How Do We Have Fun?

“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they are happy.”
-Anton Chekhov

It is July; my favorite month, and my birth month. It is warm and the days are long and light. We can take walks, ride bikes into the night, lie in the sun and bathe ourselves in warm and refreshing water. We can watch the fireworks, eat snow cones, bar-b-que, and so on.  It is summertime.  It is a time when we dress lighter in cool clothes. We bare ourselves. 

Do you find that you consciously and unconsciously keep some of you and your thoughts from others; even the ones you love? Are there places where you don’t bare yourself? Do you keep yourself from enjoying ‘you’ by limiting the amount of fun you are allowed to have? Do you have an allowance of fun?

Some of these may seem like silly questions. What I am getting at is how you live more fully, in the present, with joy and love. July is a time I love. It is a fun time for me also. I think back to things that keep us from love and from loving ourselves and others. We have looked at this issue from different perspectives through issues we carry and how we can change them to live more fully and vitally through tools like the family constellation work. Now, when we don’t live in fear, and we are gaining a sense of who we are and know we have a right to healthy boundaries, we become open to love. Some people say that the opposite of love is hate. To me, the opposite of love is fear. When we live in fear there is no way we can love ourselves. Moving through fear by having good boundaries can open us to love. When we know we can protect ourselves and also be open to who we are, we can be in the present and take in the good things in life; like having fun.

To me, part of having fun and loving myself is baring myself. It is fun to go out with friends and be true and open and bare my thoughts and feelings. When we are defended or don’t have boundaries between our ideas and thoughts and other’s ideas and thoughts, it is hard to have fun. Then it is work. 

Let’s have some fun together and play a word game where we take each letter in the word “fun”, F, U, N, and with each individual letter think of a word which starts with that letter. Let’s start with the letter F. What word do we want to use for F? How about “favorite”? Now, what word for U? How about “unique”? What word for N? How about “noodle”? We now have an acronym for fun: Favorite Unique Noodle!  This is a game I play with my nephew and family. It is fun, teaches spelling and gives a way to remember the words. When we drive, we look at the letters in license plates and make up words to go with the letters. The sillier the better. It is loads of fun.

When we allow ourselves to be us, to be silly, to enjoy life and have fun, we can come up with many things to enjoy. This too is part of life and opens more and more to us and we are able to live fully in the present. 


Shift Your Story: Guided Visualization/Meditation

Take a moment and breathe deeply. You can do this either in a leisure walk or sitting comfortably. Breathe deeply a couple of times and still your mind. With your eyes gently open or closed, in your mind’s eye see yourself doing something that is pure fun for you. Without trying to actively determine what that is, just let it appear in your mind. We are asking here for us to open to fun without predetermining what that would be or would look like. Just see in your mind’s eye something that some part of you, possibly your unconscious views as fun. Just see it in front of you, and let it go. Now let something else just appear in your mind’s eye. See it and feel it, and let it go. Let this happen a couple of more times, and let it go. The last time, let an image appear to you and look it in the eye; it could be a person, a thing, an activity…anything. See it and let it register inside of you, and listen to its message to you. Then breathe deeply a couple more times and slowly come back to the present. Before the last image leaves your consciousness, get a piece of paper and pen and write it down. This message is just for you!!

Have fun with this visualization and see what this does for you.


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