Taking Fun Seriously

By Roz Trieber, MS, CHES

One of my favorite words is Fun. Life has to be fun. Isn’t that what we really wish everyone when we send birthday and holiday greetings? Our greetings convey a message for a healthy, happy, vibrant, life --- Every single day of our life.
What is Fun?

FUN is pure energy. It reflects a certain attitude and willingness to live. Having fun means being amused, creating more opportunities to play, sing, and dance, doing what you love, and feeling the joy of living. When we are experiencing fun, we are living in the moment, with a smile on our face, and a twinkle in our eyes.

Do you have to be a “funster,” somebody who likes to have fun or who enjoys telling jokes, in order to be happy, laugh, and play in this over stressed world packed full of fear, competition, and disease?

What is Play?

Play according to the National Institute of Play “is a state of being that is intensely pleasurable. It energizes and enlivens us. It eases our burdens, renews a natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.” Play may be a silly thing and its playfulness and lightheartedness are essential to experiencing fun for its many benefits.

Play has a significant role in shaping our brains, developing creativity, innovation, and helps us adapt to situations. When play is included as part of our social practices, we are able to dramatically effect our personal health and our relationships, the opportunities to be innovative, resilient, and self reliant.
Research demonstrates that play practices are antidotes to public health trends like depression and stress. When you are playing, there is an inherent and unique feeling of reward. Playing generates optimism, seeks out novelty, makes perseverance fun, leads to mastery, gives the immune system a bounce, fosters empathy and promotes a sense of belonging and community. Each of these play by-products are indices of personal health. When play is absent from daily living, stress and its effects are enhanced.
Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, says “without play, ‘‘there’s a sense of dullness, lassitude and pessimism, which doesn’t work well in the world we live in.’’

Give yourself permission to be silly. There is no need to care about what others are thinking. You are living in the moment and laughing all the way!If you didn’t have a funectomy (the removal of our fun gene) when you were born, this is how your sense of humor might have developed.Remember when you were a preschooler and you rolled over laughing when you heard a riddle that went like this: “What do you get when you cross an elephant with a jar of peanut butter? The answer was You get a peanut butter sandwich that never forgets! You weren’t trying to be funny, you were having fun naturally.By the time you were eight years old you were beginning to develop your witty sense of humor and have more fun. You could identify comical aspects in the craziness of daily life; remember this riddle? “Why do hot dogs come in packages of 12 when hot dog rolls come in packages of eight?” This riddle continues to circulate on the internet. You are older than eight years old and you still laugh.
Play and Create Your Own Fun:

With a little bit of creativity, you can create our own fun words. Fun never goes out of style. Try this on for size. A silly rhyming game. Choose a word, any word and follow it with rhyming nonsense words or real words. For example: busy, dizzy, tizzy, frizzy and so on. Now it’s your turn. Turn to the person sitting next to you and rhyme a word for the next 30 seconds.

Have you ever thought about words that have fun as their root and we miss the point! Take the word Fundamental for example: Fundamental means the basics. The first three letters spell fun. That means enjoyment needs to be the basics for just about everything you and I do. If you’re working at a job and not having fun or enjoying what you are doing, get a new job! At least do something that brings you joy, pleasure and laughter no matter what the situation.After all, when we laugh together, we like being together.
I like to think of fun the way Dr. Clifford Kuhn, author of “The Fun Factor” thinks of it:” When you’re making others laugh, you’re having sex with them. But if you’re sharing a laugh with them, you’re making love.”
Have FUN now, why wait?

Cancer and the Healing Power of Play - The Ebook

Please contribute your experiences, success tips, and suggestions for additional games in the comment section of our blog.

WHY WE LAUGH: THE 3 BASIC FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR

WHY WE LAUGH: THE 3 BASIC FUNCTIONS OF HUMOR by Izzy Gesll, M.ED, CSP

To experience what it is like to try and definitively define humor, rent the Japanese movie Rashomon. In this 1950 film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, a crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways. The Rashomon Effect is the effect of the subjectivity of perception, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.

Humor also is a shape-shifting concept. Highly desired in both personal and community relationships as a vehicle for joy, laughter and connectedness, it can just as easily arrive as a gift that when unwrapped causes tears, anger and emotional distance.

Generally, humor serves one of three functions. As a shield, it protects us from pain caused by outside sources. If we laugh at ourselves before others do, the truth won’t hurt us as much. I think it’s important here to differentiate the concepts of self-derogatory humor and self-effacing humor. Self-derogatory humor is about laughing at who you are; self-effacing humor is about laughing at what you do. As human beings we all look foolish at times. That doesn’t make us fools.

A second function of humor is as a weapon. Hurting others or diminishing them can make us feel better or release pent up anger. It’s a way of dealing with fear or the sense of low-status. If we can “put someone down,” by definition our status is raised. This motive is the driving force behind negative humor such as ethnic, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic or racist jokes. By making fun of what scares us, we diminish its power to hurt us.

An interesting social quality of humor is its ability to allow difficult information to be received in a non-threatening way. As George Bernard Shaw said, “If you ever want to tell someone the truth, better make him laugh, or he’ll kill you.” Humor is one of the few forms of social interaction that has a trial balloon attached to it. If you say something that is received as offensive by someone else, you can always attempt to defuse the negativity by uttering the well-worn phrase, “just kidding.” This may keep tempers at bay. However, “just kidding,” does not mean, “I didn’t mean what I said.” It is true that a lot of truth is said in jest.

The third and most constructive purpose of humor is as a bridge, bringing people together. Laughing together connects people on mental, physical, emotional and spiritual levels.

Mentally we are thinking alike; we share a point of view about the topic; Physically, we are releasing tension. Laughter is one of the best tension relievers because laughter and tension cannot exist in the body at the same time. Picture two people trying to move a heavy piece of furniture. Arms taut and straining. What if one person starts to laugh? That’s right. Can’t hold the tension.

Emotionally, we are connected to each other. Think of the position we take when we laugh- heads nodding agreement as if to say, “I get it. I’m with you. We are not alone.” I believe that the people we laugh with most often are the ones we trust the most.

Spiritually, our load is lightened, our spirits lifted. We understand, at least for that moment that there is another reality; another way of looking at the world.

The first step in expanding your own sense of humor is to pay attention to how you use humor and how it is used by others around you. Obviously, the more bridges you build, the more joyfully connected to others you will be. Don’t dismiss, however, the importance of recognizing when you are using the shield or weapon function of humor. It will give you a pretty clear insight into personal areas of thought and belief you may not have been aware of.

Izzy Gesell is a keynote speaker, group facilitator and speech coach. He can be reached at izzy@izzyg.com

Holiday Happiness

The economy is in the cellar and stress is at peak levels! Is it possible to experience, fun, happiness, and joy this season?

Lighten up, Loosen Up and Happiness shows UP!

Consider thinking of “Happiness” in terms of Psychological Wealth; a phrase coined by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener in their book Happiness. This book puts the “How To” of achieving Happiness in easy, understandable terms backed up by evidenced-based research. Did you think happiness was all about having lots of money and no worries! Forget about it! Having lots of money and no worries will make you happy is a great big myth! Discover the truth about happiness.

Happiness Truths:

1. Happiness is the name we put on how we think and feel about our life.
2. Happiness is a process and not a place.
3. People who are truly happy do not just experience joy and other passing pleasant feelings, they also experience an abundance of positive emotions such as love, commitment, and gratitude that connect them to others.
4. Happiness is a balance between life satisfaction (personal fulfillment), life meaning and purpose (spirituality), positive attitudes, positive relationships, health, money, and engaging activities. How do you feel about each one of these domains?
5. Happiness is beneficial to effective functioning. That means when we experience positive emotions, we become more creative, more alert, more productive, and more focused on healthy self-care habits.

If you want to increase your positive emotions, feel connected to others, take action and engage in creative and fun activities this holiday season. My first suggestion is to play the games described in my very soon to be published E-Book “Cancer and the Healing Power of Play…A Prescription for Living with Presence, Acceptance, and Trust co-authored by Izzy Gesell. This is a book that will provide a process for you to experience positive emotions, connect to friends and family, laugh, and help you enjoy play for the sake of play. Your immune system will love you! Click on the book cover on the right for more information.

My second suggestion is to take a look at books Authored by Rebekha Delgado and illustrator Joy Delgado. Their bilingual story books are unique and bring a new concept to learning. Their newest book “Zooprise Party” teaches the reader interesting facts about some unique animals. Learn more about “Zooprise Party / Fiesta Zoorpresa” and get lots of free activities at:

http://www.laughing-zebra-children-books.com where we go beyond reading.

Read about the ‘V Zoo’, book reviews and world zoo news with Zebee the laughing zebra at: http://zooprisepartyfiestazoorpresa.blogspot.com/