You laughed when you saw that meme didn’t you? Good! It made me laugh too.
Sometimes, I think we need to take a break from the work we are doing to better ourselves and our lives, and just let ourselves be silly.
You know how I keep telling you to not be so hard on yourself? To give yourself a break? This is what I mean.
I have a saying that I tell people every time they make a comment about how old they (think they) are. “You are only as old as you choose to be.” It relates to this. If we don’t allow ourselves to not be so serious, we lose the fun that life has to offer. And life without any fun is a tragic life indeed.
You are only as old as you choose to be.
Life is supposed to be fun. Did you know that life is supposed to be fun? Has anyone ever told you that life is supposed to be fun? Well, now I’m telling you. Life is supposed to be fun! 🙂
I’ve also heard someone (I can’t remember who; maybe multiple people) say: “If it ain’t fun, don’t do it.” and this is something that is so aligned with some of the concepts that I explore here.
Fun is at the center of the whole “choosing a happy life” thing. In every situation – and I mean EVERYTHING – if you can stop yourself and say “Am I having fun doing this?”, the answer will always lead you to what you are looking for, or working towards. Really!
Let’s apply this to something easy like your work situation. When you’re there, are you having fun? Do you enjoy doing what you do? If the answer is yes, then keep doing it; but if the answer is no, then you should consider moving in a different direction.
Maybe you’ve already decided that you don’t like what you do. Then pick something you DO enjoy doing. But maybe you don’t know how to make money off of it. It doesn’t matter. If you enjoy doing it, if it’s something that you do that when you ask yourself the question “am I having fun?” and the answer is yes, then that’s what you should be doing.
“Easy for you to say, but I live in reality”, I hear you say.
You know what? I get it. You have bills to pay, mouths to feed, etc. But what most people don’t get is that success (in all things) starts with FUN. You don’t have to see how you’ll make money doing the thing you love most. If you only just start doing it, and just let yourself enjoy doing it, the universe will correspond to your feeling of fun, and bring you what you need to make it even more enjoyable (i.e. the money that comes from doing it).
I heard a really good story, once, that explained it in this way: Picture a car, driving at night. You have your headlights on, and you can only see 200 feet ahead of you, right? But you know that you can get from Charlottetown to Victoria (for us Canadians, New York to San Francisco for people who are more familiar with the US) driving at night. Because you know that once you get to the end of those 200 feet, the next 200 feet will unfold ahead of you, and the next, and the next.
Life works in the same way.
As long as you are doing what you love, what is the most fun, what you are passionate about, life will show you the next logical step for you to take so that you can do more of it.
I have been meeting all sorts of really great creators since starting this blog. And the number one complaint that I’ve seen so far, is “I’ve started my blog, or my business in doing what I love, I’ve followed the steps, so why isn’t it making me any money?” There is so much information out there to help people find their passions, directing them to building a business in the area of their passion. But most of them miss the boat because of two things:
- They get impatient, because they expect their business to become profitable in a short time frame (and there’s all kinds of other tiny details that arise from that)
- They forget why they’re doing it in the first place. They’ve stopped having fun with it. They’ve turned it into WORK.
Something has happened in our society where we’ve associated the word “work” with “not fun”. People who have fun doing their work actually shy away from even calling it work! Because we, as an entire society, have created this flawed belief that work has to be difficult. We even have expressions like “hard work” that enhance that flawed belief. People who are successful will all tell you that it’s hard work to get to where they are. And even though that may seem true from the outside, from their perspective, it’s not “hard work”, it’s pleasant work! They don’t care because they are having fun doing it!
And so, that’s why there are so many people who jump on the band wagon of the “yes I want to quit my boring job and do what I love” but then find themselves struggling with it because they’re not making money out of it yet and it’s been a year.
They’ve forgotten that life is supposed to be fun.
They’ve turned their passion into “WORK”.
I’ve started this blog as part of a challenge. It’s a challenge that is designed to (eventually) lead you to building a successful business around doing something you are passionate about. And so I go to these online communities and share what I’m doing and I get the question “What business are you building?” and do you know what I tell them?
I’m not building a business yet. I’m just having fun.
I’m focusing on enjoying this process.
I can feel the beginnings of a business slowly starting to percolate within me, as I write, and as I continue down my path to obtaining a graduate degree, but I don’t pay much attention to it.
I’m having fun.
Maybe one day, I’ll turn this blog into an income-generating business, maybe not. But I know I’m on the right path if I focus on enjoying what I’m doing. And when it stops being fun, I don’t do it. If one day, or even a few days, I’m not really feeling it, and I don’t want to write, then I don’t do it. I let it go, and focus on something else fun to do.
Follow your fun.
You’ll be surprised how many other fun things start coming into your life.
Leave me a comment and let me know: What are the fun things that you like to do? (then go do them!) 🙂
Have fun!
Mel