Who is more fun to be around? … Someone who is having fun or someone who is all grown up?

Ok, this isn’t really a question to be answered; we all know the answer, but recently I realized it was something worth thinking about. I am sure somewhere in my past it wasn’t so difficult to find time to have fun and be fun. A couple of weeks ago in my life coaching class I had a moment of clarity about my attitude to fun. I found I had made rules for myself about when I was allowed to have fun. Shockingly it wasn’t just me who’d done this, loads of other people seem to be doing it too. Go on, I dare you, ask yourself – what are your rules about fun?

Do you think of fun as time off, or too frivolous? Is there no time for fun until the many responsibilities, errands and chores are done first? Maybe fun is reserved for times when no-one is looking because, heaven forbid, fun might involve being silly! Perhaps like many others (apparently men do this a lot) fun is what happens on vacation. And here’s an idea for women, fun can only happen when everyone else’s needs are taken care of – right, that’s really never ever, ever, gonna happen! Even just taking the last two rules together and applying them to an annual 2 week vacation with your kids would mean you get maybe 14 hours of fun a year – THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT!

And that leads us back to the question: if you’re not having any fun, are you fun to be around?

So, here I am at the parent participation day of my kid’s gym class. I’ve been through 9 weeks of helping out – watching her perform fantastic feats of being upside down and providing “oohs” and “ahhs” and cheers in all (OK most of) the right places. Her fun is fun to watch. And then it happened, the very moment she’d effortlessly unwound herself from hanging upside down on the asymmetric bars (you know the position, the one where your hands and feet are on the bar in the same place and your body looks like the letter ‘U’ ). Her words rang out clear, and a little too loudly, “Go on mummy, your go”. They seemed to echo round my head forever. Well what could I do… (after glancing round the room to check no-one was watching) I had a go. And do you know what? It was fun! My inner child (although not my middle-aged body) thanked me for letting her go on gym equipment she’d never been allowed on. My dismount was not as elegant as my daughter’s, but hey – she’s a bendy kid! Anyhow, as the music from the Jungle Book “Wa’na Be Like You” bounced around my mind I caught sight of one of dads upside down on the bars too…I swear he’d the biggest smile on his face!

Maybe fun is infectious. Is infectiousness enough to get us to break our own rules? Rules are there to be broken, right?! So, the next time you are not sure whether you could have fun, ask yourself “if this were someone else, would I stop them from having fun in their life?!”

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