Have you tried just having fun?
create your own fun filosophy.
“Just have fun” - is something Richard Williams said often to his girls when raising them to be the top tennis players in all of the sport’s history.
You’ve likely heard the names, Venus Williams & Serena Williams if you’ve ever turned on any sports channel ever.
& even if not, you still may be reading this thinking “Just have fun, really? that’s the motto preached to raising 2 of the world’s best tennis players?”
Well, yep. Just have fun is the motto & today I want to go deeper into this motto to outline:
1) Why having fun matters a lot.
2) How to have more fun
3) The real winner’s mentality behind fun
— All so you can make your own conclusions & philosophy (or filosophy) around trying to add more fun into your life.
🤖 the robotic vacation begins! 🏄♂️🌴
Just before we dive deep into the fun stuff, If you’re reading this right now that means I’m on day 1 of 10 on my robotic vacation.
If you want to follow along with how I’m operating my business with robots for the length of my vacation & follow along you can do so by clicking here
Why fun matters
Most of the people living life as adults have lost the light for fun, their sense of child-like fun is all but dimmed down to nothing.
This is an absolute shame because fun matters, & it matters a lot.
Imagine yourself living a life without fun, everything is all work, no play:
Imagine you can go to an all-inclusive resort somewhere tropical but you can’t leave your room & you must work 8 hours each day.
This to me is how most adults are choosing to lead their lives. All around them are all these fun things, hobbies, activities, and possible pursuits of wonder, & yet they stay mentally in a mode where they are locked in the same, all-work no-play room all day long.
Of course, nothing ought to be fun all the time, you will have your off days where you feel like doing nothing or you face some struggle: But FUN as a focus for doing things is an excellent one.
Sadly a lot of adults will scorn people for having fun, for getting lost in an activity like a child, this is because they have pushed their own fun so far back into the dark pit of their soul that it has grown into hatred for itself.
Going back to the biography of Richard Williams "King Richard” for a second: There are many points of the film that berates the average tennis parent. The parents who scream & get angry at their kid when their kid loses, as opposed to Richard’s approach which was to make sure his kid’s “just had fun”.
Funnily enough the fun aspects & focus on the fun are what also made the not-so-fun aspects of the two tennis stars’ journeys fun, they fell in love with all the fun parts of tennis & the things that looked like immense work to others ended up feeling similar to play for them.
Having fun matters ultimately not because it makes you a better person, or helps you enjoy every waking hour of your life, but rather it matters because it stops you from questioning yourself & lets you enjoy the moment you are in fully, a lot more often.
This is one of my ideas on why fun matters, but feel free to draw your own conclusions about why else fun matters too.
If you focus on fun, you will find more of it; like anything you put your focus on.
So focus on your focus, and make it fun.
Finding fun in the boring stuff
Just the other day I was at the beach with my girlfriend and best friend. We were all sitting on a towel, trying to warm up after swimming in the cold water near the backside of the beach.
While we were warming up we had a show put on for us where we watched 2 kids no older than 10 having an overbearing amount of fun doing something most would consider absolutely boring. & they only stopped when their mom called them back, they were in an adrenaline rush trance level of fun, I could tell because I remember the feeling from when I was a kid.
What were they doing?
They were throwing rocks, aiming to hit a foam football moving with the coming & going tide on the shore. That’s all, they didn’t have any fancy slingshots or gadgets. They picked up a rock, took aim at the foam football, then jumped (& screamed) in excitement every time they got close to hitting the ball.
Why was it equally fun just to watch them have fun?
— Think about it for yourself before reading on for 10 seconds —
It was equally fun because they weren’t doing anything I couldn’t do, yet they made it into an absolute adventure, a sport, & a fantastical event with every second: one couldn’t help but be having fun too just watching others having fun at such a high level.
How to have more fun
This section doesn’t need to be long because I’ve already covered how to have more fun.
Here’s the “answer”
Focus your life around fun, Focus on having fun, & you will naturally have more of it; Like anything you put your focus on.
The winner’s mentality behind having fun
Having fun is also a winners mentality, & it’s not very complicated.
Here’s what I mean:
People who are having fun naturally don’t feel like they are partaking in a chore or work even when to others it may appear like what they are doing for fun or play is a lot of work or effort.
a focus of having fun ultimately leads to the achievement & finding the answers of these quotes listed below from Naval
The winner’s mentality behind having fun is that you find something that feels like play to you, or is play to you, but looks like work to others.
The example we’ve been using so far carrying over:
Someone who is playing tennis for fun, or treating it foremost as their form of play will have a much higher likely hood or honing in on the craft than someone who is just doing it as a form of work.
The person who tennis feels like work to will not outcompete someone who is in a state of play as they are depleted by the “work” while the other person is energized by the “work” because it is their form of fun.
& That’s the winner’s mentality of fun.
The fun haver trumps the worker for concerted effort into just about anything.
Summary, TLDR & Wrap-up Conclusion
Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena Williams, emphasized the importance of “just having fun” while raising them to become top tennis players.
Fun matters because it adds joy to life and allows you to fully enjoy the present moment. By focusing on fun, you can find more of it.
Even in seemingly boring activities, you can find fun by approaching them with a sense of adventure.
The winner's mentality behind fun is that when something feels like play to you, it becomes easier to excel at it compared to treating it as work.
The person who enjoys what they're doing will have more energy and dedication, giving them an advantage over those who view it solely as work.
or if you really want to boil it down, the lesson remains, as “Just have fun”.
Thank you for reading this, whoever you are. I appreciate you more than you know.
I hope you have an amazing & very fun-filled day.
Until we meet again (or you read another part of my writing somewhere)
sincerely, from your my mom’s basement
your friend,
jack ♠️