: Surfing is one of those great things where even even
Speaker 5: the wipeouts are quite fun.
Speaker 1: The happiness lab will be right back.
Speaker 5: I use the example of the movie The Queen's Gambit,
Speaker 5: which I thought was a great film for a popular
Speaker 5: film on Netflix. It seems like everyone saw that.
Speaker 1: Tom Vanderbilt finds it a bit sad that people devoted
Speaker 1: hours and hours to watching a drama about someone who
Speaker 1: learns to play.
Speaker 5: Chess instead of watching The Queen's gab But if you
Speaker 5: tried to take five or six hours of chess instruction,
Speaker 5: you could actually pick up a fair amount of the game.
Speaker 1: After years on the sidelines watching his daughter learn stuff,
Speaker 1: he decided to get involved too.
Speaker 5: I signed up a coach of all things to try
Speaker 5: to teach her to play chess, and then I jumped on,
Speaker 5: which was a bit strange. You had these two beginners
Speaker 5: that were separated by four decades.
Speaker 1: Tom didn't stop there. He learned how to sing, how
Speaker 1: to draw, how to deep water swim, how to juggle,
Speaker 1: how to surf, and, since he ended up losing his
Speaker 1: wedding ring wall surfing, how to make jewelry. He chronicled
Speaker 1: all this in a book called Beginners, The Joy and
Speaker 1: Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. Tom says it's less of
Speaker 1: a how to book and more of a why to book,
Speaker 1: and the why has a lot to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that learning can make us feel way more present.
Speaker 5: Being a beginner is almost by definition mindful, because you
Speaker 5: go into an activity really knowing nothing. You know, you're
Speaker 5: your loss, you're you're sort of clueless, and that demands,
Speaker 5: you know, almost total attention. And that also felt very
Speaker 5: powerful to me, because you know, this idea, especially in
Speaker 5: contemporary society, of being so endlessly distracted. None of these
Speaker 5: activities I was involved in was my phone present. You know.
Speaker 5: I would draw for three hours and it felt like
Speaker 5: ten minutes and I would look up and just that.
Speaker 5: Having that sense of deep engagement was also really refreshing.
Speaker 1: Being an amateur also brought tom the excitement that comes
Speaker 1: from novelty. I had to learn about ocean waves and
Speaker 1: musical skills and the bendable properties of metals. The freshness
Speaker 1: of all these new topics made it really easy to focus.
Speaker 5: I equate it in the book to sort of falling
Speaker 5: in love.
Speaker 1: Fittingly, the word amateur comes from the Italian amatore, to love,
Speaker 1: and even that more pejorative sounding term for a beginner, diletant,
Speaker 1: comes from the Latin delictare to delight, And if you
Speaker 1: listen to my last episode, you know experiencing delight is
Speaker 1: pretty good for your happiness.
Speaker 5: You're just plunging into this new world with new lingo,
Speaker 5: new equipment. You're moving your body in new ways that
Speaker 5: you're thinking in new ways, and I feel like your
Speaker 5: brain is sort of on fire.
Speaker 1: And the science shows that firing up your brain in
Speaker 1: this way is probably a good thing. Research by the
Speaker 1: psychologist Denise Park has found that learning new skills may
Speaker 1: help prevent the usual cognitive decline that comes as we age.
Speaker 5: She had groups of adults learn a skill collectively in
Speaker 5: a class, and she had other groups of adults get
Speaker 5: together and just socialize.
Speaker 1: The older adults took a class on photography or quilting
Speaker 1: did significantly better on tests of memory and processing speed
Speaker 1: than adults who merely got together. I find these results
Speaker 1: really striking. I mean, you wouldn't think that learning a
Speaker 1: specific skill like how to stitch or when to adjust
Speaker 1: a shutter speed would have a big effect on more
Speaker 1: important general cognitive abilities. We mostly just start new things
Speaker 1: because we think they'll be fun. But becoming a beginner
Speaker 1: in a random activity seems to give us a bigger
Speaker 1: cognitive leg up than we realize. Even for the smartest
Speaker 1: folks out there.
Speaker 5: One of the weird variables that seem to distinguish the
Speaker 5: Nobel Prize winners was that they had a higher tendency
Speaker 5: to be involved in some kind of extracurricular activity, hobby, skill,
Speaker 5: whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: But hobbies like these don't just boost our brains. Tom
Speaker 1: found that his new pursuits also had a surprisingly positive
Speaker 1: effect on his sense of personal identity.
Speaker 5: There's this interesting thing that happens when you take up
Speaker 5: these skills that in the beginning, you're thinking of them
Speaker 5: purely as a verb. I'm trying to serve. I'm trying
Speaker 5: to do that. But then at some point feel comfortable
Speaker 5: to shift to the noun phase and you say, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm a singer, I'm a surfer. I've expanded instantly the
Speaker 5: sensation of who I am, and the.
Speaker 1: Science shows that this self expansion can enhance something else
Speaker 1: that's known to boost our happiness, our relationships. Couples who
Speaker 1: participate in novel challenging activities together experience boosts in relationship satisfaction.
Speaker 1: The fun that comes from being a beginner seems to
Speaker 1: be contagious. But the biggest benefit of becoming a beginner
Speaker 1: was something I really needed for my own funder mention.
Speaker 1: Learning a new skill is a great way to fight
Speaker 1: all our self judgment and perfectionism.
Speaker 5: If you're going to do something, you have to be
Speaker 5: great at it. You have to commoditize it, turn into
Speaker 5: a profitable side hustle. Otherwise you're sort of wasting your time.
Speaker 1: After experiencing the benefits of being a beginner, Tom has
Speaker 1: dropped this sort of be perfect at all costs mantra.
Speaker 5: I like to quote the writer GK. Chesterton has said,
Speaker 5: you know, anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Speaker 1: Tom's book chronicles lots of cases when we learn best
Speaker 1: when we're doing activities that teeter just on the edge
Speaker 1: of what we find impossible. He saw this firsthand during
Speaker 1: his book research, when he started hanging out with a
Speaker 1: population that finds lots of things impossible, a group you
Speaker 1: might consider to be the ultimate beginners, babies.
Speaker 5: I spent some time with doctor Karen Aidolf at NYU
Speaker 5: studying how infants learn to walk and to move, and
Speaker 5: one of the keys to this learning process is failure.
Speaker 5: I mean, they fail a lot. Kids have been photographed
Speaker 5: falling up to seventy times an hour, So we should
Speaker 5: just embrace failure.
Speaker 1: The problem, of course, is that failure doesn't really feel good,
Speaker 1: which is why Tom practices self compassion, that act of
Speaker 1: recognizing that you're human and talking to yourself compassionately instead
Speaker 1: of like a critical drill sergeant.
Speaker 5: Larger than the physical obstacle is that mental obstacle. I
Speaker 5: think positive self talk is a key strategy in all this.
Speaker 1: As I heard Tom talk more about cultivating positive self
Speaker 1: talk and the benefits that come from embracing failure, I
Speaker 1: decided to choose a be for my fun invention that,
Speaker 1: at least for me, really felt like it was on
Speaker 1: the edge of impossible, something I thought i'd definitely have
Speaker 1: no possible way of being good at. And since it
Speaker 1: was summertime, I also liked the idea of an activity
Speaker 1: that involved hitting the beach, and so I decided that I,
Speaker 1: a middle aged, mostly out of shape Ivory Tower dwelling
Speaker 1: professor with bad knees and no coordination, was going to
Speaker 1: try surfing. I announced my decision to Tom, explaining how
Speaker 1: sure I was that I would absolutely suck at the sport.
Speaker 5: Have you ever actually tried to serve before?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: So no, Like.
Speaker 5: Lucus traits is an interesting point that you're saying, you
Speaker 5: know you're going to be bad at it, which is
Speaker 5: already that negative self talk coming up.
Speaker 1: All right, touche, I was already admitting defeat in my
Speaker 1: head before I'd even gotten started.
Speaker 5: You really don't know how you're going to be because
Speaker 5: you don't know what that thing is. But you may
Speaker 5: actually try it and discover that you're actually a depth
Speaker 5: at it, or that you take to it more than
Speaker 5: you thought you could.
Speaker 1: Maybe Tom was right, Maybe I would be better at
Speaker 1: this than I expected. Maybe I'd be so good at
Speaker 1: surfing that I dropped the whole podcasting thing and just
Speaker 1: become a full time beach bunny. Maybe I'd be a
Speaker 1: total natural on the board. That's probably how it's going
Speaker 1: to go, right Tom, I.
Speaker 5: Wasn't able to get up on the board on my
Speaker 5: first afternoon out. I spent a lot of time on
Speaker 5: my knees, you know, sort of almost standing. I spend
Speaker 5: a lot of time falling. The surfing is a very
Speaker 5: difficult activity. The ocean is very dynamic place. You are
Speaker 5: probably going to fail.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the rounding endorsement I was expecting.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to lie, I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
Speaker 5: You're going to look foolish. You might get hurt, but
Speaker 5: we have the ability to get back up and move on.
Speaker 1: Apparently I'd picked an activity that really would test my
Speaker 1: ability to be self compassionate in the face of sucking badly.
Speaker 1: But Tom still thought I should go for it, because
Speaker 1: sucking badly was kind of the point.
Speaker 5: What do you have to lose? In fact, you have
Speaker 5: to gain quite a bit. I would argue, surfing badly
Speaker 5: is still a very fun activity that will bring you joy.
Speaker 5: You don't have to be amazing at it.
Speaker 1: Immediately after my chat with Tom Fate seemed to intervene,
Speaker 1: my college friend Lucy texted me her family was headed
Speaker 1: to a nearby beach house. Beach of course met waves
Speaker 1: and waves were just the thing I needed for the
Speaker 1: next step of my Funtervention. I asked Lucy if she
Speaker 1: joined me for a surf lesson, let me think about it.
Speaker 1: That was her non committal response. Actually, she followed up,
Speaker 1: my husband says I have to do this, so I'm in.
Speaker 1: Before she could change her mind, I went online and
Speaker 1: found the Little Compton Surf Shop, a small, family run place.
Speaker 1: What I liked most about this particular surf shop was
Speaker 1: the huge quote on their web page that read, the
Speaker 1: best surfer out there is the one that's having the
Speaker 1: most fun. I was ready to be just that best surfer.
Speaker 1: I booked a lesson for two Operation Funtervention. Surfing Safari
Speaker 1: was on and you'll get to hear just how it
Speaker 1: went when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 5: The boys aren't too big, which is fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there is playing at the dinner Land here.
Speaker 1: One warm August morning, I headed to Rhode Island with
Speaker 1: my good friend from college, Lucy Bisiano, armed with her
Speaker 1: social support, a beach towel, a wet suit, and the
Speaker 1: strongest hairband I own. I was ready to become the
Speaker 1: embodiment of the immortal words of George Bernard Shaw that
Speaker 1: man progresses in all things by making a fool of himself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, trucks Lucy.
Speaker 3: Hello, she's recording.
Speaker 5: Oh no, worry as a window.
Speaker 3: It's like really bad.
Speaker 5: Actually planted not to be.
Speaker 1: We met our surf instructors for the day, and I
Speaker 1: handed my recording gear off to Lucy's daughter, Alice, who
Speaker 1: agreed to act as my guest producer, or at least
Speaker 1: to try to. The wind wasn't really helping us all
Speaker 1: that much. After some safety instructions, warm up jumping jacks,
Speaker 1: and practice pop ups on the shore, we grabbed our
Speaker 1: boards and paddled out into the sea. My lesson was amazing,
Speaker 1: not because I caught a bunch of killer waves like
Speaker 1: Tom Vanderbilt. I didn't really figure out how to stand
Speaker 1: up on the board during that first lesson. I also
Speaker 1: wiped out pretty badly trying. I got more salt water
Speaker 1: up my nose in that hour and a half lesson
Speaker 1: than I have in my entire life. These things should
Speaker 1: have felt unpleasant, but they didn't. The whole experience was
Speaker 1: so fun. Unlike with most other activities I've done, I
Speaker 1: was able to focus not on the product being able
Speaker 1: to catch a huge wave, but on the process. How
Speaker 1: it felt to be lying on the board, how I
Speaker 1: was balancing better and better as the waves rolled by,
Speaker 1: how fun it was to chat with my surf instructor,
Speaker 1: and just how nice it felt to be in the
Speaker 1: sun and the waves on a perfect summer day. I
Speaker 1: expected my arms and legs to be sore afterwards, and
Speaker 1: they were for days actually, But the thing that hurt
Speaker 1: the most after my lesson was my face from smiling
Speaker 1: and laughing so much. I was excited to tell my guru,
Speaker 1: Catherine Price, about my fun prevention surfing success, that I
Speaker 1: did something that I was really bad at and that
Speaker 1: at times was absurdly unpleasant, but that it wound up
Speaker 1: being one of the most fun things I've done in
Speaker 1: a long time. But Catherine didn't want me to rest
Speaker 1: on my laurels. She thought it was now time to
Speaker 1: move on to the final step of my f funtervention
Speaker 1: discovering ways to find more everyday fun. My first surfing
Speaker 1: lesson was a total blast, but as a busy professor,
Speaker 1: I probably couldn't spend every day driving across state lines
Speaker 1: to hit the waves, which raised a question, how could
Speaker 1: I start finding more fun each and every day.
Speaker 3: So the universal definition of fun, I would argue, is
Speaker 3: that it's a state of playful, connected flow. But each
Speaker 3: of us find that state through different things, and something
Speaker 3: that you find fun, I might not find fun at all,
Speaker 3: and vice versa.
Speaker 1: That is the purpose of what Catherine calls the fun audit,
Speaker 1: examining your own personal fun history. Catherine recommends getting a
Speaker 1: notebook and journaling about past times in which you experienced
Speaker 1: true fun. What were those so fun moments that you treasure,
Speaker 1: List them out and analyze them in detail. Who was there,
Speaker 1: what was the setting, what were you doing? Dig into
Speaker 1: them like a private investigator.
Speaker 3: Really mind them for details that might help you generate
Speaker 3: more experiences like that in the future. And once you
Speaker 3: have that, once you have a sense of the people
Speaker 3: and the activities in the settings that often are associated
Speaker 3: with fun for you, you can go to the next level,
Speaker 3: which is what I call figuring out your fun factors,
Speaker 3: and those are the characteristics of those people, or those settings,
Speaker 3: or those activities that are in some way responsible for
Speaker 3: the fun.
Speaker 1: Doing my own personal fun audit with Catherine was perhaps
Speaker 1: not surprisingly kind of fun. I told her about goofy
Speaker 1: Halloween parties that I had with my grad school roommates,
Speaker 1: trips to a Boardwalk video arcade with my husband, the
Speaker 1: time my producer Ryan and I were unexpectedly given a
Speaker 1: rental sports car and got to drive around San Francisco
Speaker 1: listening to Duran Duran on repeat. And one of my
Speaker 1: most treasured so fun memories, which happened when I traveled
Speaker 1: to Texas for a conference a few years ago. So
Speaker 1: there's this movie theater in Austin called the Alamo Draft House.
Speaker 1: They have a whole set of things called Eighties singalongs
Speaker 1: where they play music videos from the eighties that they've
Speaker 1: edited to have the text. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: karaoke where you can see what the lyrics are, but
Speaker 1: you're to sing over the music videos and they give
Speaker 1: you like eighties gear and glow sticks and like inflatable
Speaker 1: microphones and all these things. And this is like the
Speaker 1: most fun I've had in my life. So these are
Speaker 1: just like, oh my gosh, she's got pictures some images.
Speaker 1: So these are micrap students. You can see the costumes,
Speaker 1: inflatable mics and things like that. This is me, you see.
Speaker 3: Because a green inflatable guitar and a pink hairbow. Yes,
Speaker 3: that looks amazing.
Speaker 1: Analyzing the common features of all these events, looking for
Speaker 1: what Catherine calls the fun factors, I noticed a few
Speaker 1: important commonalities. All these fun times were social, and most
Speaker 1: of them had an active element, like dancing or moving
Speaker 1: my body. There was also a lot of spontaneity involved,
Speaker 1: like trying something new or traveling to a new place
Speaker 1: my so fun activities also involved a healthy dose of absurdity,
Speaker 1: think inflatable microphones or getting a ridiculous sports car, or
Speaker 1: the crazy costumes I had at my eighties singalong. But
Speaker 1: there was one specific fun factor that really surprised me.
Speaker 1: It seems like one of my fun factors that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have expected actually is music, which is surprising because
Speaker 1: I'm not musically inclined at all. I don't play an instrument,
Speaker 1: I don't think of myself as a good singer. But
Speaker 1: when I think to moments of peak fun, they have
Speaker 1: this element of music. Finding surprises like these is just
Speaker 1: the sort of insight a fun audit can bring, and
Speaker 1: everyone's audit's going to look different. You might detest music
Speaker 1: and costumes, but might really love being physical, or being
Speaker 1: out in nature or taking risks. The key is to
Speaker 1: figure out the specific fun factors that make up your
Speaker 1: own personal recipe for fun. But Catherine's found that we
Speaker 1: also need to analyze are anti fun factors.
Speaker 3: They're characteristics that if those characteristics are present in an experience,
Speaker 3: you're probably not going to have fun. And I think
Speaker 3: it's very important to put some attention into identifying them
Speaker 3: because in a lot of cases, other people might find
Speaker 3: them fun, and you might find yourself getting dragged belong
Speaker 3: to these experiences and then wondering why you never had fun.
Speaker 1: Thinking about my own experiences, I realized that one of
Speaker 1: my key anti fun facts is competition. But if there
Speaker 1: are games that we're playing that are cooperative or that
Speaker 1: are just about the absurdity of the game or something,
Speaker 1: I'm really into it. But when a game has like
Speaker 1: obvious winners and losers, it's like less fun for me.
Speaker 3: I love things like taboo where I get to be
Speaker 3: totally weird, and I mean, I guess that's technically a competition,
Speaker 3: but it's just so silly that it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: Just as with fun factors, your own anti fun factors
Speaker 1: are going to be really personal. You might love competition,
Speaker 1: but to test the beach or getting dirty or any
Speaker 1: activities that involve a lot of preparation or equipment, there
Speaker 1: are lots of things that could be an anti fun factor.
Speaker 1: And that's why it's so important to put time into
Speaker 1: thinking about what you liked and didn't like in the past.
Speaker 3: Because the better you understand these things, the easier it
Speaker 3: will be for you to spend your time wisely, frankly.
Speaker 3: And if you can understand that, then you can make
Speaker 3: different choices about how you're going to spend your leisure time, which,
Speaker 3: while we do have I think more available to us
Speaker 3: than we realize, because we're wasting a lot of it
Speaker 3: right now, it is limited.
Speaker 1: I thought back to how I often spend my own
Speaker 1: free time. When I get a break, I tend to
Speaker 1: do something passive, like plopping down on the couch and
Speaker 1: watching Netflix or reading a book. Leisure activities like that
Speaker 1: are relaxing, but they're definitely not fun. In the playful, connected,
Speaker 1: flow inducing sense, and they usually don't involve almost any
Speaker 1: of the fun factors I just identified my fun audit
Speaker 1: revealed that to get more everyday fun, I need to
Speaker 1: be doing more stuff that involves music, or having friends around,
Speaker 1: or taking part in activities that feel a bit more
Speaker 1: physical or spontaneous. I also need to find ways to
Speaker 1: recreate that singalong from my Texas trip, which was a
Speaker 1: fun factor that Catherine supported more than I had expected.
Speaker 3: You and I clearly share a lot of fun factors,
Speaker 3: like a lot of them, because that looks like my
Speaker 3: dream fun. Also, I want to be there right now.
Speaker 1: And that's when Catherine got the idea for the final
Speaker 1: step in my fun prevention. Since eighties sing along seemed
Speaker 1: to be the magical confluence of all my fun factors
Speaker 1: at once, Catherine thought it would be good, purely for
Speaker 1: scientific purposes, of course, to experience that true fun moment
Speaker 1: right there in my house. Luckily, I just happened to
Speaker 1: have some old inflatable microphones from that trip lying around.
Speaker 3: I just want to be with you.
Speaker 1: We were both a little rusty, but our impromptu sing
Speaker 1: along was awesome.
Speaker 4: But since you've been gone.
Speaker 1: Our spur of the moment. Sing along only lasted an
Speaker 1: hour or so, but having that moment of true fun
Speaker 1: right in the middle of my day wound up making
Speaker 1: me feel totally alive for days. Oddly enough, taking a
Speaker 1: short break to privately croon like a rock star made
Speaker 1: me feel even more productive through the rest of my
Speaker 1: work week.
Speaker 3: Love.
Speaker 1: Realizing my love of singalongs also took me right back
Speaker 1: to where the story began. As a kid, I was
Speaker 1: obsessed with singing songs from the Peter Pan Musical. Back then,
Speaker 1: I thought I'd never grow up. I believed I'd never
Speaker 1: turn back on fun. I never thought adult me would
Speaker 1: prioritize work and productivity over the delights of goofing around.
Speaker 1: Turns out that that wise, fun loving kid wasn't entirely lost.
Speaker 1: She was just hidden below the surface. All it took
Speaker 1: was a fun invention and an inflatable microphone to set
Speaker 1: her free. I hope hearing about the power of fun
Speaker 1: inspires you to figure out some ways that you can
Speaker 1: increase playfulness, connection, and flow. Why don't you take some
Speaker 1: time to think about the moments you remember as so fun,
Speaker 1: do your own fun audit, and make sure you also
Speaker 1: pay attention to activities that currently pass for fun in
Speaker 1: your life but don't actually feel all that good. By
Speaker 1: taking time to identify your own personal fun factors, no
Speaker 1: matter how surprising, you can better understand what they are
Speaker 1: and proactively seek them out in your daily life. You
Speaker 1: can even find some new hobbies that make you feel
Speaker 1: a little bit more alive. And the science shows that
Speaker 1: getting more fun in your life isn't just going to
Speaker 1: be fun. It can also increase your productivity and as
Speaker 1: I saw firsthand during my SURFLSS, making more time for
Speaker 1: fun can also help you be a little bit more
Speaker 1: compassionate with yourself, which is something we all need these days.
Speaker 1: And so that's a wrap for Season three of The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. But we'll be back in a few months
Speaker 1: with more science based tips that you can use to
Speaker 1: feel better. In the meantime, I'll be setting aside my
Speaker 1: podcast MIC to get in some quality time with my
Speaker 1: inflatable mic instead. Catherine, Let's do this.
Speaker 4: Thanks to you. Thanks to you now again for the
Speaker 4: first time. So yeah, yeah, thanks to you. Thanks to
Speaker 4: you now again again. What I know you should know again.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilly.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Bola. Joseph Fridman checked our facts.
Speaker 1: Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts. Emily Anne Vaughan offered
Speaker 1: additional production support. Special thanks to Mia La Belle, Carly mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Heather Fain, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lucaran, Maya Knigg, Nicol Morano,
Speaker 1: Eric Xandler, Royston Bserve, Jacob Weissberg, and my agent Ben Davis.
Speaker 1: That Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and me, Doctor Laurie Santos