August 7, 2023 • 37 mins
Listener Natalie Robinson was worried she and her fellow running club members weren't having enough fun - life was just getting in the way. But what could she and her friends do? They found inspiration in the two episodes of The Happiness Lab dedicated to Dr Laurie Santos's own quest to regain the fun and playfulness of her youth.
So here's another opportunity to listen to part one of that story again.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Oh Hannah Montana, Oh Wiley Cyris.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I recently had a fun afternoon in the studio with
members of a Massachusetts running club. Oh Hot, Ryan Gosling.
I don't often have this much fun during the recording session,
but having fun was actually the topic we'd all gathered
to discuss. You see, even though they started out as
a running club, the members have started to meet for
some very different activities. Inspired by something I talked about
(00:52):
on the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I remember in your podcast you were saying, like, I'm
a fun person, but I don't really have that much fun.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This is Natalie Robinson, and she could totally relate to
the lack of fun I was experiencing in my life.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
When the kids were little, it was so easy to
have fun, like you take them to the zoo, you
take them to the water park, and then when they
get older, there's less things to do that are that
pure fun. And so when we heard your podcast, we
were like, yeah, are we fun? Like do we even
have fun anymore? Like, let's have more fun.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Natalie told the rest of her running club about what
she'd heard on the Happiness Lab that you could inject
playfulness and fun back into life with a little bit
of deliberate effort, and so they got together and planned
fun interventions or what I called in the podcast funter Ventionance.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Scavenger Hunt was definitely a lot of playfulness, like because
we engaged with the public like we had to. Like
I remember like one of them was like pretending you're
a dock and you have to cluck around people.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
That was the most playful.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
The runners of Franklin, Massachusetts are a great group of friends,
and they're having an absolute blast with their funter Ventionance.
If you want to hear their tips for having more fun,
go back and check out our last episode right now, though,
I want to give you an opportunity to hear the
episodes that inspired Natalie and her running friends. It's a
two part show and a very personal story of how
I realized I'd let the fund drain out of my
(02:13):
life and vowed to regain some of the playfulness of
my childhood.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
Don't you know, I just can't.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But I should warn you now the podcast does contain
my attempts at singing.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
I hope you still enjoy it anyway.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm about to watch a VHS tape that I haven't
seen for more than thirty five years. It's the dress
rehearsal of a play I took part in when I
was ten years old, the nineteen eighty five New Bedford
High School Drama Club's performance of Peter Pan the Musical.
My mom somehow finagled a way for me to audition,
(03:04):
even though I was only in fourth grade and I
didn't really know how to act, saying or dance. But
I got to star as the rabbit. If you've seen
the play and don't remember a rabbit being involved, that
is because, as far as I can tell, the rabbit
is not an actual role in Peter Pan the Musical.
I think the directors just made it up. My entire
(03:27):
part involved hanging out on the back of the stage silently,
pretty much blending into the Neverland background. Why would any
self respecting high school drama teacher go to all that
trouble for a talentless ten year old kid. I think
it's because after meeting me, they couldn't really say no.
You see, back then, I was obsessed with Peter Pan.
(03:48):
My family had the album, which I had worn out
by listening to it over and over and over again.
Our home movies are filled with me forcing my older
cousins to take part in impromptu performances, always with me
playing Peter Pan Love. When I was four, my mom
(04:11):
left my newborn brother at home in Massachusetts to take
me to Broadway to see the play. My mom says
that when I got back to the hotel, I spent
the entire night jumping between the room's two beds, claiming
that I was flying to Neverland so that I could
have fun and stay a kid forever, just like Peter Pan.
(04:32):
I distinctly remember my mom's reaction that night, as I
was jumping from mattress to mattress. She couldn't hold back tears.
When I was a kid, I never really understood why,
But rewatching the musical as an adult, I finally got
what made my mom sob If you haven't seen the musical,
the plot involves Peter Pan taking Wendy to Neverland to
(04:53):
have a bunch of adventures think pirates, lost boys, all
that stuff. But eventually Wendy wants to go back to
her normal life, so Peter takes her back to London
and promises he'll come get her for more adventures soon.
But when Peter finally returns at the end of the
He's devastated. Even though Wendy promised she'd never get older,
(05:13):
she accidentally grew up, and Peter can't believe it. He
tells middle aged Wendy that she's not allowed to go
back to Neverland and have fun ever again, because she's
too grown up. Watching the play in my forties wasn't
as fun as doing so as a kid. In a
(05:34):
turn of events that would surely be mind blowing to
my ten year old self, I have gotten old, like
middle aged Wendy. I now have a job and a
mortgage and responsibilities to worry about. Even though I clearly
plan to prioritize having fun forever, that didn't really happen.
These days, I don't have time to jump around on
(05:55):
mattresses or lead fake musical sing alongs with my cousins.
Most of my days are so busy it doesn't feel
like I have time for any fun at all, And
that realization is pretty depressing and kind of ironic, because
I used to pride myself on being fun. My grad
school roommates and I through goofy theme parties several times
(06:16):
a year. My husband and I won our engagement ring
playing ski ball and a cheesy beach arcade that was
literally called the fun o Rama. I used to have
a lot of fun, but lately not so much. I
haven't thrown a ridiculous party in some time, and I
haven't been back to that beach arcade in years. In fact,
(06:37):
full disclosure, the last time my husband and I did visit,
I secretly hit outside while he was wrapped up in
some pinball game and answered by work emails. So what happened?
Am I as doomed as middle aged when he was
in that musical? Are we all destined to miss out
on fun as an inevitable part of getting older? Or
are there ways to prioritize a childlike sense of goofiness
(07:00):
and adventure well into our later years. In this first
ever double episode of the Happiness Lab, we'll learn that
it is possible to read discover how to have fun,
and our evidence will come not just from the scientific literature,
but from a much more personal experiment, because over the
next two shows, I will become the subject of a
fun intervention or fun prevention for sure, and my unorthodox
(07:26):
attempt at finding more fun, which spoiler is going to
involve inflatable microphones, cats on leashes, tomatoes on planes and
in New England surfing safari. We'll wind up having a
much bigger effect on my and other people's happiness than
I ever ever expected. Our minds are constantly telling us
(07:46):
what to you to be happy. But what if our
minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
leading us away from what will really make us happy.
The good news is that understanding the science of the
mind can point us all back in the right direction.
You're listening to the Happiness Lab for doctor Laurry Sanders.
(08:09):
The idea for my funtervention came one summer morning when
I was engaged in a not very fun one might
even say soul sucking activity. I was checking and then
immediately rechecking my email. Refreshing your inbox when you know
there's probably nothing new is kind of like when you
look in the fridge over and over, pathetically hoping there'll
(08:29):
be something else to eat. Embarrassingly, I often find myself
doing this whenever I'm bored or avoiding some writing project
that feels hard. And that's when it happened. A new
email did appear, one with an innocuous subject.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Line, will you help me with my next book? I
promise it will be fun.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
It was a newsletter from one of my favorite past
podcast guests, the journalist Catherine Price. Catherine's the author of
How to Break Up with Your Phone. In the book,
she argues that we'll only find true happiness if we
put some work into developing a better screen life balance.
Catherine would definitely not be a fan of the fact
that I was sitting there refreshing my inbox, so I
(09:09):
was already feeling a little called out when I received
her message, But as I read on, that feeling got
even worse.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Dear friends, I'm at work on a new book, and
I'm writing to ask for your help. The book is
about fun. More specifically, I'm writing about how, far from
being frivolous, having fun is absolutely essential to a joyful
and meaningful life.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The book Catherine was working on seemed to be tapping
into the very thing that I and so many other
people were missing out on in adult life.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm recruiting a
global group of people that I'm calling the Fun Squad.
My hope is that in addition to helping me with
the book, you'll also get to experience some of the
benefits of fun for yourselves.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I knew I needed it, so sheepishly I signed up
which hot tip you can too by visiting how to
Have fun dot com. It did feel a little pathetic
to reveal that I, a supposed happiness expert, was struggling
to have fun, but I figured it was just some
anonymous form. It wasn't like Catherine herself was going to
be looking at which people sawn up.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Oh no, Hi, Laurie. First of all, I am so
psyched to see that you signed up for the Fun Squad.
It's been such a pleasure to follow your work and
get to be a guest in the podcast. I love
your tone and approach, and I feel like we're very
kindred spirits, which is part of the reason I'm so
especially excited to have you as part of the Fun Squad.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Crap, Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem,
I guess, so I wrote back and tried to be honest. Hey, Catherine,
your Fun Squad is coming at a time in which
I'm personally taking a hard look at what leisure looks
like in my life. I'm embarrassed at how little time
I spend taking part in fun, so it's something I'm
thinking about a lot. I hit send and then worried
(10:50):
that Catherine would immediately revoke my fun Squad privileges. But
when we chatted over Zoom soon after that, I was
shocked at how well she understood the difficulty I was having.
Turns out that Catherine had gone through the same sort
of existential crisis that I was experiencing.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
When I was writing How To Break Up With Your Phone.
I was doing this practice where my husband and I
were taking these twenty four hour breaks from our screens,
and there was this one day where I was totally
alone in the house and I had this hour in
front of me to do whatever I wanted to do
with but without my phone or any screen to spend
(11:25):
time on. I realized I actually could not think of
a single thing I wanted to do. And I freaked
out because in my head, I thought to myself, oh wow,
I'm just sitting here waiting for dinner, which really means
I'm just waiting to die.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
The realization that she didn't have anything she wanted to
do shook Catherine to the core. She realized that she
was going through what author Victor Frankel referred to as
the Sunday neurosis.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
It's something like when the internal void within us becomes
manifest And I was like, oh, well it was Saturday,
but yes, that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
But Catherine decided to do something about the existential void
she was feeling. She asked herself, what's one thing you
say you want to do but you supposedly don't have
time for. Her answer was that she always wanted to
learn how to play guitar. She remembered seeing a flyer
in her neighborhood for a music school with adult classes,
and immediately signed up. That decision would change her life.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
It was magical, and I was having this kind of
euphoria and this sense of freedom and this sense of joy.
And part of it was that I was learning a
new skill like that was great. But I started to
realize that that was not all that was happening. There
was something much bigger happening. I was having fun with
these people, and that really got me started on this
(12:42):
investigation into what is fun? What is this feeling? And
then most importantly, how can I have more of it?
Because I wanted more of that feeling.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Four years later, Catherine is now an expert on the
Science of Fun. She's just written a new book called
The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
I cannot tell you how much joy I have found
through this pursuit of fun. Realizing the value of fun
and defining it more concretely for myself has completely changed
the way I think about how I spend my time.
I don't think I had any idea how many benefits
there would be to pursuing fun. I just thought it
would be fun, you know. And so I've been shocked,
(13:20):
pleasantly shocked to recognize the changes it's made in these
other areas of my life.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
One of those areas, ironically enough, involved improving her productivity
at work.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
I started to realize that my brain could only think
and produce creative thoughts very certain number of hours a day,
which what I was doing with the other time was
churning and I was answering my email. I was just
doing stuff to make myself feel busy. What I found
is that if I take a break, if I deliberately
take breaks to do one of these other activities that
fall much more into this fun category for me, I
returned to whatever my task had been much more refreshed,
(13:55):
with more ideas and without this sense of burnout. So
what I found, counterintuitively is actually carving out space for
this supposedly frivolous pursuit of fun actually ended up not
just making me happier, but made me more productive.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Research shows that fun also has physical health benefits. For example,
it can lower cortisol, a bodily stress hormone.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Again, we just think it's frivolous. So if I said
to you, like fun, my lower risk of a heart attack,
you'd look at me like I was crazy. But if
you think about what physiological state we're in when we
are having fun, it is a low stress state. We
are not stressed out and we are fully present, and
there is plenty of research showing that that is very
good for our health. So I personally think it's fascinating
(14:38):
to consider that the pursuit of fun over the long
run may actually be affecting the hormonal balance in our
bodies in a way that is enormously beneficial for our
long term physical health, in addition to making us feel
really good when we do it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Committing to pursuing more fun has also given Catherine a
sense of meaning.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I don't want to end up at my deathbed, feeling
like I never lived. And I think that and I
know that for me, fun is the path that is
making me feel that although death is inevitable, at least.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Hearing Catherine talk about the vast benefits of fun was
making me feel really jealous. I wanted to feel alive
again too. It felt like a rock bottom moment. I
was in total fun crisis. So I asked Catherine if
she'd helped me out. Luckily, she was up for the challenge.
So I'm not a lost cause.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
You are not a lost cause. I would dare say
I'm even having fun right now too. Writing it right,
give yourself a golden star already.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
My fun Prevention will shift into high gear when the
Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
In a moment. I absolutely love swing dancing. I've always
loved swing, Nancy. I think it is so fun. And
if you watch people's swing dancing like that's fun.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Author and fun expert Catherine Price began my Funtervention with
some tips about what not to do, calling one of
her more unfortunate swing dance partners.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
This poor guy was so stiff, and I just heard
him talking to himself and he was just going, I'm
having fun because this is fun, because this is fun,
because we're having fun over and over again to himself
and needless to say, I don't think he was having fun.
You don't want that. That's not our goal here.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
The good news is that Catherine's funtervention would not involve
me gritting my teeth and strong arming my brain into
trying to enjoy something I totally hated. But there was
also bad news. Finding more fun in my life was
going to take some time, effort, and soul searching.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Are there things that you should do and try if
you want to reorient towards fun. Yes, you're gonna have
to put some effort into this, but it doesn't have
to be effort that feels un fun. If it starts
to feel like work at any time, then you're on
the wrong path. Like you don't want this to feel
like work, but you do want it to feel like, Oh,
this is interesting. I'm curious about this. I'm enjoying this process.
(17:08):
That's what our goal is.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Part of that curiosity involves overcoming the misconceptions that so
many of us have about what actually feels fun. As
we chatted, I realized I often use the term fun
when I don't really mean it, like what a fun
dinner party, when in reality I couldn't wait to get home.
I've even wielded the words that was so fun to
(17:30):
describe an at best meh zoom meeting.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
We use fun very casually and sloppily, and that leaves
us vulnerable to being manipulated by anyone who tells us
their product or service is fun. We will say, oh, yeah,
I'll do that because it's for fun, Because we just
think anything we don't do for work or leisure time
it must be fund But if you actually think about
the things that you're doing for fun and then investigate
(17:55):
how it's making you feel emotionally and physically, you may
realize that it's not actually making you feel it that good.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
When Catherine began the research for her Power of Fun book,
her first task was to define this elusive concept.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
We don't have a good working definition of what fun is,
and as a result, we don't take it seriously. There
are is very little scholarly work that's been done, or
academic work or scientific research into fun, because I mean
makes sense. How are you going to study something if
you don't have a definition for it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I did my own literature search and Catherine's right. There's
lots of scientific work on happiness, but there are surprisingly
few papers on fun. If you do the Standards Scientific
Database search for the word fun, one of the top
hits is a paper entitled putting the Fun in Fungui
toenail oncomcosis.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Not fun, not fun at all.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And so to develop her own definition of fun, Catherine
called upon her Fun Squad, that group of one thousand
or so people like me who'd signed up to help
out with her new book. Catherine asked the fun Squad
to describe their own experiences with fun.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I think I had a very technical way of phrasing
the question, which is basically like, tell me about three
times that you would describe as so fun.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
She got back hundreds of examples. People talked about memories
of squishing mud through their toes, or playing drums with
their grandkids, or church dances, or playing fetch with a
particularly cute dog, or summer days on the lake laughing
with friends. Catherine was surprised by how vary the experiences were,
(19:26):
but also that these very different examples seem to touch
on the same three themes over and over again.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
What I call true fun is the confluence of playfulness,
connection and flow.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Playfulness, connection and flow. Let's look first at playfulness, which
Catherine describes as a feeling of being out of the
normal responsibilities of life.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
You don't have to actually be playing in the way
of like playing a board game or playing with a child,
but a playful spirit. You don't care too much about
the outcome. You're carefree. You're doing it just for the
sake of doing it, and it's very intrinsically motivating. But
you can bring a playful spirit to things that you
wouldn't think are play You can have a playful spirit
and engage in play at work, for example. So we
shouldn't be so strict about what we consider potentially playful.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
We should, however, be strict about making sure we find
ways to get more playfulness in our lives, especially if
we care about our mental and physical help, because the
science shows that play not only feels nice, it's also
good for our bodies and our brains. Studies find that
people who play more often are less susceptible to chronic
conditions like dementia and heart disease. There's also evidence that
(20:35):
playfulness is linked with increases in what's known as brain
derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that's linked to nerve growth.
This connection between play and brain development is one of
the reasons that many animals seem to play so much
in childhood, the very time in which we grow the
most new neural tissue. The second component of fun is
(20:56):
something we talk about a lot on the Happiness Lab connection,
that feeling of social togetherness and a sense that we're
sharing experiences with those around us. When Catherine surveyed her
fun squad, she found that nearly all of their examples
of true fun involved activities done with other people.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
And that was true even for introverts. A number of
people actually said they were surprised because they were a
self described introvert, and yet the experiences they described to
me allhead other people.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Connection is one of the big reasons that fun feels
so good. Study after study shows that being around other
people increases our positive mood and improves our mental health.
One famous well being study even concluded that spending time
with others was a necessary condition for high happiness.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Fun definitely helps us tap into our shared humanity, which
is something we do not prioritize, but which is enormously
important and I think we all know that intuitively, even
if we haven't thought about it, because that's the drive
that causes us to do things like spend a lot
of time in social media.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
And that gets us to the third component of true
fun flow. Psychologist Mihi Chiek set Me High, the guy
who first studied flow, defined it as that state of
true immersion that comes when we engage in a challenging activity.
Flow is the feeling you get when you're so present
and passionately involved in something that time just starts flying by,
(22:18):
but not all time flying by is a good thing.
Catherine argues that it's important to distinguish between true, honest
to goodness flow and what Cheek sent Me High called
junk flow.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
The easiest way to think about it is the difference
between being engaged and being hypnotized. So anytime you find
your eyes glazing over and forty five minutes passing and
you haven't taken a deep breath, that you haven't moved,
and you're just staring at a screen, the chances are
your junk flow. And it's very easy to get sucked
into that and think, Oh, I'm looking at Instagram or
I'm looking at social media. For fun and oh, I'm
(22:50):
in a flow state, but then you don't really feel
very good. That's not what true fun is about at all,
because true fun, by definition, is an active state. It's
not about zoning out. If you're zoned out and you're
not fully present, you're not having true fun.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That requirement of presents is another reason true fun feels
so good. The presence we get from fun pursuits also
protects us from the urge to spend time on devices
that tend to steal our attention and drain our happiness.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
If you're having fun, you're not gonna want to be
on your phone like it's just not appealing. You don't
have to use billpower, you just don't want to do
it because it's less fun than whatever else you're doing.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
So playfulness, connection, and flow, those are the three ingredients
of fun that I'll be shooting for.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
If you can have a life that has more playfulness
or connection or flow, you're probably going to be on
the right track and in a better place than you
are now. If you have two of those states at once,
even better, And if you have all three of them
at once, I think of it as really being like
hitting the bulls eye, and you will have a moment
that I would consider to be true fun.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
The first step of my fundervention would require figuring out
all the factors that were preventing me from finding that
bullseye combination of playfulness, connection, and flow.
Speaker 6 (23:59):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yes, my phone.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Distraction is like kryptonite to fun. And I can assure
you that you are certainly not the only person for
whom distraction is probably the biggest fun killer in your life.
Because we all have smartphones, and they all have notifications
that go off all the time, and we've been conditioned
to want to check them all the time, even if
they're not notifying us. And anytime you do that, you're
pulling yourself out of your present experience and mentally checking
(24:24):
out for a second.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Catherine noted that distraction was probably also contributing to another
problem I've discussed before on this podcast that I often
feel too time famished to do stuff I really enjoy.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
It's all tied together because the distraction that we're all
encountering all the time is making us feel like we
don't have much time, which is making us stressed out,
which is making us more distractable, which is making us
feel like we have no time.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Catherine decided that addressing this would be fun prevention action
item number one. I had to find ways to train
my brain to be a little less distracted. But since
this is a fun prevention, Catherine thought I should limit
my distractions in a way that boosted my playfulness and connection. So,
rather than focus on avoiding the stuff I shouldn't be
paying attention to my email and notifications and so on,
(25:09):
Catherine decided that I should try to focus on more
attractive stuff, things that naturally make me feel good. She
suggested trying out a practice that she does with a
few of her friends, looking for what she calls delights.
I asked her what she meant by a delight.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Delight is something that makes you feel delighted.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Laurie Her version of the practice started when a friend
recommended a book by the poet Rosque entitled The Book
of Delights.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
And he wrote an essay every day for a year
about something that delighted him.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Catherine copied the idea and found it to be well delightful.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Savoring like good things in the same way that we
ruminate about bad things, and I find it's a great
way to attract more fun into your life.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
It did sound like fun to swish a bunch of
delightful things around in my brain all day. But I
also worried that Catherine didn't fully realize the level of
mind distraction her pupil was dealing with. I realized I
might need some remedial help before jumping into the delight
deep end. So I decided to talk to the poet
who inspired Catherine, the guy who literally wrote the book
(26:12):
on delights. When we get back from the break, we'll
hear all the amazing lessons he shared. We'll see how
fun it can be to start noticing all the great
stuff in the world. Spring flowers, smiling faces on public transport,
the eighties band el DeBarge, and even tomato plants.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You know there's my tomato?
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Did you the happiness Lab? We'll be right back. I
knew finding more delights was going to be tough for
someone who's as distracted and overworked as I am, So
I decided to talk to the man who invented the practice,
(26:55):
the poet Rossquae.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
Well, you don't know until you carry a tomato seed,
lean through the airport and onto a plane is that
carrying a tomato seed lean through the airport and onto
a plane will make people smile at you, almost like
you're carrying a baby.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Ross is reading from his essay entitled Tomato on Board.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
I did not know this until today. Carrying my little
tomato about three or four inches high in its four
inch plastic starter pot, which my friend Michael gave to me,
smirking about how I was going to get it home.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Ross decided to stick the plant in his open carry
on bag and send it through the TSA machine.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
When the security guy saw it was a tomato, he
smiled and said, I don't know how to check that.
Have a good day.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
But as Ross tried to stick the tomato plant back
into his bag, he realized that one of its stems
had broken.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
So I decided I'd better just carry it out in
the open, and the shower of love began. Before boarding
the final leg in my flight, one of the workers
said nice tomato, which I don't think was a come on,
and the flight attendant asked about the tomato at least
five times, not an exaggeration, every time calling it my tomato,
Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You there's my tomato,
(28:04):
did you. She even directed me to an open seat
in the exit row. Why don't you guys go sit
there and stretch out. When I got my water, I
poured some into the low guy's soil. When we got bumpy,
I put my hand on the low guy's container, careful
not to snap another arm off. And when we landed
and the pilot put the brakes on hard, my arm
reflexively went across the seat, holding the low guy in place,
(28:25):
the way my dad's arm would when he had to
break hard in that car without seat belts to speak of.
In one of my very favorite gestures in the Encyclopedia
of Human Gestures.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Tomato on board is just one of the many joy
inducing essays in Ross's Book of Delights, an entire book
filled with his personal stories of feeling delighted. The idea
for the book came when Ross was in Italy, walking
on a lovely path and noticing all the wildflowers. He
recognized how present he felt when experiencing delight, that feeling
(28:55):
of deep pleasure we get when we noticed something beautiful
or funny or just well delightful. Ross wanted to experience
that feeling more often and to document it.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
The thought was, no, you should write an essay every
day for a year about something that delights you and
see what you learn.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
He gave himself three rules for his new delight.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Project, and they were to do it every day, to
write by hand, and to write them quickly. So I
drafted them all in thirty minutes.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Ross began noticing new delights all the time, and every
time he saw one, he'd stick his finger in the
air and announce delight. The practice immediately connected him to
a lot more joy than he was expecting, which was
evident in the sheer number of times Ross laughed out
loud as he fidgeted through our interview. But the practice
also connected Ross to a host of wonderful, often very
(29:44):
specific things that he normally wouldn't have time to notice
because of the usual life distractions. Wonderful things like praying
mantis's and fireflies, and the first lilacs of the year,
which Ross eloquently refers to as the purple cornets of spring,
and the fact that spring not only has lots of
lovely flowers like lilacs, but oddly lots of lovely purple
(30:06):
flowers hyacinths, bellflower, irises those circular puff things I don't
really know the name of. It is indeed kind of
delightful that they are all purple.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
The abundance of the purple things like what a miracle
is that, you know, kind of miracul of fat.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Ross also found delight in the dumb things our bodies do,
like the laughing snort that sound we make when we
go fall so hard that we wind up sounding like
a pig.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
Which is this really beautiful experience of like, oh, my
body did something I didn't mean it to do, but
it did it out of a kind of you know,
a delight.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Ross also started to take delight and the weird things
humans do all the time, like giving a high five
to a total stranger, and the do over when we
make a mistake and quickly yell out do over and
just somehow get to pretend that whatever we just did
didn't happen. Ross also finds a lot of delight in music.
One essay called Love Me in a Special Way chronicles
(31:08):
his appreciation for one of my favorite eighties bands, El
DeBarge Think to the beat of the Rhythm of the Night.
The essay ends with him hearing El DeBarge playing in
the security line at the Philadelphia Airport and then noticing
an older man working there scream out to no one
in particular, Hey, is that el DeBarge?
Speaker 6 (31:27):
That that record was made and I could have listened
to it is astonishing.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
As I shared my own delight in listening to l
DeBarge with Ross, he explained that conversations like ours soon
became one of the best parts of his project.
Speaker 6 (31:40):
Like the fact that you just shared that with me,
It just makes my eyes bigger for that, and it
makes my heart bigger too.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Ross's eyes are still constantly focused on the wonders of
the world. He even shared a delight that he'd heard
that very morning.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
I never noticed it before, but the way that sometimes
we will make a sound to another person. Maybe you
grow blueberries, I might make a sound to indicate their
delicious hmo, and like ah.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
By training himself to notice delights, Ross has made his
days more playful, that first marker of true fun. But
he's also embraced that sense of connection that comes from
sharing your own delights with others.
Speaker 6 (32:23):
Oh this delights you, this delights me. Oh, we're kindred
in this way, probably among other ways.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
A year of focusing on delightful things also made Ross
more present. Seeking out delights gives him flow.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
I found that as I was practicing this, my eyes
were on for delight. That's it. My eyes were on
for delight.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
But noticing delights has had other benefits for Ross beyond
just being fun. It's given Ross an unexpected dose of resilience.
Even though his book is ostensibly about delights, his essays
also tackle issues like structural racism and grief following the
death of a loved one, and many of the parts
of life that are downright ugly. But training his brain
to notice positive things has allowed him to keep noticing
(33:05):
blessings even in the worst of times.
Speaker 6 (33:08):
In the midst of found sorrow, there's like eight purple
things that bloom in May. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
As I chatted with Ross, I was struck by how
much happiness he exuded. He's one of the most joyful
people I've spoken with in a really long time. Ross
explained that he constantly feels an emotion that scientifically known
to boost well being, a deep sense of gratitude. Ross
claims that his gratitude for the universe often feel so
profound these days that it sometimes moves him to tears.
Speaker 6 (33:39):
No it is it's like me hens, thank you, you
know like that.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Seeing the joy that Ross experienced got me really excited
to do my fun prevention delight homework. So I bought
a crappy notebook and got ready to catalog like Ross.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
I worried that I.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Wouldn't be able to come up with something truly delightful
every single day. I also feared that I'd constantly feel
like I didn't have time to be focused on sleuthing
out all these good things, especially on busier days. But
I adapted the rules Ross used to make things easier.
I just had to find one delight a day, and
I promised myself that I'd take no more than a
(34:18):
few seconds to scribble something about that delight down on paper.
And if I was feeling really overwhelmed on a particular day,
I didn't even have to write anything, just notice finger
in the air delight. So what happened, Well, I quickly
realized how easily delight start finding you when you just
take time to notice. Instead of walking around town with
(34:41):
my phone out to check my email, I spent my
days feeling kind of curious, looking around trying to find
that hidden delight for the day. And when you train
your attention to look for good stuff, it works often
pretty fast. In fact, locating all those hidden delights took
way less time than I thought. It quickly felt like
they were finding me rather than me finding them. I
(35:04):
was very excited to report back about all my successes
to my fun prevention instructor. I was at this beach house.
There's this beautiful beach house looking out at the ocean,
and this mockingbird like flew and came onto the fence
right near there, and I was like, oh, I'm mockingbird.
And then he just took a dump and flew away,
(35:25):
and that was like.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Delight, delight, A finger in the air.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
The same beach, I went for a walk on the
beach and there was this woman, you know, who was
on a beach blanket, just hanging out on the beach
and I noticed that she had a leash, but on
the leash wasn't a dog. It was a cat. Like
she'd brought her cat to the beach and the cat
was just like sitting there chilling on the beach.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
That's delightful.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
It was wonderful.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
The cats on the beach was so good.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
As Catherine and I connected and playfully laughed at the
delights I'd been present enough to start noticing. I realized
I was on the path to feeling less distracted and
actually experiencing this thing called fun. But there was still
more fun invention to be done. I was getting better
at paying attention, but I still needed to discover what
really felt fun, and to do that, I needed to
(36:12):
find ways to experience a bit more self compassion when
trying new things. And so, unfortunately I need to leave
you with a bit of a cliffhanger this week, but
I promise that Part two of my fun Prevention will
be even more that super fun. I was really scared
with that superbud it was.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
It was awesome fun.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
So if you want to hear about the final steps
in my fun Prevention, then don't miss the next sure
to be fun episode of The Happiness Lab with me
Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and
produced by Ryan Dilly. Our original music was composed by
Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by Evan Biola.
(36:55):
Joseph Fridman checked our facts. Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts.
Emily and Vaughan offered additional production support. Special thanks to
Mi LaBelle, Carly Migliori, Heather Fame, Maggie Taylor, Annella Lucaran,
Maya Knigg, Nicol Morano, Eric Xandler, Boyston Biser, Jacob Weissberg,
and my agent Ben Davis. That Pinis Lab is brought
(37:18):
to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Laurie Santos
Pushkin, Oh Hannah Montana, Oh Wiley Cyris.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I recently had a fun afternoon in the studio with
members of a Massachusetts running club. Oh Hot, Ryan Gosling.
I don't often have this much fun during the recording session,
but having fun was actually the topic we'd all gathered
to discuss. You see, even though they started out as
a running club, the members have started to meet for
some very different activities. Inspired by something I talked about
(00:52):
on the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I remember in your podcast you were saying, like, I'm
a fun person, but I don't really have that much fun.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This is Natalie Robinson, and she could totally relate to
the lack of fun I was experiencing in my life.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
When the kids were little, it was so easy to
have fun, like you take them to the zoo, you
take them to the water park, and then when they
get older, there's less things to do that are that
pure fun. And so when we heard your podcast, we
were like, yeah, are we fun? Like do we even
have fun anymore? Like, let's have more fun.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Natalie told the rest of her running club about what
she'd heard on the Happiness Lab that you could inject
playfulness and fun back into life with a little bit
of deliberate effort, and so they got together and planned
fun interventions or what I called in the podcast funter Ventionance.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Scavenger Hunt was definitely a lot of playfulness, like because
we engaged with the public like we had to. Like
I remember like one of them was like pretending you're
a dock and you have to cluck around people.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
That was the most playful.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
The runners of Franklin, Massachusetts are a great group of friends,
and they're having an absolute blast with their funter Ventionance.
If you want to hear their tips for having more fun,
go back and check out our last episode right now, though,
I want to give you an opportunity to hear the
episodes that inspired Natalie and her running friends. It's a
two part show and a very personal story of how
I realized I'd let the fund drain out of my
(02:13):
life and vowed to regain some of the playfulness of
my childhood.
Speaker 5 (02:16):
Don't you know, I just can't.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
But I should warn you now the podcast does contain
my attempts at singing.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
I hope you still enjoy it anyway.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm about to watch a VHS tape that I haven't
seen for more than thirty five years. It's the dress
rehearsal of a play I took part in when I
was ten years old, the nineteen eighty five New Bedford
High School Drama Club's performance of Peter Pan the Musical.
My mom somehow finagled a way for me to audition,
(03:04):
even though I was only in fourth grade and I
didn't really know how to act, saying or dance. But
I got to star as the rabbit. If you've seen
the play and don't remember a rabbit being involved, that
is because, as far as I can tell, the rabbit
is not an actual role in Peter Pan the Musical.
I think the directors just made it up. My entire
(03:27):
part involved hanging out on the back of the stage silently,
pretty much blending into the Neverland background. Why would any
self respecting high school drama teacher go to all that
trouble for a talentless ten year old kid. I think
it's because after meeting me, they couldn't really say no.
You see, back then, I was obsessed with Peter Pan.
(03:48):
My family had the album, which I had worn out
by listening to it over and over and over again.
Our home movies are filled with me forcing my older
cousins to take part in impromptu performances, always with me
playing Peter Pan Love. When I was four, my mom
(04:11):
left my newborn brother at home in Massachusetts to take
me to Broadway to see the play. My mom says
that when I got back to the hotel, I spent
the entire night jumping between the room's two beds, claiming
that I was flying to Neverland so that I could
have fun and stay a kid forever, just like Peter Pan.
(04:32):
I distinctly remember my mom's reaction that night, as I
was jumping from mattress to mattress. She couldn't hold back tears.
When I was a kid, I never really understood why,
But rewatching the musical as an adult, I finally got
what made my mom sob If you haven't seen the musical,
the plot involves Peter Pan taking Wendy to Neverland to
(04:53):
have a bunch of adventures think pirates, lost boys, all
that stuff. But eventually Wendy wants to go back to
her normal life, so Peter takes her back to London
and promises he'll come get her for more adventures soon.
But when Peter finally returns at the end of the
He's devastated. Even though Wendy promised she'd never get older,
(05:13):
she accidentally grew up, and Peter can't believe it. He
tells middle aged Wendy that she's not allowed to go
back to Neverland and have fun ever again, because she's
too grown up. Watching the play in my forties wasn't
as fun as doing so as a kid. In a
(05:34):
turn of events that would surely be mind blowing to
my ten year old self, I have gotten old, like
middle aged Wendy. I now have a job and a
mortgage and responsibilities to worry about. Even though I clearly
plan to prioritize having fun forever, that didn't really happen.
These days, I don't have time to jump around on
(05:55):
mattresses or lead fake musical sing alongs with my cousins.
Most of my days are so busy it doesn't feel
like I have time for any fun at all, And
that realization is pretty depressing and kind of ironic, because
I used to pride myself on being fun. My grad
school roommates and I through goofy theme parties several times
(06:16):
a year. My husband and I won our engagement ring
playing ski ball and a cheesy beach arcade that was
literally called the fun o Rama. I used to have
a lot of fun, but lately not so much. I
haven't thrown a ridiculous party in some time, and I
haven't been back to that beach arcade in years. In fact,
(06:37):
full disclosure, the last time my husband and I did visit,
I secretly hit outside while he was wrapped up in
some pinball game and answered by work emails. So what happened?
Am I as doomed as middle aged when he was
in that musical? Are we all destined to miss out
on fun as an inevitable part of getting older? Or
are there ways to prioritize a childlike sense of goofiness
(07:00):
and adventure well into our later years. In this first
ever double episode of the Happiness Lab, we'll learn that
it is possible to read discover how to have fun,
and our evidence will come not just from the scientific literature,
but from a much more personal experiment, because over the
next two shows, I will become the subject of a
fun intervention or fun prevention for sure, and my unorthodox
(07:26):
attempt at finding more fun, which spoiler is going to
involve inflatable microphones, cats on leashes, tomatoes on planes and
in New England surfing safari. We'll wind up having a
much bigger effect on my and other people's happiness than
I ever ever expected. Our minds are constantly telling us
(07:46):
what to you to be happy. But what if our
minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
leading us away from what will really make us happy.
The good news is that understanding the science of the
mind can point us all back in the right direction.
You're listening to the Happiness Lab for doctor Laurry Sanders.
(08:09):
The idea for my funtervention came one summer morning when
I was engaged in a not very fun one might
even say soul sucking activity. I was checking and then
immediately rechecking my email. Refreshing your inbox when you know
there's probably nothing new is kind of like when you
look in the fridge over and over, pathetically hoping there'll
(08:29):
be something else to eat. Embarrassingly, I often find myself
doing this whenever I'm bored or avoiding some writing project
that feels hard. And that's when it happened. A new
email did appear, one with an innocuous subject.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Line, will you help me with my next book? I
promise it will be fun.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
It was a newsletter from one of my favorite past
podcast guests, the journalist Catherine Price. Catherine's the author of
How to Break Up with Your Phone. In the book,
she argues that we'll only find true happiness if we
put some work into developing a better screen life balance.
Catherine would definitely not be a fan of the fact
that I was sitting there refreshing my inbox, so I
(09:09):
was already feeling a little called out when I received
her message, But as I read on, that feeling got
even worse.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Dear friends, I'm at work on a new book, and
I'm writing to ask for your help. The book is
about fun. More specifically, I'm writing about how, far from
being frivolous, having fun is absolutely essential to a joyful
and meaningful life.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The book Catherine was working on seemed to be tapping
into the very thing that I and so many other
people were missing out on in adult life.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm recruiting a
global group of people that I'm calling the Fun Squad.
My hope is that in addition to helping me with
the book, you'll also get to experience some of the
benefits of fun for yourselves.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I knew I needed it, so sheepishly I signed up
which hot tip you can too by visiting how to
Have fun dot com. It did feel a little pathetic
to reveal that I, a supposed happiness expert, was struggling
to have fun, but I figured it was just some
anonymous form. It wasn't like Catherine herself was going to
be looking at which people sawn up.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Oh no, Hi, Laurie. First of all, I am so
psyched to see that you signed up for the Fun Squad.
It's been such a pleasure to follow your work and
get to be a guest in the podcast. I love
your tone and approach, and I feel like we're very
kindred spirits, which is part of the reason I'm so
especially excited to have you as part of the Fun Squad.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Crap, Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem,
I guess, so I wrote back and tried to be honest. Hey, Catherine,
your Fun Squad is coming at a time in which
I'm personally taking a hard look at what leisure looks
like in my life. I'm embarrassed at how little time
I spend taking part in fun, so it's something I'm
thinking about a lot. I hit send and then worried
(10:50):
that Catherine would immediately revoke my fun Squad privileges. But
when we chatted over Zoom soon after that, I was
shocked at how well she understood the difficulty I was having.
Turns out that Catherine had gone through the same sort
of existential crisis that I was experiencing.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
When I was writing How To Break Up With Your Phone.
I was doing this practice where my husband and I
were taking these twenty four hour breaks from our screens,
and there was this one day where I was totally
alone in the house and I had this hour in
front of me to do whatever I wanted to do
with but without my phone or any screen to spend
(11:25):
time on. I realized I actually could not think of
a single thing I wanted to do. And I freaked
out because in my head, I thought to myself, oh wow,
I'm just sitting here waiting for dinner, which really means
I'm just waiting to die.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
The realization that she didn't have anything she wanted to
do shook Catherine to the core. She realized that she
was going through what author Victor Frankel referred to as
the Sunday neurosis.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
It's something like when the internal void within us becomes
manifest And I was like, oh, well it was Saturday,
but yes, that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
But Catherine decided to do something about the existential void
she was feeling. She asked herself, what's one thing you
say you want to do but you supposedly don't have
time for. Her answer was that she always wanted to
learn how to play guitar. She remembered seeing a flyer
in her neighborhood for a music school with adult classes,
and immediately signed up. That decision would change her life.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
It was magical, and I was having this kind of
euphoria and this sense of freedom and this sense of joy.
And part of it was that I was learning a
new skill like that was great. But I started to
realize that that was not all that was happening. There
was something much bigger happening. I was having fun with
these people, and that really got me started on this
(12:42):
investigation into what is fun? What is this feeling? And
then most importantly, how can I have more of it?
Because I wanted more of that feeling.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Four years later, Catherine is now an expert on the
Science of Fun. She's just written a new book called
The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
I cannot tell you how much joy I have found
through this pursuit of fun. Realizing the value of fun
and defining it more concretely for myself has completely changed
the way I think about how I spend my time.
I don't think I had any idea how many benefits
there would be to pursuing fun. I just thought it
would be fun, you know. And so I've been shocked,
(13:20):
pleasantly shocked to recognize the changes it's made in these
other areas of my life.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
One of those areas, ironically enough, involved improving her productivity
at work.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
I started to realize that my brain could only think
and produce creative thoughts very certain number of hours a day,
which what I was doing with the other time was
churning and I was answering my email. I was just
doing stuff to make myself feel busy. What I found
is that if I take a break, if I deliberately
take breaks to do one of these other activities that
fall much more into this fun category for me, I
returned to whatever my task had been much more refreshed,
(13:55):
with more ideas and without this sense of burnout. So
what I found, counterintuitively is actually carving out space for
this supposedly frivolous pursuit of fun actually ended up not
just making me happier, but made me more productive.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Research shows that fun also has physical health benefits. For example,
it can lower cortisol, a bodily stress hormone.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Again, we just think it's frivolous. So if I said
to you, like fun, my lower risk of a heart attack,
you'd look at me like I was crazy. But if
you think about what physiological state we're in when we
are having fun, it is a low stress state. We
are not stressed out and we are fully present, and
there is plenty of research showing that that is very
good for our health. So I personally think it's fascinating
(14:38):
to consider that the pursuit of fun over the long
run may actually be affecting the hormonal balance in our
bodies in a way that is enormously beneficial for our
long term physical health, in addition to making us feel
really good when we do it.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Committing to pursuing more fun has also given Catherine a
sense of meaning.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
I don't want to end up at my deathbed, feeling
like I never lived. And I think that and I
know that for me, fun is the path that is
making me feel that although death is inevitable, at least.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Hearing Catherine talk about the vast benefits of fun was
making me feel really jealous. I wanted to feel alive
again too. It felt like a rock bottom moment. I
was in total fun crisis. So I asked Catherine if
she'd helped me out. Luckily, she was up for the challenge.
So I'm not a lost cause.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
You are not a lost cause. I would dare say
I'm even having fun right now too. Writing it right,
give yourself a golden star already.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
My fun Prevention will shift into high gear when the
Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
In a moment. I absolutely love swing dancing. I've always
loved swing, Nancy. I think it is so fun. And
if you watch people's swing dancing like that's fun.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Author and fun expert Catherine Price began my Funtervention with
some tips about what not to do, calling one of
her more unfortunate swing dance partners.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
This poor guy was so stiff, and I just heard
him talking to himself and he was just going, I'm
having fun because this is fun, because this is fun,
because we're having fun over and over again to himself
and needless to say, I don't think he was having fun.
You don't want that. That's not our goal here.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
The good news is that Catherine's funtervention would not involve
me gritting my teeth and strong arming my brain into
trying to enjoy something I totally hated. But there was
also bad news. Finding more fun in my life was
going to take some time, effort, and soul searching.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Are there things that you should do and try if
you want to reorient towards fun. Yes, you're gonna have
to put some effort into this, but it doesn't have
to be effort that feels un fun. If it starts
to feel like work at any time, then you're on
the wrong path. Like you don't want this to feel
like work, but you do want it to feel like, Oh,
this is interesting. I'm curious about this. I'm enjoying this process.
(17:08):
That's what our goal is.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Part of that curiosity involves overcoming the misconceptions that so
many of us have about what actually feels fun. As
we chatted, I realized I often use the term fun
when I don't really mean it, like what a fun
dinner party, when in reality I couldn't wait to get home.
I've even wielded the words that was so fun to
(17:30):
describe an at best meh zoom meeting.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
We use fun very casually and sloppily, and that leaves
us vulnerable to being manipulated by anyone who tells us
their product or service is fun. We will say, oh, yeah,
I'll do that because it's for fun, Because we just
think anything we don't do for work or leisure time
it must be fund But if you actually think about
the things that you're doing for fun and then investigate
(17:55):
how it's making you feel emotionally and physically, you may
realize that it's not actually making you feel it that good.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
When Catherine began the research for her Power of Fun book,
her first task was to define this elusive concept.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
We don't have a good working definition of what fun is,
and as a result, we don't take it seriously. There
are is very little scholarly work that's been done, or
academic work or scientific research into fun, because I mean
makes sense. How are you going to study something if
you don't have a definition for it.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I did my own literature search and Catherine's right. There's
lots of scientific work on happiness, but there are surprisingly
few papers on fun. If you do the Standards Scientific
Database search for the word fun, one of the top
hits is a paper entitled putting the Fun in Fungui
toenail oncomcosis.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Not fun, not fun at all.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And so to develop her own definition of fun, Catherine
called upon her Fun Squad, that group of one thousand
or so people like me who'd signed up to help
out with her new book. Catherine asked the fun Squad
to describe their own experiences with fun.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I think I had a very technical way of phrasing
the question, which is basically like, tell me about three
times that you would describe as so fun.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
She got back hundreds of examples. People talked about memories
of squishing mud through their toes, or playing drums with
their grandkids, or church dances, or playing fetch with a
particularly cute dog, or summer days on the lake laughing
with friends. Catherine was surprised by how vary the experiences were,
(19:26):
but also that these very different examples seem to touch
on the same three themes over and over again.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
What I call true fun is the confluence of playfulness,
connection and flow.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Playfulness, connection and flow. Let's look first at playfulness, which
Catherine describes as a feeling of being out of the
normal responsibilities of life.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
You don't have to actually be playing in the way
of like playing a board game or playing with a child,
but a playful spirit. You don't care too much about
the outcome. You're carefree. You're doing it just for the
sake of doing it, and it's very intrinsically motivating. But
you can bring a playful spirit to things that you
wouldn't think are play You can have a playful spirit
and engage in play at work, for example. So we
shouldn't be so strict about what we consider potentially playful.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
We should, however, be strict about making sure we find
ways to get more playfulness in our lives, especially if
we care about our mental and physical help, because the
science shows that play not only feels nice, it's also
good for our bodies and our brains. Studies find that
people who play more often are less susceptible to chronic
conditions like dementia and heart disease. There's also evidence that
(20:35):
playfulness is linked with increases in what's known as brain
derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that's linked to nerve growth.
This connection between play and brain development is one of
the reasons that many animals seem to play so much
in childhood, the very time in which we grow the
most new neural tissue. The second component of fun is
(20:56):
something we talk about a lot on the Happiness Lab connection,
that feeling of social togetherness and a sense that we're
sharing experiences with those around us. When Catherine surveyed her
fun squad, she found that nearly all of their examples
of true fun involved activities done with other people.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
And that was true even for introverts. A number of
people actually said they were surprised because they were a
self described introvert, and yet the experiences they described to
me allhead other people.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Connection is one of the big reasons that fun feels
so good. Study after study shows that being around other
people increases our positive mood and improves our mental health.
One famous well being study even concluded that spending time
with others was a necessary condition for high happiness.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Fun definitely helps us tap into our shared humanity, which
is something we do not prioritize, but which is enormously
important and I think we all know that intuitively, even
if we haven't thought about it, because that's the drive
that causes us to do things like spend a lot
of time in social media.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
And that gets us to the third component of true
fun flow. Psychologist Mihi Chiek set Me High, the guy
who first studied flow, defined it as that state of
true immersion that comes when we engage in a challenging activity.
Flow is the feeling you get when you're so present
and passionately involved in something that time just starts flying by,
(22:18):
but not all time flying by is a good thing.
Catherine argues that it's important to distinguish between true, honest
to goodness flow and what Cheek sent Me High called
junk flow.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
The easiest way to think about it is the difference
between being engaged and being hypnotized. So anytime you find
your eyes glazing over and forty five minutes passing and
you haven't taken a deep breath, that you haven't moved,
and you're just staring at a screen, the chances are
your junk flow. And it's very easy to get sucked
into that and think, Oh, I'm looking at Instagram or
I'm looking at social media. For fun and oh, I'm
(22:50):
in a flow state, but then you don't really feel
very good. That's not what true fun is about at all,
because true fun, by definition, is an active state. It's
not about zoning out. If you're zoned out and you're
not fully present, you're not having true fun.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
That requirement of presents is another reason true fun feels
so good. The presence we get from fun pursuits also
protects us from the urge to spend time on devices
that tend to steal our attention and drain our happiness.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
If you're having fun, you're not gonna want to be
on your phone like it's just not appealing. You don't
have to use billpower, you just don't want to do
it because it's less fun than whatever else you're doing.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
So playfulness, connection, and flow, those are the three ingredients
of fun that I'll be shooting for.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
If you can have a life that has more playfulness
or connection or flow, you're probably going to be on
the right track and in a better place than you
are now. If you have two of those states at once,
even better, And if you have all three of them
at once, I think of it as really being like
hitting the bulls eye, and you will have a moment
that I would consider to be true fun.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
The first step of my fundervention would require figuring out
all the factors that were preventing me from finding that
bullseye combination of playfulness, connection, and flow.
Speaker 6 (23:59):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yes, my phone.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Distraction is like kryptonite to fun. And I can assure
you that you are certainly not the only person for
whom distraction is probably the biggest fun killer in your life.
Because we all have smartphones, and they all have notifications
that go off all the time, and we've been conditioned
to want to check them all the time, even if
they're not notifying us. And anytime you do that, you're
pulling yourself out of your present experience and mentally checking
(24:24):
out for a second.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Catherine noted that distraction was probably also contributing to another
problem I've discussed before on this podcast that I often
feel too time famished to do stuff I really enjoy.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
It's all tied together because the distraction that we're all
encountering all the time is making us feel like we
don't have much time, which is making us stressed out,
which is making us more distractable, which is making us
feel like we have no time.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Catherine decided that addressing this would be fun prevention action
item number one. I had to find ways to train
my brain to be a little less distracted. But since
this is a fun prevention, Catherine thought I should limit
my distractions in a way that boosted my playfulness and connection. So,
rather than focus on avoiding the stuff I shouldn't be
paying attention to my email and notifications and so on,
(25:09):
Catherine decided that I should try to focus on more
attractive stuff, things that naturally make me feel good. She
suggested trying out a practice that she does with a
few of her friends, looking for what she calls delights.
I asked her what she meant by a delight.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
Delight is something that makes you feel delighted.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Laurie Her version of the practice started when a friend
recommended a book by the poet Rosque entitled The Book
of Delights.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
And he wrote an essay every day for a year
about something that delighted him.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Catherine copied the idea and found it to be well delightful.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Savoring like good things in the same way that we
ruminate about bad things, and I find it's a great
way to attract more fun into your life.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
It did sound like fun to swish a bunch of
delightful things around in my brain all day. But I
also worried that Catherine didn't fully realize the level of
mind distraction her pupil was dealing with. I realized I
might need some remedial help before jumping into the delight
deep end. So I decided to talk to the poet
who inspired Catherine, the guy who literally wrote the book
(26:12):
on delights. When we get back from the break, we'll
hear all the amazing lessons he shared. We'll see how
fun it can be to start noticing all the great
stuff in the world. Spring flowers, smiling faces on public transport,
the eighties band el DeBarge, and even tomato plants.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You know there's my tomato?
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Did you the happiness Lab? We'll be right back. I
knew finding more delights was going to be tough for
someone who's as distracted and overworked as I am, So
I decided to talk to the man who invented the practice,
(26:55):
the poet Rossquae.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
Well, you don't know until you carry a tomato seed,
lean through the airport and onto a plane is that
carrying a tomato seed lean through the airport and onto
a plane will make people smile at you, almost like
you're carrying a baby.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Ross is reading from his essay entitled Tomato on Board.
Speaker 6 (27:13):
I did not know this until today. Carrying my little
tomato about three or four inches high in its four
inch plastic starter pot, which my friend Michael gave to me,
smirking about how I was going to get it home.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Ross decided to stick the plant in his open carry
on bag and send it through the TSA machine.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
When the security guy saw it was a tomato, he
smiled and said, I don't know how to check that.
Have a good day.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
But as Ross tried to stick the tomato plant back
into his bag, he realized that one of its stems
had broken.
Speaker 6 (27:41):
So I decided I'd better just carry it out in
the open, and the shower of love began. Before boarding
the final leg in my flight, one of the workers
said nice tomato, which I don't think was a come on,
and the flight attendant asked about the tomato at least
five times, not an exaggeration, every time calling it my tomato,
Where's my tomato? How's my tomato? You there's my tomato,
(28:04):
did you. She even directed me to an open seat
in the exit row. Why don't you guys go sit
there and stretch out. When I got my water, I
poured some into the low guy's soil. When we got bumpy,
I put my hand on the low guy's container, careful
not to snap another arm off. And when we landed
and the pilot put the brakes on hard, my arm
reflexively went across the seat, holding the low guy in place,
(28:25):
the way my dad's arm would when he had to
break hard in that car without seat belts to speak of.
In one of my very favorite gestures in the Encyclopedia
of Human Gestures.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Tomato on board is just one of the many joy
inducing essays in Ross's Book of Delights, an entire book
filled with his personal stories of feeling delighted. The idea
for the book came when Ross was in Italy, walking
on a lovely path and noticing all the wildflowers. He
recognized how present he felt when experiencing delight, that feeling
(28:55):
of deep pleasure we get when we noticed something beautiful
or funny or just well delightful. Ross wanted to experience
that feeling more often and to document it.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
The thought was, no, you should write an essay every
day for a year about something that delights you and
see what you learn.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
He gave himself three rules for his new delight.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Project, and they were to do it every day, to
write by hand, and to write them quickly. So I
drafted them all in thirty minutes.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Ross began noticing new delights all the time, and every
time he saw one, he'd stick his finger in the
air and announce delight. The practice immediately connected him to
a lot more joy than he was expecting, which was
evident in the sheer number of times Ross laughed out
loud as he fidgeted through our interview. But the practice
also connected Ross to a host of wonderful, often very
(29:44):
specific things that he normally wouldn't have time to notice
because of the usual life distractions. Wonderful things like praying
mantis's and fireflies, and the first lilacs of the year,
which Ross eloquently refers to as the purple cornets of spring,
and the fact that spring not only has lots of
lovely flowers like lilacs, but oddly lots of lovely purple
(30:06):
flowers hyacinths, bellflower, irises those circular puff things I don't
really know the name of. It is indeed kind of
delightful that they are all purple.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
The abundance of the purple things like what a miracle
is that, you know, kind of miracul of fat.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Ross also found delight in the dumb things our bodies do,
like the laughing snort that sound we make when we
go fall so hard that we wind up sounding like
a pig.
Speaker 6 (30:37):
Which is this really beautiful experience of like, oh, my
body did something I didn't mean it to do, but
it did it out of a kind of you know,
a delight.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Ross also started to take delight and the weird things
humans do all the time, like giving a high five
to a total stranger, and the do over when we
make a mistake and quickly yell out do over and
just somehow get to pretend that whatever we just did
didn't happen. Ross also finds a lot of delight in music.
One essay called Love Me in a Special Way chronicles
(31:08):
his appreciation for one of my favorite eighties bands, El
DeBarge Think to the beat of the Rhythm of the Night.
The essay ends with him hearing El DeBarge playing in
the security line at the Philadelphia Airport and then noticing
an older man working there scream out to no one
in particular, Hey, is that el DeBarge?
Speaker 6 (31:27):
That that record was made and I could have listened
to it is astonishing.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
As I shared my own delight in listening to l
DeBarge with Ross, he explained that conversations like ours soon
became one of the best parts of his project.
Speaker 6 (31:40):
Like the fact that you just shared that with me,
It just makes my eyes bigger for that, and it
makes my heart bigger too.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Ross's eyes are still constantly focused on the wonders of
the world. He even shared a delight that he'd heard
that very morning.
Speaker 6 (31:53):
I never noticed it before, but the way that sometimes
we will make a sound to another person. Maybe you
grow blueberries, I might make a sound to indicate their
delicious hmo, and like ah.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
By training himself to notice delights, Ross has made his
days more playful, that first marker of true fun. But
he's also embraced that sense of connection that comes from
sharing your own delights with others.
Speaker 6 (32:23):
Oh this delights you, this delights me. Oh, we're kindred
in this way, probably among other ways.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
A year of focusing on delightful things also made Ross
more present. Seeking out delights gives him flow.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
I found that as I was practicing this, my eyes
were on for delight. That's it. My eyes were on
for delight.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
But noticing delights has had other benefits for Ross beyond
just being fun. It's given Ross an unexpected dose of resilience.
Even though his book is ostensibly about delights, his essays
also tackle issues like structural racism and grief following the
death of a loved one, and many of the parts
of life that are downright ugly. But training his brain
to notice positive things has allowed him to keep noticing
(33:05):
blessings even in the worst of times.
Speaker 6 (33:08):
In the midst of found sorrow, there's like eight purple
things that bloom in May. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
As I chatted with Ross, I was struck by how
much happiness he exuded. He's one of the most joyful
people I've spoken with in a really long time. Ross
explained that he constantly feels an emotion that scientifically known
to boost well being, a deep sense of gratitude. Ross
claims that his gratitude for the universe often feel so
profound these days that it sometimes moves him to tears.
Speaker 6 (33:39):
No it is it's like me hens, thank you, you
know like that.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
Seeing the joy that Ross experienced got me really excited
to do my fun prevention delight homework. So I bought
a crappy notebook and got ready to catalog like Ross.
Speaker 5 (33:57):
I worried that I.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Wouldn't be able to come up with something truly delightful
every single day. I also feared that I'd constantly feel
like I didn't have time to be focused on sleuthing
out all these good things, especially on busier days. But
I adapted the rules Ross used to make things easier.
I just had to find one delight a day, and
I promised myself that I'd take no more than a
(34:18):
few seconds to scribble something about that delight down on paper.
And if I was feeling really overwhelmed on a particular day,
I didn't even have to write anything, just notice finger
in the air delight. So what happened, Well, I quickly
realized how easily delight start finding you when you just
take time to notice. Instead of walking around town with
(34:41):
my phone out to check my email, I spent my
days feeling kind of curious, looking around trying to find
that hidden delight for the day. And when you train
your attention to look for good stuff, it works often
pretty fast. In fact, locating all those hidden delights took
way less time than I thought. It quickly felt like
they were finding me rather than me finding them. I
(35:04):
was very excited to report back about all my successes
to my fun prevention instructor. I was at this beach house.
There's this beautiful beach house looking out at the ocean,
and this mockingbird like flew and came onto the fence
right near there, and I was like, oh, I'm mockingbird.
And then he just took a dump and flew away,
(35:25):
and that was like.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Delight, delight, A finger in the air.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
The same beach, I went for a walk on the
beach and there was this woman, you know, who was
on a beach blanket, just hanging out on the beach
and I noticed that she had a leash, but on
the leash wasn't a dog. It was a cat. Like
she'd brought her cat to the beach and the cat
was just like sitting there chilling on the beach.
Speaker 4 (35:46):
That's delightful.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
It was wonderful.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
The cats on the beach was so good.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
As Catherine and I connected and playfully laughed at the
delights I'd been present enough to start noticing. I realized
I was on the path to feeling less distracted and
actually experiencing this thing called fun. But there was still
more fun invention to be done. I was getting better
at paying attention, but I still needed to discover what
really felt fun, and to do that, I needed to
(36:12):
find ways to experience a bit more self compassion when
trying new things. And so, unfortunately I need to leave
you with a bit of a cliffhanger this week, but
I promise that Part two of my fun Prevention will
be even more that super fun. I was really scared
with that superbud it was.
Speaker 5 (36:29):
It was awesome fun.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
So if you want to hear about the final steps
in my fun Prevention, then don't miss the next sure
to be fun episode of The Happiness Lab with me
Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written and
produced by Ryan Dilly. Our original music was composed by
Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by Evan Biola.
(36:55):
Joseph Fridman checked our facts. Sophie Crane mckibbon edited our scripts.
Emily and Vaughan offered additional production support. Special thanks to
Mi LaBelle, Carly Migliori, Heather Fame, Maggie Taylor, Annella Lucaran,
Maya Knigg, Nicol Morano, Eric Xandler, Boyston Biser, Jacob Weissberg,
and my agent Ben Davis. That Pinis Lab is brought
(37:18):
to you by Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Laurie Santos
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