Should Life Be Fun?

Lately a theme has been coming up in the conversations I’m having with clients and peers.

Should life be fun? What role does fun have in how I create my life? My career?

For many of us—especially those of us who adopted the “good girl” persona in childhood—fun is a secondary priority, if it even ranks at all.

As an eldest daughter with cPTSD and an atrophied ability to connect to and make sense of my own emotions, needs, and desires, fun was something I drifted far, far away from as a teenager.

This drift made way for a focus on other people’s emotions and needs, an identity built around serving those less fortunate, and a vision of “success” built on how useful I could make myself to others.

I joined committees and boards. I volunteered. I was dependable and reliable. I had no commitments to myself that couldn’t be broken if someone else needed me.

I was also exhausted, jaded, and miserable.

This isn’t just about me as an individual deciding not to prioritize fun in my life. It’s about the larger systems that incentivized me—and many others—to tie our identities to our work, paid and unpaid, and to put that before all else.

As children, we inherently know how to have fun. We know how to play. We follow our curiosity. We do things simply because we enjoy doing them.

So what happens to cause this collective Forgetting?

Can you imagine talking to a high school senior who answers the question “What’s next after graduation?” with a declaration that they’re going to spend a year making pottery, learning to surf, or wandering around the country instead of getting on with the business of life and work and adulting?

Many adults would respond with incredulity, skepticism, and gloomy warnings about destitution and “ruining your life.”

We learn pretty quickly which desires are considered legitimate.

Relearning fun

For me, it took getting divorced in my early thirties to realize that I had built a life I didn’t actually want to live in.

Once I had the awareness, I couldn’t un-see it.

So I thought about the last time I felt deeply connected to fun, to life, to myself: my childhood.

I made a list of things I loved to do as a child:

• Riding my bike around the neighborhood until it got dark and I had to come inside.

• Dancing in the kitchen with my sister.

• Listening to classical music.

• Drawing and painting and making crafts.

• Playing dress up.

• Playing games with friends and family.

• Learning about animals and the planet.

Then I thought about how I might incorporate these activities into my adult life on a regular basis.

I actually set quarterly goals for having fun. I made a colorful display for my wall to keep those things top of mind.

It might sound ridiculous to turn fun into a goal, but that was what I needed at the time. I had spent decades strengthening my muscles for responsibility, achievement, and obligation.

I needed to practice fun again.

And it worked.

It helped me reconnect with myself and my interests.

But it didn’t prevent me from burning out at work a few years later.

Which brings me to another question:

What role does fun have in how I create my career?

What did you learn to believe about work?

I believe that most of us get some mix of the following messages about the purpose of work and what we should prioritize as we choose our career paths:

• Work is just a paycheck.

• Work shouldn’t be fun—that’s why it’s called “work.”

• Work is about building financial stability.

• Work should give you meaning and purpose.

• Work is just a means to an end.

• Work is the most important thing.

• Work is how you achieve “success.”

• Hard work and dedication are inherently virtuous.

• You should always give 100%.

• Taking time off, resting, or pacing yourself at work is weak or risky.

• Setting boundaries around work will disappoint people.

• Hustling and being busy are status symbols.

• If you don’t have enough, work harder or work more hours.

What we do with these messages and how we determine our own path varies greatly from person to person. But those of us who hit the point of burnout, disillusionment, or hopelessness have often internalized many of them.

What if these aren’t the only ways to relate to work?

What if you chose instead to believe:

• Work can feel good.

• Enjoyment is a legitimate criterion for choosing work.

• Your output will naturally vary depending on your energy, capacity, and season of life.

• Rest is part of sustainable work, not something you earn by exhausting yourself first.

• Your boundaries matter even when they inconvenience someone else.

• Being good at something doesn’t mean you should build your career around it.

• Your work should fit your humanity rather than requiring you to continually override it.

• More effort is not always the answer.

• How your work feels to you matters.

What if you built a career that centers fun, what feels good, and what you truly need?

This kind of orientation doesn’t fit neatly within the capitalist hegemony.

It’s a countercultural approach that centers your humanity rather than your ability to produce. That centers your experience of your life rather than the experience of the shareholders. That centers your inherent enough-ness rather than your ego’s need to prove itself worthy.

And there’s another reason I think we should pay attention to what feels good:

Fun is information.

You can be good at something that drains you

When I became certified as a Kolbe Consultant, I learned about the different instinctive ways we take action and solve problems.

One of the most important things I took from that experience was this:

You can be highly skilled at something that costs you a tremendous amount of energy.

Working in alignment with our natural ways of taking action can support our effectiveness, confidence, satisfaction, and motivation. Constantly working against those instincts can be draining.

And one of the trickiest places to be is just slightly out of alignment.

It can feel like a slow leak.

This is what happened to me in the corporate role that eventually led to my burnout.

I was a frog in slowly boiling water.

I had been trained for the role. I was performing extremely well. I got promoted. And I kept picking up tasks that needed to be done but that I didn’t enjoy.

I could do them.

I could do them well.

So there was no obvious reason to stop.

Until eventually, I was fully cooked.

Fun is data. But are you willing to believe the data?

When something feels fun, exciting, fascinating, or personally meaningful, this is DATA.

When we find tasks or activities that come so naturally to us that we don’t even realize we’re masterful at them, this is DATA.

When we lose track of time because we're absorbed in something, that's data.

When an idea makes us want to immediately start experimenting, that's data.

And when something consistently leaves us depleted despite being very good at it, that's data too.

But I've realized that collecting the data isn't enough.

This is where self-acceptance comes in.

You can be perfectly aware that you crave more creativity, autonomy, play, movement, spaciousness, novelty, or connection—and still believe that you shouldn't need those things.

You can know that something makes you miserable and tell yourself you should be grateful for it.

You can know what makes you come alive and dismiss it as frivolous, unrealistic, childish, irresponsible, or unproductive.

You can know yourself remarkably well and still build a life that doesn't honor what you know.

Self-acceptance means allowing what you discover about yourself to be true without immediately arguing with it.

Yes, I need more variety than this.

Yes, I want work to be fun.

Yes, this thing that looks impressive on paper drains me.

Yes, this thing that doesn't seem particularly productive makes me come alive.

And maybe I don't need to justify that before I'm allowed to let it matter.

This is what I mean when I talk about self-connection.

Self-awareness says: This gives me energy.

Self-acceptance says: I'm allowed to care about that.

Self-trust says: I'm going to let that information guide me.

Follow the fun

In improv, there’s a concept called “finding the fun.”

You notice the most interesting, delightful, or energizing thing happening in the scene—and you follow it. You amplify it. You see where it takes you.

I've started thinking about my life in much the same way.

If you’ve ever felt paralyzed in the face of a decision, imagine being able to check in with your own Fun Barometer.

Which option makes me more curious?

What gives me energy?

What feels expansive or exciting?

What would I choose if enjoyment were allowed to be part of the equation?

And then imagine trusting yourself enough to let the answers actually influence your path.

It may take some experimentation and exploration to figure out exactly what is fun for you. And following the fun doesn't mean ignoring money, responsibility, stability, impact, or the realities of your life.

It means fun gets a seat at the table, too.

This is the experiment I'm conducting in my own life and the work I'm doing with my clients: creating lives that we actually want to live in.

The end result is TBD.

But I firmly believe that if I get to the end of my life having paid attention to what made me curious, energized, connected, and alive—and having trusted myself enough to follow it—I’ll feel pretty damn good about how I lived.

How connected are you to yourself?

Following the fun requires being able to hear yourself in the first place.

Can you recognize what you need and want? Can you accept what you discover without immediately judging or overriding it? Can you trust what you know about yourself enough to let it influence your choices?

Those are some of the capacities I explore in my Self-Connection Check-In, a free assessment designed to help you understand where your connection to yourself is strongest—and where it might need a little more attention.

Take the free Self-Connection Check-In →

Photo: Me as a "Leaf Peeper" for Halloween last year. Spoiler alert: I still enjoy playing dress up and I love a punny costume!