Start Having Fun

By Lan Vuga

In my “unhappy days” I didn’t do anything fun for years. At least not consistently.

I usually enjoyed sports like football and tennis, I enjoyed running, gym, travelling,..etc.

But all of this was completely at the bottom of my priority list at the time as I was on a mission to get to my goals of learning digital marketing and growing a business as fast as possible.

I didn’t have time for fun, I was busy running after success and freedom. Little did I know that with my striving and attitude, I was destroying my chances for the things I was pursuing

I didn’t know at that time that fun is the lifeblood of life.

And that joyous, happy people are much more likely to succeed professionally as well, which was what I was pursuing at the time.

Now I know that I leaned my ladder on the wrong wall and it didn’t help If I climbed faster. That joy and enthusiasm are the only options you have for living a happy, amazing life. I still want to be successful. Also financially. But how I plan to get there is completely different.

By letting go of the notion of how things should be, enjoying growth and creation.

Joy = Success

If you are not experiencing joy often then I would say you are not successful in life.

Yes, you may have a lot of money, power, a special relationship or anything else you might think you craved.

But if these things are not bringing you joy, you clearly have to change what you are working on and start to focus on the things that are actually a success for you.

It may be difficult to face reality and start doing what you actually want to do. Let’s take an example that you would find in movies perhaps. Your parents want you to become a lawyer but you are not really interested in that. You want to work with animals. But the pressures you feel are too big and you don’t find the power to rebel when you were young. You finish law school, are regarded as quite a competent lawyer, you gain high status in society, the money is amazing and so are the perks. You try squashing your dreams of becoming a zoologist because it’s too painful to look the truth in the eyes.

Are you successful? By my definition, no. You haven’t yet faced the truth. You are not free to pursue who you really are. You may be finding joy in activities after work, which is great, but you haven’t yet taken responsibility for all parts of your life.

What I would consider success is that one day this person realizes what is happening and enrols in college to pursue his dream.

Can we imagine how this person would feel on the day he did that? I bet it would be joy and enthusiasm.

If he continues to make decisions in line with his authentic self and feels and lives who he is, then he is a success.

For me a success was starting to enjoy my weekends by going for trips, it was playing football and table tennis after 10 year. It was finally taking a spearfishing and cross country skiing courses I talked about for years, buying plane tickets to Naples and Santorini, because it was places that I wanted to visit.

I felt blocked from doing this for years and years. My head was telling me “you will enjoy after you are successful, after you are financially well off, after you become a business owner.. After you become somebody.”

This is a fallacy.

It doesn’t work that way. When I started breaking these beliefs I had and started doing what was extremely difficult for me – taking the time, money and effort to do fun and joyous activities, I felt success and was proud of myself. I did something I wanted to do. I wanted to do it for such a long time but I denied myself the joy, the pleasure. When I finally did it I was proud of myself. It was a huge step in my life.

And there are still so many things that I am doing that bring me these feelings. It can be a simple thing like buying a really good steak and preparing it. For me this was a success as my head was always telling me: “This meat is expensive and you will just destroy it because you don’t even know how to prepare it. Don’t buy it, it’s a waste of money. You will do it sometime in the future when you will be able to more easily afford it and you won’t care about the 20 €. Not now, now you have to save money so that you can pursue your goals of becoming a success”.

Funny eh? I was thinking I am becoming financially free by being the total opposite of free. When I was restricting my freedom to buy anything not 100 % necessary and connected with my goal. By denying my freedom to buy something I could easily afford.

It’s just absurd. But this is how our mind works. Irrational beliefs guide our actions. And it’s hard to snap out of it as they are deeply ingrained in our subconsciousness.

If we want to become successful, we have to start recognizing the patterns of our existence. We have to get to know ourselves, face the truth and start making the changes we want to make.

This takes a lot of courage. The more we are down, the harder it is. But the more we are down, the less we have to lose. And the more we are down, the desire to change becomes greater and greater until one day it will become greater than the desire to remain the same. Because the pain is just too big and we aren’t able to live another day without changing.

This is the first day of the rest of our life.

I am trying to challenge you to not wait that long and start doing the changes today. Why wait to become ill to start working on your health. Why wait for despair to start enjoying yourself?

Success is not a one time thing

Success is how you live your life.

What’s important here is that you start listening to yourself. What do you want to do? What do you want to try? Put it in your calendar. You only have one life.

If you have to do it alone, do it.

I would prefer to go hiking or biking and exploring new routes with friends than going alone. But I can’t always find the company and I just go alone. I feel even more uncomfortable but I still have fun doing it. It’s the best decision I can make at that time. It’s not perfect but it’s the best I can do at the time. And that’s all that matters. We have to work with what we have now. This is the best possibility we are creating so that the future can be even better. If we are doing our best in the present. With me going alone on some tours, I believe that in time I will attract new people in my life to share my joy with.

And If not I am still doing the exact thing I want to. I feel proud of myself when I do it. A success. Every single time.

So schedule your fun time! Plan it! Mark it in your calendar with even more intention than your work or education-related meetings. It has to be there to fill up your batteries. So you are operating life from a higher energy rate and frequency.

I try to develop my skills of having fun very seriously. I started spearfishing, biking, hiking, mountain climbing, cross-country skiing, playing table tennis and tennis, camping and probably some other things as well in the last 4 years.

Things that I really enjoy and can just let go of my mind. Things that are really fun and I didn’t even consider doing years ago as it was not the thing that would bring me “success”.