Speaker 1: Pushkin for So, I just have so many questions to
Speaker 1: ask you about what you've been up to for this
Speaker 1: past month. This is Katherine Price. Over the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: she's become my new guru. I need a guru because
Speaker 1: I'm on a mission, a mission to have fun. As
Speaker 1: a kid, I used to have fun all the time.
Speaker 1: I spent all day playing with friends, goofing around and
Speaker 1: just doing lots of random activities that I enjoyed. But
Speaker 1: as an adult, not so much. That's why I've turned
Speaker 1: to Catherine. You see, Catherine is the author of a
Speaker 1: new book called The Power of Fun, How to Feel
Speaker 1: Alive Again, and I've asked her to use her expertise
Speaker 1: to give me an emergency fun intervention or fun intervention
Speaker 1: for short. So far, Catherine's taught me that fun, by definition,
Speaker 1: requires a combination of playful, connected flow, and that those
Speaker 1: three parts of an experience are wrecked when you're feeling distracted.
Speaker 1: So my homework was to train my brain to focus
Speaker 1: better by finding delights, those funny, beautiful, delightful things that
Speaker 1: are out there all the time but we tend not
Speaker 1: to notice. But today I'll be tackling a different problem
Speaker 1: embarrassingly enough, even when I have time to focus and
Speaker 1: be present, I often just can't think of anything fun
Speaker 1: to do. I've sort of forgotten the kinds of things
Speaker 1: I like and enjoy. Plus I'm often so exhausted these
Speaker 1: days that a lot of the time I kind of
Speaker 1: just want to vege on the couch. So today I'll
Speaker 1: be rediscovering what feels fun and learning, as Catherine puts it,
Speaker 1: to feel alive again. But even though that's the goal,
Speaker 1: I'm worried there's a decent chance that my attempts at
Speaker 1: finding fun might actually kill me. What's the worst that
Speaker 1: can happen? Well, I guess you could give you actually
Speaker 1: something No, no, I think like getting concussed, dying, But yeah,
Speaker 1: or at the very least, might kill my voice to
Speaker 1: do the heart and your to blame. You give loop
Speaker 1: a bad name, and you play. So, with those slight
Speaker 1: spoilers out there, welcome to Doctor Laurie Santos's Extreme Funtervention
Speaker 1: Part two. Our minds are constantly telling us what to
Speaker 1: do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong?
Speaker 1: What if our minds are lying to us, leading us
Speaker 1: away from what will really make us happy? The good
Speaker 1: news is that understanding the science of the mind can
Speaker 1: point us all back in the right direction. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab for doctor Laurie Santos. I live
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, relatively close to the School River, which is
Speaker 1: a famous rowing river, and I had a neighbor who
Speaker 1: had been telling me how she'd been taking rowing lessons
Speaker 1: and there were baby turtles in the river, and I'm like, what,
Speaker 1: that sounds interesting. So a couple of years ago I
Speaker 1: decided to try to learn to row. And her quest
Speaker 1: to have fun enjoying guitar classes, drum practices, and swing
Speaker 1: dancing workshops. She's an expert on pushing her boundaries in
Speaker 1: order to experience more fun, and getting out on the
Speaker 1: water was her most recent attempt. So I spent a
Speaker 1: summer biking up to Boathouse Row every Thursday morning and
Speaker 1: taking lessons from this guy named Brian, who was this
Speaker 1: very funny rowing coach, very playfully sarcastic. Those mornings out
Speaker 1: on the water were full of playfulness and connection with
Speaker 1: coach Brian constantly joking with her through a ridiculous megaphone.
Speaker 1: Somebody by the megaphone, like, I just loved it. Rowing
Speaker 1: also gave Katherine lots of flow. She was consistently present
Speaker 1: on the water, paying attention to her movements, so she
Speaker 1: didn't tip over. With these three elements of playfulness, connection
Speaker 1: and flow in place, rowing was fun, but don't be fooled.
Speaker 1: 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, which was a dumb move.
Speaker 1: There was nobody else on this river. Torrential downpour started,
Speaker 1: but Catherine kept heading over to the spot where her
Speaker 1: beloved baby turtles hung out. But there were no turtles
Speaker 1: that day, because they're not idiots. Her oars were extra
Speaker 1: slippery that day, and all of a sudden she tipped over.
Speaker 1: One of those things where you know what's happening and
Speaker 1: you cannot do anything about it. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I am going into the school, which side note is like,
Speaker 1: not a river you really want to swim in. The
Speaker 1: occasional body fished out of this thing is 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. But the thing was I actually was
Speaker 1: having fun. Like in retrospect, I'm like, I was just
Speaker 1: giddy when we got back to the dock and I
Speaker 1: started announcing to 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
Speaker 1: her story. There's a lot of moments in life where
Speaker 1: if you can embrace the absurdity of the objectively unpleasant situation,
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty fun. For the next step of my
Speaker 1: fun intervention, Catherine wanted me to follow her lead try
Speaker 1: out a new hobby, ideally one that I'd be reasonably
Speaker 1: bad at, in order to ensure that I experience those
Speaker 1: juicy moments of absurd unpleasantness. And I reacted to this
Speaker 1: suggestion with terror. As a busy adult, I haven't tried
Speaker 1: out something completely new and challenging in a very, very
Speaker 1: long time. And I'm guessing I'm not alone here. But
Speaker 1: I also tend to beat myself up when I'm not
Speaker 1: immediately good at something. Turns out, this combination of terror
Speaker 1: and self criticism is yet another fun killer. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're self conscious, you can't let yourself go, and
Speaker 1: you can't really be playful and it's harder to 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 1: That's gonna not make it possible for you to be present.
Speaker 1: And again, if you're not present, you can't be in flow.
Speaker 1: And if you're not in flow, you 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. This frightening
Speaker 1: email comes over from the elementary school. We're having an
Speaker 1: apparent talent day. You know, can you come in and
Speaker 1: do something? One fateful day, journalist Tom Vanderbilt got a
Speaker 1: request that changed his whole approach to life. What you
Speaker 1: need talent? Could you show off to a room of
Speaker 1: twenty five first graders at his daughter's school. He was
Speaker 1: a best selling author, But I couldn't really go in
Speaker 1: and write a paragraph in front of a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids in a class. We all have our job resumes,
Speaker 1: but if you step away from you just your career achievements,
Speaker 1: as important as they are, you know, what else are
Speaker 1: you doing in your life? And I felt a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit sparse. Tom had the painful realization that
Speaker 1: he hadn't learned anything new in a long time, which
Speaker 1: was ironic since Tom spent a lot of his time
Speaker 1: chauffeuring his daughter from chess class to swim practice and
Speaker 1: then piano lessons. While she was off having fun and
Speaker 1: bill new skills, Tom sat there waiting for her class
Speaker 1: to finish, feeling bored and mostly screwing around on his laptop.
Speaker 1: Here I was taking her to all these sorts of lessons,
Speaker 1: instilling in her you know how important it was, I thought,
Speaker 1: to learn new things, to be as wide raging as
Speaker 1: you can. And in my own life I had kind
Speaker 1: of frozen in terms of learning these ambitious new skills.
Speaker 1: You know, sometime many decades ago, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: too late. Why bother, I'm never going to be that great.
Speaker 1: Sort of felt like it was a bit hypocritical of
Speaker 1: 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 psychologists Dan Gilbert calls the end of
Speaker 1: history illusion. I think people often think they are the
Speaker 1: finished person they are going to be at any moment.
Speaker 1: Gilbert and his colleagues found that if you ask people, 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 they're history in a sense,
Speaker 1: 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. I don't have to be
Speaker 1: stuck as this person that doesn't know how to do X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. I can start to try to do
Speaker 1: those things even though I'm middle aged. That's why Tom
Speaker 1: decided to devote the next few years to becoming a
Speaker 1: professional beginner to picking up all the tricky new skills
Speaker 1: he never got around to learning before. It's also why
Speaker 1: he's going to try to convince me that face planting
Speaker 1: into the water over and over again might just be
Speaker 1: the thing I need for the next step of my
Speaker 1: funtervention surveys. One of those great things where even the
Speaker 1: whiteouts are quite fun. The happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 1: I use the example of the movie The Queen's Gambit,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a great film, very popular film
Speaker 1: on Netflix. It seems like everyone saw that. Tom Vanderbilt
Speaker 1: finds it a bit sad that people devoted hours and
Speaker 1: hours to watching a drama about someone who learns to
Speaker 1: play chess instead of watching The Queen's Gabbitt. If you
Speaker 1: tried to take five or six hours of chess instruction,
Speaker 1: you could actually pick up a fair amount of the game.
Speaker 1: After years on the sidelines watching his daughter learned stuff,
Speaker 1: he decided to get involved too. I signed up a
Speaker 1: coach of all things to try to teach her to
Speaker 1: play chess, and then I jumped on, which was a
Speaker 1: bit strange. You had these two beginners that were separated
Speaker 1: by four decades. Tom didn't stop there He learned how
Speaker 1: to sing, how to draw, how to deep water swim,
Speaker 1: how to juggle, how to surf, and, since he ended
Speaker 1: up losing his wedding ring wall surfing, how to make jewelry.
Speaker 1: He chronicled all this in a book called Beginners, The
Speaker 1: Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. Tom says it's
Speaker 1: less of a how to book and more of a
Speaker 1: why too book, and the why has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that learning can make us feel
Speaker 1: way more present. Being a beginner is almost by definition mindful,
Speaker 1: because you go into an activity really knowing nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're lost, You're you're sort of clueless, and that demands,
Speaker 1: you know, almost total attention. And that also felt very
Speaker 1: powerful to me, because you know, this idea, especially in
Speaker 1: contemporary society, of being so endlessly distracted. You know, I
Speaker 1: would draw for three hours and it felt like ten minutes,
Speaker 1: and just that having that sense of deep engagement was
Speaker 1: also really refreshing. Being an amateur also brought Tom the
Speaker 1: excitement that comes from novelty. He had to learn about
Speaker 1: ocean waves and musical scales and the bendable properties of metals.
Speaker 1: The freshness of all these new topics made it really
Speaker 1: easy to focus. I equated in the book to sort
Speaker 1: of falling in love. Fittingly, the word amateur comes from
Speaker 1: the Italian amatore to love, and even that more pujoy
Speaker 1: worative sounding term for a beginner, dilettante, comes from the
Speaker 1: Latin delectate to delight. And if you listen to my
Speaker 1: last episode, you know experiencing delight is pretty good for
Speaker 1: your happiness. You're just plunging into this new world with
Speaker 1: new lingo, new equipment. You're moving your body in new
Speaker 1: ways that you're thinking in new ways, and I feel
Speaker 1: like your brain is sort of on fire. And the
Speaker 1: science shows that firing up your brain in this way
Speaker 1: is probably a good thing. Research by the psychologist Denise
Speaker 1: Park has found that learning new skills may help prevent
Speaker 1: the usual cognitive decline that comes as we age. She
Speaker 1: had groups of adults learn a skill collectively in a class,
Speaker 1: and she had other groups of adults get together and
Speaker 1: just socialize. The older adults who took a class on
Speaker 1: photography or quilting did significantly better on tests of memory
Speaker 1: and processing speed than adults who merely got together. I
Speaker 1: find these results really striking. I mean, you wouldn't think
Speaker 1: that learning a specific skill like how to stitch or
Speaker 1: when to adjust a shutter speed would have a big
Speaker 1: effect on more important general cognitive abilities. We mostly just
Speaker 1: start new things because we think they'll be fun, But
Speaker 1: becoming a beginner and a random activity seems to give
Speaker 1: us a bigger cognitive leg up than we realize. But
Speaker 1: hobbies like these don't just boost our brains. Tom found
Speaker 1: that his new pursuits also had a surprisingly positive effect
Speaker 1: on his sense of personal identity. There's this interesting thing
Speaker 1: that happens when you take up these skills that in
Speaker 1: the beginning you're thinking of them purely as a verb.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to surf. I'm trying to do this. But
Speaker 1: then at some point feel comfortable to shift to the
Speaker 1: noun phase and you say, you know, I'm a singer,
Speaker 1: I'm a surfer. I've expanded instantly the sensation of who
Speaker 1: I am, and the science shows that this self expansion
Speaker 1: can enhance something else that's known to boost our happiness,
Speaker 1: our relationships. Couples who participate in novel challenging activities together
Speaker 1: experience boosts in relationship satisfaction. The fun that comes from
Speaker 1: being a beginner seems to be contagious. But the biggest
Speaker 1: benefit of becoming a beginner was something I really needed
Speaker 1: for my own funder mention. Learning a new skill is
Speaker 1: a great way to fight all our self judgment and perfectionism.
Speaker 1: I like to quote the writer GK. Chesterton has said,
Speaker 1: anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Tom's book chronicles
Speaker 1: lots of cases when we learn best when we're doing
Speaker 1: activities that teeter just on the edge of what we
Speaker 1: find impossible. He saw this firsthand when he started hanging
Speaker 1: out with a population that finds lots of things impossible,
Speaker 1: a group you might consider to be the ultimate beginners, babies.
Speaker 1: I spent some time with doctor Karen Adolph at NYU
Speaker 1: studying how infants learn to walk and to move, and
Speaker 1: one of the keys to this learning process is failure.
Speaker 1: I mean, they fail a lot. Kids have been photographed
Speaker 1: falling up to seventy times an hour, so we should
Speaker 1: just embrace failure. The problem, of course, is that failure
Speaker 1: doesn't really feel good, which is why Tom practices self compassion,
Speaker 1: that act of recognizing that you're human and talking to
Speaker 1: yourself compassionately instead of like a critical drill sergeant Larger
Speaker 1: than the physical obstacle is that mental obstacle. I think
Speaker 1: 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 hobby for my funtervention that, at
Speaker 1: least for me, really felt like it was on the
Speaker 1: edge of impossible, something I thought I definitely have no
Speaker 1: possible way of being good at. And since it was summertime,
Speaker 1: I also liked the idea of an activity that involved
Speaker 1: hitting the beach, and so I decided that I am
Speaker 1: middle aged, mostly out of shape, i'vey towered dwelling professor
Speaker 1: with bad knees and no coordination, was going to try surfing.
Speaker 1: I announced my decision to Tom, explaining how sure I
Speaker 1: was that I would absolutely suck at the sport. Have
Speaker 1: you ever actually tried to surf before? Like? So, no?
Speaker 1: Why like this race as an interesting point that you're
Speaker 1: you're saying you know you're going to be bad at it,
Speaker 1: which is already that negative self talk coming up? All right, touche,
Speaker 1: I was already admitting defeat in my head, or i'd
Speaker 1: even gott and started. You really don't know how you're
Speaker 1: going to be because you don't know what that thing is.
Speaker 1: But you may actually try it and discover that you're
Speaker 1: actually adept at it, or that you take to it
Speaker 1: more than you thought you could. Maybe Tom was right.
Speaker 1: Maybe I would be better at this than I expected.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'd be so good at surfing that I dropped
Speaker 1: the whole podcasting thing and just become a full time
Speaker 1: beach bunny. Maybe I'd be a total natural on the board.
Speaker 1: That's probably how it's going to go, right Tom, I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to get up on the board on my
Speaker 1: first afternoon out. I spent a lot of time on
Speaker 1: my knees, you know, sort of almost standing. I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time falling. Your surfing is a very
Speaker 1: difficult activity. The ocean is very dynamic place. You are
Speaker 1: probably going to fail. That wasn't the rounding endorsement I
Speaker 1: was expecting. I'm not going to lie, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to sugarcoat it. You're going to look fullish. You might
Speaker 1: get hurt, but we have the ability to get back
Speaker 1: up and move on. Apparently I'd picked an activity that
Speaker 1: really would test my ability to be self compassionate in
Speaker 1: the face of sucking badly, but Tom still thought I
Speaker 1: should go for it because sucking badly was kind of
Speaker 1: the point. What do you have to lose? In fact,
Speaker 1: you have to gain quite a bit, I would argue.
Speaker 1: Surfing badly is still a very fun activity that will
Speaker 1: bring you joy. 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, meant 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 noncommittal response. Actually, she followed up, my
Speaker 1: 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 how the
Speaker 1: most fun. I was ready to be just that best surfer.
Speaker 1: I booked a lesson for two Operation fun Intervention surfing
Speaker 1: Safari was on, and you'll get to hear test how
Speaker 1: it went when the happiness lad returns in a Mormentos
Speaker 1: aren't too big. Yeah. One warm August morning, I headed
Speaker 1: to Rhode Island with my good friend from college, Lucy Bisignano,
Speaker 1: armed with her social support, a beach towel, a wetsuit,
Speaker 1: and the strongest hair band I own. I was ready
Speaker 1: to become the embodiment of the immortal words of George
Speaker 1: Bernard's shaw that man progresses in all things by making
Speaker 1: a fool of himself. Yeah, truck, she's recording. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: like really bad. Actually feel We met our surf instructors
Speaker 1: for the day, and I handed my recording gear off
Speaker 1: to Lucy's daughter, Alice, who agreed to act as my
Speaker 1: guest producer, or at least to try to. The wind
Speaker 1: wasn't really helping us all that much. Perfect. After some
Speaker 1: safety instructions, warm up jumping jack's, and practice pop ups
Speaker 1: on the shore, we grabbed our boards and paddled out
Speaker 1: into the sea. My lesson was amazing, not because I
Speaker 1: caught a bunch of killer waves Like Tom Vanderbilt. I
Speaker 1: didn't really figure out how to stand up on the board.
Speaker 1: During that first lesson, I also wiped out pretty badly tried.
Speaker 1: I got more salt water up my nose in that
Speaker 1: hour and a half lesson than I have in my
Speaker 1: entire life. These things should have felt unpleasant, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: The whole experience was so fun. Unlike with most other
Speaker 1: activities I've done, I was able to focus not on
Speaker 1: the product being able to catch a huge wave, but
Speaker 1: on the process. How it felt to be lying on
Speaker 1: the board, how I was balancing better and better as
Speaker 1: the waves rolled by, how fun it was to chat
Speaker 1: with my surf instructor, and just how nice it felt
Speaker 1: to be in the sun and the waves on a
Speaker 1: perfect summer day. I expected my arms and legs to
Speaker 1: be sore afterwards, and they were for days actually, But
Speaker 1: the thing that hurt the most after my lesson was
Speaker 1: my face from smiling and laughing so much. I was
Speaker 1: excited to tell my guru, Catherine Price, about my fun
Speaker 1: interventions surfing success, that I did something that I was
Speaker 1: really bad at and that at times was absurdly unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but that it wound up being one of the most
Speaker 1: fun things I've done in a long time. But Katherine
Speaker 1: didn't want me to rest on my laurels. She thought
Speaker 1: it was now time to move on to the final
Speaker 1: step of my fun intervention, discovering ways to find more
Speaker 1: everyday fun. My first surfing lesson was a total blast,
Speaker 1: but as a busy professor, I probably couldn't spend every
Speaker 1: day driving across state lines to hit the waves, which
Speaker 1: raised a question, how could I start finding more fun
Speaker 1: each and every day. So the universal definition of fun,
Speaker 1: I would argue, is that it's a state of playful,
Speaker 1: connected flow. But each of us find that state through
Speaker 1: different things, and something that you find fun, I might
Speaker 1: not find fun at all, and vice versa. That is
Speaker 1: the purpose of what Catherine calls the fun audit, examining
Speaker 1: your own personal fun history. Catherine recommends getting a notebook
Speaker 1: and journaling about pastimes in which you experienced true fun.
Speaker 1: What were those so fun moments that you treasure, list
Speaker 1: 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 investor to gator. And once you
Speaker 1: have that, once you have a sense of the people
Speaker 1: and the activities in the settings that often are associated
Speaker 1: with fun for you, you can go to the next level,
Speaker 1: which is what I call figuring out your fun factors,
Speaker 1: and those are the characteristics of those people, or those settings,
Speaker 1: or those activities that are in some way responsible for
Speaker 1: the fun. Doing my own personal fun audit with Catherine
Speaker 1: was perhaps not surprisingly kind of fun. I told her
Speaker 1: about goofy Halloween parties that I had with my grad
Speaker 1: school roommates, trips to a Boardwalk video arcade with my husband,
Speaker 1: the time my producer Ryan and I were unexpectedly given
Speaker 1: a rental sports car and got to drive around San
Speaker 1: Francisco listening to Duran Duran on repeat, and one of
Speaker 1: my most treasured so fun memories, which happened when I
Speaker 1: traveled to Texas for a conference a few years ago.
Speaker 1: So there's this movie theater in Austin called the Alamo Drafthouse.
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: carrio y where you can see what the lyrics are,
Speaker 1: but you're supposed to sing over the music videos, and
Speaker 1: they give you like eighties gear and glow sticks and
Speaker 1: like inflatable microphones and all these things and this is
Speaker 1: like the most fun I've had in my life. So
Speaker 1: these are just like, oh my gosh, she's got pictures,
Speaker 1: some images. So these are my grad students. You can
Speaker 1: see the costumes, inflatable mics and things like that. This
Speaker 1: is me, you see because a green inflatable guitar and
Speaker 1: a pink hair bow. Yes, that looks amazing. Analyzing the
Speaker 1: common features of all these events, looking for what Catherine
Speaker 1: calls the fun factors, I noticed a few important commonalities.
Speaker 1: All these fun times were social, and most of them
Speaker 1: had an active element, like dancing or moving my body.
Speaker 1: There was also a lot of spontaneity involved, like trying
Speaker 1: something new or traveling to a new place my so
Speaker 1: fun activities also involved a healthy dose of absurdity, think
Speaker 1: inflatable microphones or getting a ridiculous sports car, or the
Speaker 1: crazy costumes I had eighties sing along. But there was
Speaker 1: one specific fun factor that really surprised me. It seems
Speaker 1: like one of my fun factors that I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: expected actually is music, which is surprising because I'm not
Speaker 1: musically inclined at all. I don't play an instrument. I
Speaker 1: don't think of myself as a good singer. But when
Speaker 1: I think to moments of peakue fun, they have this
Speaker 1: element of music. Finding surprises like these is just the
Speaker 1: sort of insight a fun audit can bring, and everyone's
Speaker 1: audit it's going to look different. You might detest music
Speaker 1: in 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. They're characteristics
Speaker 1: that if those characteristics are present in an experience, you're
Speaker 1: probably not going to have fun. And I think it's
Speaker 1: very important to put some attention into identifying them because
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, other people might find them fun,
Speaker 1: and you might find yourself getting drag belonged to these
Speaker 1: experiences and then wondering why you never had fun. Thinking
Speaker 1: about my own experiences, I realize that one of my
Speaker 1: key anti fund factors is competition. If there are games
Speaker 1: that we're playing that are cooperative or that are just
Speaker 1: about the absurdity of the game or something, I'm really
Speaker 1: into it. But when a game has like obvious winners
Speaker 1: and losers, it's like less fun. For me. Just as
Speaker 1: with fun factors, your own anti fund factors are going
Speaker 1: to be really personal. You might love competition, but to
Speaker 1: test the beach or getting dirty, or any activities that
Speaker 1: involve a lot of preparation or equipment. There are lots
Speaker 1: of things that could be an anti fun factor. And
Speaker 1: that's why it's so important to put time into thinking
Speaker 1: about what you liked and didn't like in the past,
Speaker 1: because the better you understand these things, the easier it
Speaker 1: will be for you to spend your time wisely, frankly.
Speaker 1: And if you can understand that, then you can make
Speaker 1: different choices about how you're going to spend your leisure time,
Speaker 1: which well we do have I think more available to
Speaker 1: us than we realize, because we're wasting a lot of
Speaker 1: it right now, it is limited. I thought back to
Speaker 1: how I often spend my own free time. When I
Speaker 1: get a break, I tend to do something passive, like
Speaker 1: plopping down on the and watching Netflix or reading a book.
Speaker 1: Leisure activities like that are relaxing, but they're definitely not
Speaker 1: fun in the playful, connected, flow inducing sense, and they
Speaker 1: usually don't involve almost any of the fun factors I
Speaker 1: just identified my fun audit revealed that to get more
Speaker 1: everyday fun, I need to be doing more stuff that
Speaker 1: involves music, or having friends around, or taking part in
Speaker 1: activities that feel a bit more physical or spontaneous. I
Speaker 1: also need to find ways to recreate that sing along
Speaker 1: from my Texas trip, which was a fun factor that
Speaker 1: Catherine supported more than I had expected. You and I
Speaker 1: clearly share a lot of fun factors, like a lot
Speaker 1: of them, because that looks like my dream fun as
Speaker 1: I want to be there right now. And that's when
Speaker 1: Catherine got the idea for the final step in my
Speaker 1: fun intervention. Since eighties sing along seemed to be the
Speaker 1: magical confluence of all my fun factors at once. Catherine
Speaker 1: thought it would be good, purely for scientific purposes, of course,
Speaker 1: to experience that true fun moment right there in my house.
Speaker 1: Luckily happened to have some old inflatable microphones from that
Speaker 1: trip lying around. I just want to be with you.
Speaker 1: We were both a little rusty, but our impromptu sing
Speaker 1: along was awesome. What says You've been got our spur
Speaker 1: of the moment sing along only last an hour or so,
Speaker 1: but having that moment of true fun right in the
Speaker 1: middle of my day wound up, making me feel totally
Speaker 1: alive for days. Oddly enough, taking a short break to
Speaker 1: privately croon like a rock star made me feel even
Speaker 1: more productive through the rest of my work week, never
Speaker 1: realizing my love of sing alongs also took me right
Speaker 1: back to where the story began. As a kid, I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with singing songs from the Peter Pan Musical.
Speaker 1: Back then, I thought I'd never grow up. I believed
Speaker 1: I'd never turn my back on fun. I never thought
Speaker 1: adult me would prioritize work and productivity over the delights
Speaker 1: of moving around. Turns out that wise fun loving kid
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely lost. She was just hidden below the surface.
Speaker 1: All it took was a fun intervention and an inflatable
Speaker 1: microphone to set her free. I hope hearing about the
Speaker 1: power of fun inspires you to figure out some ways
Speaker 1: that you can increase playfulness, connection, and flow. Why don't
Speaker 1: you take some time to think about the moments you
Speaker 1: remember is so fun? Do your own fun audit, and
Speaker 1: make sure you also pay attention to activities that currently
Speaker 1: pass for fun in your life but don't actually feel
Speaker 1: all that good. By taking time to identify your own
Speaker 1: personal fun factors, no matter how surprising, you can better
Speaker 1: understand what they are and proactively seek them out in
Speaker 1: your daily life. You can even find some new hobbies
Speaker 1: that make you feel a little bit more alive. And
Speaker 1: the science shows that getting more fun in your life
Speaker 1: isn't justest going to be fun. It can also increase
Speaker 1: your productivity. And as I saw firsthand during my surf lesson,
Speaker 1: making more time for fun can also help you be
Speaker 1: a little bit more compassionate with yourself, which is something
Speaker 1: we all need these days. And so that's a rap
Speaker 1: for Season three of The Happiness Lab. But we'll be
Speaker 1: back in a few months with more science based tips
Speaker 1: that you can use to feel better. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'll be setting aside my podcast Mike to get in
Speaker 1: some quality time with my inflatable mic instead. Catherine. Let's
Speaker 1: do this than do you you? Now? I get? Three?
Speaker 1: First A Soloman Yeah, yeah, thanks to you. Thanks to you,
Speaker 1: Now I get Yeah. You should know now I get.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Delley.
Speaker 1: Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring,
Speaker 1: mixing and mastering by Evan Biola. Joseph Fridman checked our
Speaker 1: facts Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts. Emily Anne Vaughan
Speaker 1: offered additional productions for it Special thanks to Miela Belle,
Speaker 1: Carl mcgliori, Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lucarne, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, Royston Berserve, Jacob Weisberg, and my
Speaker 1: agent Ben Davis. That Penus Lab is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Laurie Santos