Where are you on the fun meter? Yes, the fun meter! On a scale of 1 to 10, how much fun are you having? When I ask people this question, I consistently get a look of utter amazement. Then they might say, “You have got to be kidding!” “The stress of my job is killing me.” “I don’t have time for the important things in my life.” “There is no time for fun.” My favorite was this one, “When I asked my manager for help he told me he didn’t care and I should join the I don’t care club like he had.”
When I was a kid, I loved to play Monopoly. One summer I remember we played a perpetual game of Monopoly. The game board was set up in our basement and we never picked it up. We never wanted the game to end, so we invented ways to make loans, build alliances, and stay alive for another roll of the dice.
If we didn’t like our game piece, we changed it. If we didn’t like a rule, we changed it. The goal was to keep playing the game. Eventually summer ended, the game had to end, and everything went back in the box.
Where are you on the fun meter? If all the pieces of your life went back in the box today would you like the story you wrote?
Paulo Coelho dreamed of being an author. He dreamed of making a difference and seeing his work translated into English. Coelho’s book “The Alchemist” has now sold 65 million copies in 56 different languages. Coelho wrote,
“We all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God’s blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth…we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream because; we are told it is impossible, we are afraid of abandoning what we know to pursue what is on our heart, we fear the defeats we will face, and we lack the patience to weather difficult times.”
Where are you on the fun meter?
Here are four suggestions for boosting fun.
- Get tuned into your personal calling. Check out strategy #9 in “Breakthrough” for six ways to identify your passion.
- Spend your most important time on your most important roles. Lives lived with few regrets invest their time and energy in building and sustaining relationships with the people who matter most in their lives. No one approaches the end of the game saying, “I wish I would have spent more time at work.”
- Are you working for a bad boss, selfish leader, or the wrong organization? Put “Plan B” together, you have more options than you think.
- If you are unwilling to change your circumstance, change your attitude. Everyone can make a difference right where they are at by approaching their work and every personal encounter with a solution-oriented attitude.
“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
— Steven Pressfield “The War of Art”
When all the pieces of your life go back in the box, will it be a fun story?
What suggestion would you have to put more fun into life?
Great food for thought! Oh, and I remember those Monopoly games quite fondly.
A lot of fun! And you gave me food for thought that prompted this post. Always good to be thinking and is liberating to know we always have choices.