Speaker 1: Pushkin, Oh Hannah Montana, Oh Wiley Cyris.
Speaker 2: I recently had a fun afternoon in the studio with
Speaker 2: members of a Massachusetts running club. Oh Hot, Ryan Gosling.
Speaker 2: I don't often have this much fun during the recording session,
Speaker 2: but having fun was actually the topic we'd all gathered
Speaker 2: to discuss. You see, even though they started out as
Speaker 2: a running club, the members have started to meet for
Speaker 2: some very different activities. Inspired by something I talked about
Speaker 2: on the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3: I remember in your podcast you were saying, like, I'm
Speaker 3: a fun person, but I don't really have that much fun.
Speaker 2: This is Natalie Robinson, and she could totally relate to
Speaker 2: the lack of fun I was experiencing in my life.
Speaker 3: When the kids were little, it was so easy to
Speaker 3: have fun, like you take them to the zoo, you
Speaker 3: take them to the water park, and then when they
Speaker 3: get older, there's less things to do that are that
Speaker 3: pure fun. And so when we heard your podcast, we
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, are we fun? Like do we even
Speaker 3: have fun anymore? Like, let's have more fun.
Speaker 2: Natalie told the rest of her running club about what
Speaker 2: she'd heard on the Happiness Lab that you could inject
Speaker 2: playfulness and fun back into life with a little bit
Speaker 2: of deliberate effort, and so they got together and planned
Speaker 2: fun interventions or what I called in the podcast funter Ventionance.
Speaker 3: Scavenger Hunt was definitely a lot of playfulness, like because
Speaker 3: we engaged with the public like we had to. Like
Speaker 3: I remember like one of them was like pretending you're
Speaker 3: a dock and you have to cluck around people.
Speaker 4: That was the most playful.
Speaker 2: The runners of Franklin, Massachusetts are a great group of friends,
Speaker 2: and they're having an absolute blast with their funter Ventionance.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear their tips for having more fun,
Speaker 2: go back and check out our last episode right now, though,
Speaker 2: I want to give you an opportunity to hear the
Speaker 2: episodes that inspired Natalie and her running friends. It's a
Speaker 2: two part show and a very personal story of how
Speaker 2: I realized I'd let the fund drain out of my
Speaker 2: life and vowed to regain some of the playfulness of
Speaker 2: my childhood.
Speaker 5: Don't you know, I just can't.
Speaker 2: But I should warn you now the podcast does contain
Speaker 2: my attempts at singing.
Speaker 5: I hope you still enjoy it anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm about to watch a VHS tape that I haven't
Speaker 2: seen for more than thirty five years. It's the dress
Speaker 2: rehearsal of a play I took part in when I
Speaker 2: was ten years old, the nineteen eighty five New Bedford
Speaker 2: High School Drama Club's performance of Peter Pan the Musical.
Speaker 2: My mom somehow finagled a way for me to audition,
Speaker 2: even though I was only in fourth grade and I
Speaker 2: didn't really know how to act, saying or dance. But
Speaker 2: I got to star as the rabbit. If you've seen
Speaker 2: the play and don't remember a rabbit being involved, that
Speaker 2: is because, as far as I can tell, the rabbit
Speaker 2: is not an actual role in Peter Pan the Musical.
Speaker 2: I think the directors just made it up. My entire
Speaker 2: part involved hanging out on the back of the stage silently,
Speaker 2: pretty much blending into the Neverland background. Why would any
Speaker 2: self respecting high school drama teacher go to all that
Speaker 2: trouble for a talentless ten year old kid. I think
Speaker 2: it's because after meeting me, they couldn't really say no.
Speaker 2: You see, back then, I was obsessed with Peter Pan.
Speaker 2: My family had the album, which I had worn out
Speaker 2: by listening to it over and over and over again.
Speaker 2: Our home movies are filled with me forcing my older
Speaker 2: cousins to take part in impromptu performances, always with me
Speaker 2: playing Peter Pan Love. When I was four, my mom
Speaker 2: left my newborn brother at home in Massachusetts to take
Speaker 2: me to Broadway to see the play. My mom says
Speaker 2: that when I got back to the hotel, I spent
Speaker 2: the entire night jumping between the room's two beds, claiming
Speaker 2: that I was flying to Neverland so that I could
Speaker 2: have fun and stay a kid forever, just like Peter Pan.
Speaker 2: I distinctly remember my mom's reaction that night, as I
Speaker 2: was jumping from mattress to mattress. She couldn't hold back tears.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I never really understood why,
Speaker 2: But rewatching the musical as an adult, I finally got
Speaker 2: what made my mom sob If you haven't seen the musical,
Speaker 2: the plot involves Peter Pan taking Wendy to Neverland to
Speaker 2: have a bunch of adventures think pirates, lost boys, all
Speaker 2: that stuff. But eventually Wendy wants to go back to
Speaker 2: her normal life, so Peter takes her back to London
Speaker 2: and promises he'll come get her for more adventures soon.
Speaker 2: But when Peter finally returns at the end of the
Speaker 2: He's devastated. Even though Wendy promised she'd never get older,
Speaker 2: she accidentally grew up, and Peter can't believe it. He
Speaker 2: tells middle aged Wendy that she's not allowed to go
Speaker 2: back to Neverland and have fun ever again, because she's
Speaker 2: too grown up. Watching the play in my forties wasn't
Speaker 2: as fun as doing so as a kid. In a
Speaker 2: turn of events that would surely be mind blowing to
Speaker 2: my ten year old self, I have gotten old, like
Speaker 2: middle aged Wendy. I now have a job and a
Speaker 2: mortgage and responsibilities to worry about. Even though I clearly
Speaker 2: plan to prioritize having fun forever, that didn't really happen.
Speaker 2: These days, I don't have time to jump around on
Speaker 2: mattresses or lead fake musical sing alongs with my cousins.
Speaker 2: Most of my days are so busy it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like I have time for any fun at all, And
Speaker 2: that realization is pretty depressing and kind of ironic, because
Speaker 2: I used to pride myself on being fun. My grad
Speaker 2: school roommates and I through goofy theme parties several times
Speaker 2: a year. My husband and I won our engagement ring
Speaker 2: playing ski ball and a cheesy beach arcade that was
Speaker 2: literally called the fun o Rama. I used to have
Speaker 2: a lot of fun, but lately not so much. I
Speaker 2: haven't thrown a ridiculous party in some time, and I
Speaker 2: haven't been back to that beach arcade in years. In fact,
Speaker 2: full disclosure, the last time my husband and I did visit,
Speaker 2: I secretly hit outside while he was wrapped up in
Speaker 2: some pinball game and answered by work emails. So what happened?
Speaker 2: Am I as doomed as middle aged when he was
Speaker 2: in that musical? Are we all destined to miss out
Speaker 2: on fun as an inevitable part of getting older? Or
Speaker 2: are there ways to prioritize a childlike sense of goofiness
Speaker 2: and adventure well into our later years. In this first
Speaker 2: ever double episode of the Happiness Lab, we'll learn that
Speaker 2: it is possible to read discover how to have fun,
Speaker 2: and our evidence will come not just from the scientific literature,
Speaker 2: but from a much more personal experiment, because over the
Speaker 2: next two shows, I will become the subject of a
Speaker 2: fun intervention or fun prevention for sure, and my unorthodox
Speaker 2: attempt at finding more fun, which spoiler is going to
Speaker 2: involve inflatable microphones, cats on leashes, tomatoes on planes and
Speaker 2: in New England surfing safari. We'll wind up having a
Speaker 2: much bigger effect on my and other people's happiness than
Speaker 2: I ever ever expected. Our minds are constantly telling us
Speaker 2: what to you to be happy. But what if our
Speaker 2: minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
Speaker 2: leading us away from what will really make us happy.
Speaker 2: The good news is that understanding the science of the
Speaker 2: mind can point us all back in the right direction.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Happiness Lab for doctor Laurry Sanders.
Speaker 2: The idea for my funtervention came one summer morning when
Speaker 2: I was engaged in a not very fun one might
Speaker 2: even say soul sucking activity. I was checking and then
Speaker 2: immediately rechecking my email. Refreshing your inbox when you know
Speaker 2: there's probably nothing new is kind of like when you
Speaker 2: look in the fridge over and over, pathetically hoping there'll
Speaker 2: be something else to eat. Embarrassingly, I often find myself
Speaker 2: doing this whenever I'm bored or avoiding some writing project
Speaker 2: that feels hard. And that's when it happened. A new
Speaker 2: email did appear, one with an innocuous subject.
Speaker 4: Line, will you help me with my next book? I
Speaker 4: promise it will be fun.
Speaker 2: It was a newsletter from one of my favorite past
Speaker 2: podcast guests, the journalist Catherine Price. Catherine's the author of
Speaker 2: How to Break Up with Your Phone. In the book,
Speaker 2: she argues that we'll only find true happiness if we
Speaker 2: put some work into developing a better screen life balance.
Speaker 2: Catherine would definitely not be a fan of the fact
Speaker 2: that I was sitting there refreshing my inbox, so I
Speaker 2: was already feeling a little called out when I received
Speaker 2: her message, But as I read on, that feeling got
Speaker 2: even worse.
Speaker 4: Dear friends, I'm at work on a new book, and
Speaker 4: I'm writing to ask for your help. The book is
Speaker 4: about fun. More specifically, I'm writing about how, far from
Speaker 4: being frivolous, having fun is absolutely essential to a joyful
Speaker 4: and meaningful life.
Speaker 2: The book Catherine was working on seemed to be tapping
Speaker 2: into the very thing that I and so many other
Speaker 2: people were missing out on in adult life.
Speaker 4: I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm recruiting a
Speaker 4: global group of people that I'm calling the Fun Squad.
Speaker 4: My hope is that in addition to helping me with
Speaker 4: the book, you'll also get to experience some of the
Speaker 4: benefits of fun for yourselves.
Speaker 2: I knew I needed it, so sheepishly I signed up
Speaker 2: which hot tip you can too by visiting how to
Speaker 2: Have fun dot com. It did feel a little pathetic
Speaker 2: to reveal that I, a supposed happiness expert, was struggling
Speaker 2: to have fun, but I figured it was just some
Speaker 2: anonymous form. It wasn't like Catherine herself was going to
Speaker 2: be looking at which people sawn up.
Speaker 4: Oh no, Hi, Laurie. First of all, I am so
Speaker 4: psyched to see that you signed up for the Fun Squad.
Speaker 4: It's been such a pleasure to follow your work and
Speaker 4: get to be a guest in the podcast. I love
Speaker 4: your tone and approach, and I feel like we're very
Speaker 4: kindred spirits, which is part of the reason I'm so
Speaker 4: especially excited to have you as part of the Fun Squad.
Speaker 2: Crap, Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem,
Speaker 2: I guess, so I wrote back and tried to be honest. Hey, Catherine,
Speaker 2: your Fun Squad is coming at a time in which
Speaker 2: I'm personally taking a hard look at what leisure looks
Speaker 2: like in my life. I'm embarrassed at how little time
Speaker 2: I spend taking part in fun, so it's something I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about a lot. I hit send and then worried
Speaker 2: that Catherine would immediately revoke my fun Squad privileges. But
Speaker 2: when we chatted over Zoom soon after that, I was
Speaker 2: shocked at how well she understood the difficulty I was having.
Speaker 2: Turns out that Catherine had gone through the same sort
Speaker 2: of existential crisis that I was experiencing.
Speaker 4: When I was writing How To Break Up With Your Phone.
Speaker 4: I was doing this practice where my husband and I
Speaker 4: were taking these twenty four hour breaks from our screens,
Speaker 4: and there was this one day where I was totally
Speaker 4: alone in the house and I had this hour in
Speaker 4: front of me to do whatever I wanted to do
Speaker 4: with but without my phone or any screen to spend
Speaker 4: time on. I realized I actually could not think of
Speaker 4: a single thing I wanted to do. And I freaked
Speaker 4: out because in my head, I thought to myself, oh wow,
Speaker 4: I'm just sitting here waiting for dinner, which really means
Speaker 4: I'm just waiting to die.
Speaker 2: The realization that she didn't have anything she wanted to
Speaker 2: do shook Catherine to the core. She realized that she
Speaker 2: was going through what author Victor Frankel referred to as
Speaker 2: the Sunday neurosis.
Speaker 4: It's something like when the internal void within us becomes
Speaker 4: manifest And I was like, oh, well it was Saturday,
Speaker 4: but yes, that's what happened.
Speaker 2: But Catherine decided to do something about the existential void
Speaker 2: she was feeling. She asked herself, what's one thing you
Speaker 2: say you want to do but you supposedly don't have
Speaker 2: time for. Her answer was that she always wanted to
Speaker 2: learn how to play guitar. She remembered seeing a flyer
Speaker 2: in her neighborhood for a music school with adult classes,
Speaker 2: and immediately signed up. That decision would change her life.
Speaker 4: It was magical, and I was having this kind of
Speaker 4: euphoria and this sense of freedom and this sense of joy.
Speaker 4: And part of it was that I was learning a
Speaker 4: new skill like that was great. But I started to
Speaker 4: realize that that was not all that was happening. There
Speaker 4: was something much bigger happening. I was having fun with
Speaker 4: these people, and that really got me started on this
Speaker 4: investigation into what is fun? What is this feeling? And
Speaker 4: then most importantly, how can I have more of it?
Speaker 4: Because I wanted more of that feeling.
Speaker 2: Four years later, Catherine is now an expert on the
Speaker 2: Science of Fun. She's just written a new book called
Speaker 2: The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again.
Speaker 4: I cannot tell you how much joy I have found
Speaker 4: through this pursuit of fun. Realizing the value of fun
Speaker 4: and defining it more concretely for myself has completely changed
Speaker 4: the way I think about how I spend my time.
Speaker 4: I don't think I had any idea how many benefits
Speaker 4: there would be to pursuing fun. I just thought it
Speaker 4: would be fun, you know. And so I've been shocked,
Speaker 4: pleasantly shocked to recognize the changes it's made in these
Speaker 4: other areas of my life.
Speaker 2: One of those areas, ironically enough, involved improving her productivity
Speaker 2: at work.
Speaker 4: I started to realize that my brain could only think
Speaker 4: and produce creative thoughts very certain number of hours a day,
Speaker 4: which what I was doing with the other time was
Speaker 4: churning and I was answering my email. I was just
Speaker 4: doing stuff to make myself feel busy. What I found
Speaker 4: is that if I take a break, if I deliberately
Speaker 4: take breaks to do one of these other activities that
Speaker 4: fall much more into this fun category for me, I
Speaker 4: returned to whatever my task had been much more refreshed,
Speaker 4: with more ideas and without this sense of burnout. So
Speaker 4: what I found, counterintuitively is actually carving out space for
Speaker 4: this supposedly frivolous pursuit of fun actually ended up not
Speaker 4: just making me happier, but made me more productive.
Speaker 2: Research shows that fun also has physical health benefits. For example,
Speaker 2: it can lower cortisol, a bodily stress hormone.
Speaker 4: Again, we just think it's frivolous. So if I said
Speaker 4: to you, like fun, my lower risk of a heart attack,
Speaker 4: you'd look at me like I was crazy. But if
Speaker 4: you think about what physiological state we're in when we
Speaker 4: are having fun, it is a low stress state. We
Speaker 4: are not stressed out and we are fully present, and
Speaker 4: there is plenty of research showing that that is very
Speaker 4: good for our health. So I personally think it's fascinating
Speaker 4: to consider that the pursuit of fun over the long
Speaker 4: run may actually be affecting the hormonal balance in our
Speaker 4: bodies in a way that is enormously beneficial for our
Speaker 4: long term physical health, in addition to making us feel
Speaker 4: really good when we do it.
Speaker 2: Committing to pursuing more fun has also given Catherine a
Speaker 2: sense of meaning.
Speaker 4: I don't want to end up at my deathbed, feeling
Speaker 4: like I never lived. And I think that and I
Speaker 4: know that for me, fun is the path that is
Speaker 4: making me feel that although death is inevitable, at least.
Speaker 2: Hearing Catherine talk about the vast benefits of fun was
Speaker 2: making me feel really jealous. I wanted to feel alive
Speaker 2: again too. It felt like a rock bottom moment. I
Speaker 2: was in total fun crisis. So I asked Catherine if
Speaker 2: she'd helped me out. Luckily, she was up for the challenge.
Speaker 2: So I'm not a lost cause.
Speaker 4: You are not a lost cause. I would dare say
Speaker 4: I'm even having fun right now too. Writing it right,
Speaker 4: give yourself a golden star already.
Speaker 2: My fun Prevention will shift into high gear when the
Speaker 2: Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 4: In a moment. I absolutely love swing dancing. I've always
Speaker 4: loved swing, Nancy. I think it is so fun. And
Speaker 4: if you watch people's swing dancing like that's fun.
Speaker 2: Author and fun expert Catherine Price began my Funtervention with
Speaker 2: some tips about what not to do, calling one of
Speaker 2: her more unfortunate swing dance partners.
Speaker 4: This poor guy was so stiff, and I just heard
Speaker 4: him talking to himself and he was just going, I'm
Speaker 4: having fun because this is fun, because this is fun,
Speaker 4: because we're having fun over and over again to himself
Speaker 4: and needless to say, I don't think he was having fun.
Speaker 4: You don't want that. That's not our goal here.
Speaker 2: The good news is that Catherine's funtervention would not involve
Speaker 2: me gritting my teeth and strong arming my brain into
Speaker 2: trying to enjoy something I totally hated. But there was
Speaker 2: also bad news. Finding more fun in my life was
Speaker 2: going to take some time, effort, and soul searching.
Speaker 4: Are there things that you should do and try if
Speaker 4: you want to reorient towards fun. Yes, you're gonna have
Speaker 4: to put some effort into this, but it doesn't have
Speaker 4: to be effort that feels un fun. If it starts
Speaker 4: to feel like work at any time, then you're on
Speaker 4: the wrong path. Like you don't want this to feel
Speaker 4: like work, but you do want it to feel like, Oh,
Speaker 4: this is interesting. I'm curious about this. I'm enjoying this process.
Speaker 4: That's what our goal is.
Speaker 2: Part of that curiosity involves overcoming the misconceptions that so
Speaker 2: many of us have about what actually feels fun. As
Speaker 2: we chatted, I realized I often use the term fun
Speaker 2: when I don't really mean it, like what a fun
Speaker 2: dinner party, when in reality I couldn't wait to get home.
Speaker 2: I've even wielded the words that was so fun to
Speaker 2: describe an at best meh zoom meeting.
Speaker 4: We use fun very casually and sloppily, and that leaves
Speaker 4: us vulnerable to being manipulated by anyone who tells us
Speaker 4: their product or service is fun. We will say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll do that because it's for fun, Because we just
Speaker 4: think anything we don't do for work or leisure time
Speaker 4: it must be fund But if you actually think about
Speaker 4: the things that you're doing for fun and then investigate
Speaker 4: how it's making you feel emotionally and physically, you may
Speaker 4: realize that it's not actually making you feel it that good.
Speaker 2: When Catherine began the research for her Power of Fun book,
Speaker 2: her first task was to define this elusive concept.
Speaker 4: We don't have a good working definition of what fun is,
Speaker 4: and as a result, we don't take it seriously. There
Speaker 4: are is very little scholarly work that's been done, or
Speaker 4: academic work or scientific research into fun, because I mean
Speaker 4: makes sense. How are you going to study something if
Speaker 4: you don't have a definition for it.
Speaker 2: I did my own literature search and Catherine's right. There's
Speaker 2: lots of scientific work on happiness, but there are surprisingly
Speaker 2: few papers on fun. If you do the Standards Scientific
Speaker 2: Database search for the word fun, one of the top
Speaker 2: hits is a paper entitled putting the Fun in Fungui
Speaker 2: toenail oncomcosis.
Speaker 4: Not fun, not fun at all.
Speaker 2: And so to develop her own definition of fun, Catherine
Speaker 2: called upon her Fun Squad, that group of one thousand
Speaker 2: or so people like me who'd signed up to help
Speaker 2: out with her new book. Catherine asked the fun Squad
Speaker 2: to describe their own experiences with fun.
Speaker 4: I think I had a very technical way of phrasing
Speaker 4: the question, which is basically like, tell me about three
Speaker 4: times that you would describe as so fun.
Speaker 2: She got back hundreds of examples. People talked about memories
Speaker 2: of squishing mud through their toes, or playing drums with
Speaker 2: their grandkids, or church dances, or playing fetch with a
Speaker 2: particularly cute dog, or summer days on the lake laughing
Speaker 2: with friends. Catherine was surprised by how vary the experiences were,
Speaker 2: but also that these very different examples seem to touch
Speaker 2: on the same three themes over and over again.
Speaker 4: What I call true fun is the confluence of playfulness,
Speaker 4: connection and flow.
Speaker 2: Playfulness, connection and flow. Let's look first at playfulness, which
Speaker 2: Catherine describes as a feeling of being out of the
Speaker 2: normal responsibilities of life.
Speaker 4: You don't have to actually be playing in the way
Speaker 4: of like playing a board game or playing with a child,
Speaker 4: but a playful spirit. You don't care too much about
Speaker 4: the outcome. You're carefree. You're doing it just for the
Speaker 4: sake of doing it, and it's very intrinsically motivating. But
Speaker 4: you can bring a playful spirit to things that you
Speaker 4: wouldn't think are play You can have a playful spirit
Speaker 4: and engage in play at work, for example. So we
Speaker 4: shouldn't be so strict about what we consider potentially playful.
Speaker 2: We should, however, be strict about making sure we find
Speaker 2: ways to get more playfulness in our lives, especially if
Speaker 2: we care about our mental and physical help, because the
Speaker 2: science shows that play not only feels nice, it's also
Speaker 2: good for our bodies and our brains. Studies find that
Speaker 2: people who play more often are less susceptible to chronic
Speaker 2: conditions like dementia and heart disease. There's also evidence that
Speaker 2: playfulness is linked with increases in what's known as brain
Speaker 2: derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that's linked to nerve growth.
Speaker 2: This connection between play and brain development is one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that many animals seem to play so much
Speaker 2: in childhood, the very time in which we grow the
Speaker 2: most new neural tissue. The second component of fun is
Speaker 2: something we talk about a lot on the Happiness Lab connection,
Speaker 2: that feeling of social togetherness and a sense that we're
Speaker 2: sharing experiences with those around us. When Catherine surveyed her
Speaker 2: fun squad, she found that nearly all of their examples
Speaker 2: of true fun involved activities done with other people.
Speaker 4: And that was true even for introverts. A number of
Speaker 4: people actually said they were surprised because they were a
Speaker 4: self described introvert, and yet the experiences they described to
Speaker 4: me allhead other people.
Speaker 2: Connection is one of the big reasons that fun feels
Speaker 2: so good. Study after study shows that being around other
Speaker 2: people increases our positive mood and improves our mental health.
Speaker 2: One famous well being study even concluded that spending time
Speaker 2: with others was a necessary condition for high happiness.
Speaker 4: Fun definitely helps us tap into our shared humanity, which
Speaker 4: is something we do not prioritize, but which is enormously
Speaker 4: important and I think we all know that intuitively, even
Speaker 4: if we haven't thought about it, because that's the drive
Speaker 4: that causes us to do things like spend a lot
Speaker 4: of time in social media.
Speaker 2: And that gets us to the third component of true
Speaker 2: fun flow. Psychologist Mihi Chiek set Me High, the guy
Speaker 2: who first studied flow, defined it as that state of
Speaker 2: true immersion that comes when we engage in a challenging activity.
Speaker 2: Flow is the feeling you get when you're so present
Speaker 2: and passionately involved in something that time just starts flying by,
Speaker 2: but not all time flying by is a good thing.
Speaker 2: Catherine argues that it's important to distinguish between true, honest
Speaker 2: to goodness flow and what Cheek sent Me High called
Speaker 2: junk flow.
Speaker 4: The easiest way to think about it is the difference
Speaker 4: between being engaged and being hypnotized. So anytime you find
Speaker 4: your eyes glazing over and forty five minutes passing and
Speaker 4: you haven't taken a deep breath, that you haven't moved,
Speaker 4: and you're just staring at a screen, the chances are
Speaker 4: your junk flow. And it's very easy to get sucked
Speaker 4: into that and think, Oh, I'm looking at Instagram or
Speaker 4: I'm looking at social media. For fun and oh, I'm
Speaker 4: in a flow state, but then you don't really feel
Speaker 4: very good. That's not what true fun is about at all,
Speaker 4: because true fun, by definition, is an active state. It's
Speaker 4: not about zoning out. If you're zoned out and you're
Speaker 4: not fully present, you're not having true fun.
Speaker 2: That requirement of presents is another reason true fun feels
Speaker 2: so good. The presence we get from fun pursuits also
Speaker 2: protects us from the urge to spend time on devices
Speaker 2: that tend to steal our attention and drain our happiness.
Speaker 4: If you're having fun, you're not gonna want to be
Speaker 4: on your phone like it's just not appealing. You don't
Speaker 4: have to use billpower, you just don't want to do
Speaker 4: it because it's less fun than whatever else you're doing.
Speaker 2: So playfulness, connection, and flow, those are the three ingredients
Speaker 2: of fun that I'll be shooting for.
Speaker 4: If you can have a life that has more playfulness
Speaker 4: or connection or flow, you're probably going to be on
Speaker 4: the right track and in a better place than you
Speaker 4: are now. If you have two of those states at once,
Speaker 4: even better, And if you have all three of them
Speaker 4: at once, I think of it as really being like
Speaker 4: hitting the bulls eye, and you will have a moment
Speaker 4: that I would consider to be true fun.
Speaker 2: The first step of my fundervention would require figuring out
Speaker 2: all the factors that were preventing me from finding that
Speaker 2: bullseye combination of playfulness, connection, and flow.
Speaker 6: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yes, my phone.
Speaker 4: Distraction is like kryptonite to fun. And I can assure
Speaker 4: you that you are certainly not the only person for
Speaker 4: whom distraction is probably the biggest fun killer in your life.
Speaker 4: Because we all have smartphones, and they all have notifications
Speaker 4: that go off all the time, and we've been conditioned
Speaker 4: to want to check them all the time, even if
Speaker 4: they're not notifying us. And anytime you do that, you're
Speaker 4: pulling yourself out of your present experience and mentally checking
Speaker 4: out for a second.
Speaker 2: Catherine noted that distraction was probably also contributing to another
Speaker 2: problem I've discussed before on this podcast that I often
Speaker 2: feel too time famished to do stuff I really enjoy.
Speaker 4: It's all tied together because the distraction that we're all
Speaker 4: encountering all the time is making us feel like we
Speaker 4: don't have much time, which is making us stressed out,
Speaker 4: which is making us more distractable, which is making us
Speaker 4: feel like we have no time.
Speaker 2: Catherine decided that addressing this would be fun prevention action
Speaker 2: item number one. I had to find ways to train
Speaker 2: my brain to be a little less distracted. But since
Speaker 2: this is a fun prevention, Catherine thought I should limit
Speaker 2: my distractions in a way that boosted my playfulness and connection. So,
Speaker 2: rather than focus on avoiding the stuff I shouldn't be
Speaker 2: paying attention to my email and notifications and so on,
Speaker 2: Catherine decided that I should try to focus on more
Speaker 2: attractive stuff, things that naturally make me feel good. She
Speaker 2: suggested trying out a practice that she does with a
Speaker 2: few of her friends, looking for what she calls delights.
Speaker 2: I asked her what she meant by a delight.
Speaker 4: Delight is something that makes you feel delighted.
Speaker 2: Laurie Her version of the practice started when a friend
Speaker 2: recommended a book by the poet Rosque entitled The Book
Speaker 2: of Delights.
Speaker 4: And he wrote an essay every day for a year
Speaker 4: about something that delighted him.
Speaker 2: Catherine copied the idea and found it to be well delightful.
Speaker 4: Savoring like good things in the same way that we
Speaker 4: ruminate about bad things, and I find it's a great
Speaker 4: way to attract more fun into your life.
Speaker 2: It did sound like fun to swish a bunch of
Speaker 2: delightful things around in my brain all day. But I
Speaker 2: also worried that Catherine didn't fully realize the level of
Speaker 2: mind distraction her pupil was dealing with. I realized I
Speaker 2: might need some remedial help before jumping into the delight
Speaker 2: deep end. So I decided to talk to the poet
Speaker 2: who inspired Catherine, the guy who literally wrote the book
Speaker 2: on delights. When we get back from the break, we'll
Speaker 2: hear all the amazing lessons he shared. We'll see how
Speaker 2: fun it can be to start noticing all the great
Speaker 2: stuff in the world. Spring flowers, smiling faces on public transport,
Speaker 2: the eighties band el DeBarge, and even tomato plants.
Speaker 6: Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You know there's my tomato?
Speaker 2: Did you the happiness Lab? We'll be right back. I
Speaker 2: knew finding more delights was going to be tough for
Speaker 2: someone who's as distracted and overworked as I am, So
Speaker 2: I decided to talk to the man who invented the practice,
Speaker 2: the poet Rossquae.
Speaker 6: Well, you don't know until you carry a tomato seed,
Speaker 6: lean through the airport and onto a plane is that
Speaker 6: carrying a tomato seed lean through the airport and onto
Speaker 6: a plane will make people smile at you, almost like
Speaker 6: you're carrying a baby.
Speaker 2: Ross is reading from his essay entitled Tomato on Board.
Speaker 6: I did not know this until today. Carrying my little
Speaker 6: tomato about three or four inches high in its four
Speaker 6: inch plastic starter pot, which my friend Michael gave to me,
Speaker 6: smirking about how I was going to get it home.
Speaker 2: Ross decided to stick the plant in his open carry
Speaker 2: on bag and send it through the TSA machine.
Speaker 6: When the security guy saw it was a tomato, he
Speaker 6: smiled and said, I don't know how to check that.
Speaker 6: Have a good day.
Speaker 2: But as Ross tried to stick the tomato plant back
Speaker 2: into his bag, he realized that one of its stems
Speaker 2: had broken.
Speaker 6: So I decided I'd better just carry it out in
Speaker 6: the open, and the shower of love began. Before boarding
Speaker 6: the final leg in my flight, one of the workers
Speaker 6: said nice tomato, which I don't think was a come on,
Speaker 6: and the flight attendant asked about the tomato at least
Speaker 6: five times, not an exaggeration, every time calling it my tomato,
Speaker 6: Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You there's my tomato,
Speaker 6: did you. She even directed me to an open seat
Speaker 6: in the exit row. Why don't you guys go sit
Speaker 6: there and stretch out. When I got my water, I
Speaker 6: poured some into the low guy's soil. When we got bumpy,
Speaker 6: I put my hand on the low guy's container, careful
Speaker 6: not to snap another arm off. And when we landed
Speaker 6: and the pilot put the brakes on hard, my arm
Speaker 6: reflexively went across the seat, holding the low guy in place,
Speaker 6: the way my dad's arm would when he had to
Speaker 6: break hard in that car without seat belts to speak of.
Speaker 6: In one of my very favorite gestures in the Encyclopedia
Speaker 6: of Human Gestures.
Speaker 2: Tomato on board is just one of the many joy
Speaker 2: inducing essays in Ross's Book of Delights, an entire book
Speaker 2: filled with his personal stories of feeling delighted. The idea
Speaker 2: for the book came when Ross was in Italy, walking
Speaker 2: on a lovely path and noticing all the wildflowers. He
Speaker 2: recognized how present he felt when experiencing delight, that feeling
Speaker 2: of deep pleasure we get when we noticed something beautiful
Speaker 2: or funny or just well delightful. Ross wanted to experience
Speaker 2: that feeling more often and to document it.
Speaker 6: The thought was, no, you should write an essay every
Speaker 6: day for a year about something that delights you and
Speaker 6: see what you learn.
Speaker 2: He gave himself three rules for his new delight.
Speaker 6: Project, and they were to do it every day, to
Speaker 6: write by hand, and to write them quickly. So I
Speaker 6: drafted them all in thirty minutes.
Speaker 2: Ross began noticing new delights all the time, and every
Speaker 2: time he saw one, he'd stick his finger in the
Speaker 2: air and announce delight. The practice immediately connected him to
Speaker 2: a lot more joy than he was expecting, which was
Speaker 2: evident in the sheer number of times Ross laughed out
Speaker 2: loud as he fidgeted through our interview. But the practice
Speaker 2: also connected Ross to a host of wonderful, often very
Speaker 2: specific things that he normally wouldn't have time to notice
Speaker 2: because of the usual life distractions. Wonderful things like praying
Speaker 2: mantis's and fireflies, and the first lilacs of the year,
Speaker 2: which Ross eloquently refers to as the purple cornets of spring,
Speaker 2: and the fact that spring not only has lots of
Speaker 2: lovely flowers like lilacs, but oddly lots of lovely purple
Speaker 2: flowers hyacinths, bellflower, irises those circular puff things I don't
Speaker 2: really know the name of. It is indeed kind of
Speaker 2: delightful that they are all purple.
Speaker 6: The abundance of the purple things like what a miracle
Speaker 6: is that, you know, kind of miracul of fat.
Speaker 2: Ross also found delight in the dumb things our bodies do,
Speaker 2: like the laughing snort that sound we make when we
Speaker 2: go fall so hard that we wind up sounding like
Speaker 2: a pig.
Speaker 6: Which is this really beautiful experience of like, oh, my
Speaker 6: body did something I didn't mean it to do, but
Speaker 6: it did it out of a kind of you know,
Speaker 6: a delight.
Speaker 2: Ross also started to take delight and the weird things
Speaker 2: humans do all the time, like giving a high five
Speaker 2: to a total stranger, and the do over when we
Speaker 2: make a mistake and quickly yell out do over and
Speaker 2: just somehow get to pretend that whatever we just did
Speaker 2: didn't happen. Ross also finds a lot of delight in music.
Speaker 2: One essay called Love Me in a Special Way chronicles
Speaker 2: his appreciation for one of my favorite eighties bands, El
Speaker 2: DeBarge Think to the beat of the Rhythm of the Night.
Speaker 2: The essay ends with him hearing El DeBarge playing in
Speaker 2: the security line at the Philadelphia Airport and then noticing
Speaker 2: an older man working there scream out to no one
Speaker 2: in particular, Hey, is that el DeBarge?
Speaker 6: That that record was made and I could have listened
Speaker 6: to it is astonishing.
Speaker 2: As I shared my own delight in listening to l
Speaker 2: DeBarge with Ross, he explained that conversations like ours soon
Speaker 2: became one of the best parts of his project.
Speaker 6: Like the fact that you just shared that with me,
Speaker 6: It just makes my eyes bigger for that, and it
Speaker 6: makes my heart bigger too.
Speaker 2: Ross's eyes are still constantly focused on the wonders of
Speaker 2: the world. He even shared a delight that he'd heard
Speaker 2: that very morning.
Speaker 6: I never noticed it before, but the way that sometimes
Speaker 6: we will make a sound to another person. Maybe you
Speaker 6: grow blueberries, I might make a sound to indicate their
Speaker 6: delicious hmo, and like ah.
Speaker 2: By training himself to notice delights, Ross has made his
Speaker 2: days more playful, that first marker of true fun. But
Speaker 2: he's also embraced that sense of connection that comes from
Speaker 2: sharing your own delights with others.
Speaker 6: Oh this delights you, this delights me. Oh, we're kindred
Speaker 6: in this way, probably among other ways.
Speaker 2: A year of focusing on delightful things also made Ross
Speaker 2: more present. Seeking out delights gives him flow.
Speaker 6: I found that as I was practicing this, my eyes
Speaker 6: were on for delight. That's it. My eyes were on
Speaker 6: for delight.
Speaker 2: But noticing delights has had other benefits for Ross beyond
Speaker 2: just being fun. It's given Ross an unexpected dose of resilience.
Speaker 2: Even though his book is ostensibly about delights, his essays
Speaker 2: also tackle issues like structural racism and grief following the
Speaker 2: death of a loved one, and many of the parts
Speaker 2: of life that are downright ugly. But training his brain
Speaker 2: to notice positive things has allowed him to keep noticing
Speaker 2: blessings even in the worst of times.
Speaker 6: In the midst of found sorrow, there's like eight purple
Speaker 6: things that bloom in May. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: As I chatted with Ross, I was struck by how
Speaker 2: much happiness he exuded. He's one of the most joyful
Speaker 2: people I've spoken with in a really long time. Ross
Speaker 2: explained that he constantly feels an emotion that scientifically known
Speaker 2: to boost well being, a deep sense of gratitude. Ross
Speaker 2: claims that his gratitude for the universe often feel so
Speaker 2: profound these days that it sometimes moves him to tears.
Speaker 6: No it is it's like me hens, thank you, you
Speaker 6: know like that.
Speaker 2: Seeing the joy that Ross experienced got me really excited
Speaker 2: to do my fun prevention delight homework. So I bought
Speaker 2: a crappy notebook and got ready to catalog like Ross.
Speaker 5: I worried that I.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't be able to come up with something truly delightful
Speaker 2: every single day. I also feared that I'd constantly feel
Speaker 2: like I didn't have time to be focused on sleuthing
Speaker 2: out all these good things, especially on busier days. But
Speaker 2: I adapted the rules Ross used to make things easier.
Speaker 2: I just had to find one delight a day, and
Speaker 2: I promised myself that I'd take no more than a
Speaker 2: few seconds to scribble something about that delight down on paper.
Speaker 2: And if I was feeling really overwhelmed on a particular day,
Speaker 2: I didn't even have to write anything, just notice finger
Speaker 2: in the air delight. So what happened, Well, I quickly
Speaker 2: realized how easily delight start finding you when you just
Speaker 2: take time to notice. Instead of walking around town with
Speaker 2: my phone out to check my email, I spent my
Speaker 2: days feeling kind of curious, looking around trying to find
Speaker 2: that hidden delight for the day. And when you train
Speaker 2: your attention to look for good stuff, it works often
Speaker 2: pretty fast. In fact, locating all those hidden delights took
Speaker 2: way less time than I thought. It quickly felt like
Speaker 2: they were finding me rather than me finding them. I
Speaker 2: was very excited to report back about all my successes
Speaker 2: to my fun prevention instructor. I was at this beach house.
Speaker 2: There's this beautiful beach house looking out at the ocean,
Speaker 2: and this mockingbird like flew and came onto the fence
Speaker 2: right near there, and I was like, oh, I'm mockingbird.
Speaker 2: And then he just took a dump and flew away,
Speaker 2: and that was like.
Speaker 4: Delight, delight, A finger in the air.
Speaker 2: The same beach, I went for a walk on the
Speaker 2: beach and there was this woman, you know, who was
Speaker 2: on a beach blanket, just hanging out on the beach
Speaker 2: and I noticed that she had a leash, but on
Speaker 2: the leash wasn't a dog. It was a cat. Like
Speaker 2: she'd brought her cat to the beach and the cat
Speaker 2: was just like sitting there chilling on the beach.
Speaker 4: That's delightful.
Speaker 2: It was wonderful.
Speaker 4: The cats on the beach was so good.
Speaker 2: As Catherine and I connected and playfully laughed at the
Speaker 2: delights I'd been present enough to start noticing. I realized
Speaker 2: I was on the path to feeling less distracted and
Speaker 2: actually experiencing this thing called fun. But there was still
Speaker 2: more fun invention to be done. I was getting better
Speaker 2: at paying attention, but I still needed to discover what
Speaker 2: really felt fun, and to do that, I needed to
Speaker 2: find ways to experience a bit more self compassion when
Speaker 2: trying new things. And so, unfortunately I need to leave
Speaker 2: you with a bit of a cliffhanger this week, but
Speaker 2: I promise that Part two of my fun Prevention will
Speaker 2: be even more that super fun. I was really scared
Speaker 2: with that superbud it was.
Speaker 5: It was awesome fun.
Speaker 2: So if you want to hear about the final steps
Speaker 2: in my fun Prevention, then don't miss the next sure
Speaker 2: to be fun episode of The Happiness Lab with me
Speaker 2: Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and
Speaker 2: produced by Ryan Dilly. Our original music was composed by
Speaker 2: Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by Evan Biola.
Speaker 2: Joseph Fridman checked our facts. Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts.
Speaker 2: Emily and Vaughan offered additional production support. Special thanks to
Speaker 2: Mi LaBelle, Carly Migliori, Heather Fame, Maggie Taylor, Annella Lucaran,
Speaker 2: Maya Knigg, Nicol Morano, Eric Xandler, Boyston Biser, Jacob Weissberg,
Speaker 2: and my agent Ben Davis. That Pinis Lab is brought
Speaker 2: to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Laurie Santos