Put More Fun into Your Work

No sense working so hard. These days that's my mantra, followed by "Let's see how I can have more fun with this." By "this" I mean whatever I'm doing it. How can I turn my work or my shopping trip or my time standing in line somewhere into play? How can I have a good time doing it?

For example, I was stuck in traffic for a long while recently. Stressing out about it certainly wasn't going to help, and even all my music choices didn't seem appealing. So I asked myself, How can I have a good time doing this? I came up with three methods:

Play the Alphabet Game

Remember doing this as a kid to pass the time on a long trip (before electonic games)? I quickly noticed an auto (easy), bumper, car (kind of cheating there after already saying auto -- oh, forget the rules!), dashboard, equipment, fan (not a fan of mine -- I wasn't becoming delusional). It was the fan on my car's cooling system) and so on. Admittedly not exciting stuff, but more fun than growling at the drivers in front of me. Well, almost more fun than that...

Make a Face

Doing facial play is relaxing and refreshing. Like we did as kids. Puckering up, sticking out our tongue, rolling our lower lip into pouting position, moving our cheeks and jaws into various weird contortions, snarling. I found that snarling with growly sound effects was rather satisfying while parked on the freeway. And all the goofy facial expressions reminded me to lighten up a little. The world wasn't ending, I was just moving at a leisurely pace.

Make Up a Sad Country Western Song Title

Now, we're talking serious silliness. Moaning and groaning (from our hard, hard life) can easily be translated into a real sad love song for a Country Western album. My two attempts were rather limp, but you'll get the idea: 1) I Can't Seem to Get Nowhere Near You, 2) While I'm Stuck in Traffic, You're Getting Stuck on Someone Else.

Now I'm a fairly serious person, so I do not do this kind of play easily. I have to make my mind up I'm going to do it and set aside my assumption that I'll feel or look foolish. (My mother's "Don't be silly" still rings in my ears.) Once I do that, I start having fun. In the traffic standstill, I was enjoying myself so much that by the time I got home I had created the idea for a new teleseminar series on turning work into play that I'll be offering soon. I want to reconnect people with childlike playfulness to help them reduce stress and get past obstacles. Playing is all about enjoying life and moving on toward our dreams.

Author of The Secret Wisdom of a Woman's Body
Visit me at www.patsamples.com