FUN: We’re Finally Figuring It Out with Catherine Price

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Hello, fun people.

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

Together, we are diving into something near and dear to my cold, dead heart.

And that is

why do we feel half dead inside?

And how can we feel alive again?

And I feel strongly that that particular set of questions is among the most important we can be asking and answering together in this community because seriously.

How are we going to know what is ours to do, what our particular lives were meant for, how to unleash the love and gifts that only we can give.

How are we going to stay strong and upright and have joy inside of this ridiculous world if we are half dead inside of us?

What the good news and the bad news seems to be, friends, is that we have to be fully alive to live fully.

So, we are going to return to a mystery we've been exploring since the very earliest days of this community and this podcast, and that grand mystery is fun.

In fact,

almost three years ago, our fourth episode ever of this podcast is titled Fun.

What the hell is it?

And why do we need it?

This week, we have two episodes for those of us who not only feel like we don't have time for fun, but couldn't even begin to tell you what would be fun if we had the time for it.

Catherine Price is here with us today, and she is here to spread the word that fun is not a distraction from our problems, it's a solution.

Snaps.

That gets Abby snaps.

We are going to walk through fun killers, fun magnets, why fake fun can be worse than no fun at all, why having fun can feel like just another burden, and how to start feeding ourselves the fun we are starving for, even if we don't know we're hungry.

Catherine Price is the author of The Power of Fun, How to Feel Alive Again.

She is also an award-winning health and science journalist, founder of Screen Life Balance, and author of How to Break Up With Your Phone.

She runs a Substack newsletter called How to Feel Alive, and her TED Talk, Why Having Fun is the Secret to a Healthier Life, has been viewed close to 5 million times.

Thank you for being here, Catherine.

Thank you for having me.

I distinctly remember listening to that episode that you guys did about fun in 2021.

walking on a road in New Jersey and thinking, I want to talk to them about fun.

So this is really full circle.

I'm very excited.

It only took us three years to figure out what we also needed to talk to you about fun.

Thank you for being patient.

Yeah, right before you came on, Dina and Allison, we were talking about you coming on.

And Allison said, why didn't we do this earlier?

Like, why are we?

And I said, because I just thought fun was a fad.

I thought it was going to pass.

I knew this book was big, but I thought fun was just going to be the thing of the year and then we could just get on with it.

No.

But no, it turns out fun is a fundamental thing.

I like what you did there.

And also I think that you and Amanda and sister are a little bit scared.

You are more scared then than you are now.

You're like more able to think and possibly welcome fun into your life.

Yeah, because it used to be like how I felt about romantic love.

I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't know what it was and I didn't have ever experienced it.

And I thought it wasn't real and I thought it wasn't for me and I thought I couldn't access it.

So I didn't want to talk about it.

And then I met you, and now I can talk about it.

So that's how I feel about fun.

Now, I have experienced inklings of it.

And so, Catherine, now we are ready for you.

I feel like my

evolution from that, because I feel like the analogy is like Abby lives in fun.

That's where she lives.

Her address is like 555 fun.

And

Glennon visits fun.

She knows where it is and she visits it.

And I like read about fun in a travel book.

And I'm like, that looks interesting.

But I feel like the difference is

to mess up my metaphors here is that when you don't know that fun

can

feed you, like you, you don't know that it tastes good and makes you feel good.

Then you're not hungry for it.

And it just feels like another thing that like you're fucking up, that you're like not getting enough that you should want, but you don't want it and now i feel like i've had a little bit more of that in the last few years and now i'm like oh

i like the taste of that i could potentially have a craving for that anyway right that's where i am catherine can you take us back to the day where you found yourself in that amazing moment where your partner and your young kid were gone and what you discovered in that moment.

Sure.

So prior to writing The Power of Fun, as you just alluded to i wrote a book called how to break up with your phone which is all about healthier relationships with devices not necessarily dumping them but creating a relationship with better boundaries that feels healthy to you and i had gone through the plan in the book myself and i was feeling pretty good about it you know it gave me more space it gave me more time and then i had a moment actually in the same room that i'm speaking to you from I can look at the place where it happened right now, where my husband was out doing an errand and our daughter, who was then a baby, she was taking a nap and I had this hour in front of me that should have been this glorious opportunity to do anything I wanted to with.

And I also was in that day taking a total break from all screens, doing a digital Sabbath.

And I had this real existential moment where I realized that I didn't know what I actually wanted to do.

You know, I'd gotten so used to allowing my time to be filled by whatever presented itself on a screen.

that when that was taken away and when the busyness of my obligations was taken away, I was clueless.

And I'm prone to existential malaise anyway.

So that tipped me into a bit of a hole.

And I ended up asking myself a question that I'd asked people when I was writing How to Break Up With Your Phone.

And the question was, what's something you say you want to do, but you supposedly don't have time for?

And the reason I thought that was an important question to ask is that the best statistics I found before the pandemic, and I think this is consistent, if not worse now, is that the average person was spending about four hours a day on their phones, not the internet writ large, not computers or tablets or TVs, just phones, which adds up to 60 full days a year.

And when I did the calculation based on my own sleep habits, it's a quarter of your waking life.

Right?

So I was like, oh my goodness, we actually have time.

We just are frittering it away in many cases.

So I asked myself that question and I ended up answering, well, I say that I want to play guitar.

I was very close to my grandmother.

She'd given me money for a guitar that I got in college.

Actually, the very first song I learned to play on it was Closer to Fine.

And I didn't learn how to play it.

And so in that moment on the couch, my existential hole, I was like, okay, the next time I'm online, I'm going to find a guitar class to take.

I was aware of one that I'd heard of and I signed up for that.

And it met on Wednesday nights.

And it was just a group of other adults, many of whom were parents, but not all of whom were parents.

And we just sat around and technically we were learning to play guitar, but it was play in the broader sense of the word because we weren't trying to be professional musicians.

And I started to realize that this evening, this hour and a half on wednesday nights was quickly turning into the highlight of my week and i was getting this sense of joy and buoyancy and energy that was deeply nourishing that was powering me through the rest of the week it became this kind of shining light in the

darkness of early parenthood i'm just going to say it it's tough time yes and so it's a surprise to no one listening right right right you guys might be familiar with the lack of uh yeah

anything for yourself in those days so anyway i got really interested in what that feeling was you know what was this energy?

What was this joy?

And I was trying to think of a word for it.

And this is one of those revelations that maybe seems dumb afterwards, but it really was a revelation where I was like, oh, I'm having fun.

That's

not.

What's that, Chris?

Yeah, exactly.

We have to diagnose this.

I should take this to my therapist and find out what this sensation is.

Yes, exactly.

What is this crazy feeling?

And, you know, I really like turning my personal issues into professional projects.

Then it's like, I had written how to break with your phone because I was spending too much time on my phone.

And then I decided, whoa, I want to know more about what this feeling is, what it's doing to me, why it feels so foreign.

And then most importantly, how can I have more of it?

And I wanted to explore that and then write about it so that other people might be able to learn from my learnings as well.

And I was really fascinated by the fact that when I did look up fun, there was no good definition of fun.

And also there was no good research on fun.

How amazing to have a word that we use all the time that no one seems to have fully explored.

And then the writer in me got very excited about that.

So that's the origin story of how this book came to be.

I just need to know, like, how have we gotten here?

I mean, every child you ask, you're like, what do you want to do?

And they're like, I want to play.

I want to have fun.

It's instinctively inside of them.

So how did we get here?

And like, at what point?

And why do we forget what fun did for us?

And what did we do for fun?

Yeah, I think that's those are very important questions to be asking that have complicated answers, but

we can go down whichever road you want.

I mean, one of them is that we do have to be present in order to have fun, and there's a lot of distraction these days.

Then you also have the big issue of how we were raised.

And I know you have spoken about this before, but how was fun prioritized or who was allowed to have fun, who was allowed to give themselves permission to do things for themselves?

And I think that broadly as a society and culture, we've also internalized the idea that fun is frivolous.

And so it's almost irresponsible to prioritize fun, especially given the state of the world right now and how you know polarized we are and all the things that are happening.

So I think it's a multifaceted problem.

I think in terms of kids in particular,

one of the benefits of being a kid, of course, is that in most cases, you have fewer responsibilities than an adult, but also you have a lack of self-consciousness, which I think would be important to talk about as well, is that you are not seeing yourself from the outside.

You are actually just fully able to be present in your own body.

You're not yet the object.

You're the subject.

And I think that we start to lose that, especially as women.

So there's a lot of factors that make it difficult to have fun.

And there's certainly no societal support or very little societal support right now for anyone as an adult to prioritize fun.

So my funnest question is always this.

It's gendered, right?

Like

boys

when they're little.

I mean, in huge generalization, but for certainly girls are conditioned

to

be the object and not the subject.

We see it in high school.

The girls are the cheerleaders.

The boys are having fun and the girls are watching the boys have fun and the girls are concerned with how they look.

It feels to me like the loss of fun, which is living from the inside out, is quite gendered, yes.

I think in many cases it is.

You know, if we're giving ourselves permission to speak in broad generalizations, then yes, I do.

It definitely is.

And I remember a story that you were, Glennon, you were telling during that early podcast about, I think you said you used to sit around in college and watch your boyfriend play video games, which is interesting.

Very interesting.

That's what I did.

And then you were like, I don't think you'd sit around and watch me do yoga.

You wouldn't have even known if I did yoga.

It's like, those are good points.

So I think there definitely is.

And I think that that carries forward into adulthood as well, where we get into this caregiving role.

Or I think there is truth to the idea that, again, in generalizations, but at least the woman I know, we carry a lot in our minds in terms of the to-do lists.

Amanda, you're saying that, of all the things that we're aware of all the time.

Like I can tell you nearly every single weekend from now in August, like when we do in don't home plans and when there's school closures and all of this stuff,

that really adds a weight.

There's a sense of heaviness that comes with adult responsibilities.

And I do think in many cases, it does become gendered.

So that's something I think about a lot, and especially as the mother of a girl, right?

To think about how am I going to model this for her to show her that it's important to prioritize fun.

And how do I try to model the idea that she should do things for herself and not necessarily because people are watching or because of external validation or external feedback.

I think it's a constant struggle, though.

And my husband and I do try to show that ourselves in the terms of how we divide labor in our household or how we talk about it or how we try very consciously not to fall into the traditional gender roles of who does what.

I get so mad when the school calls me first.

I've had to go into some of the contact forms and make sure he's listed first.

And even if he is, they often call me first.

It's only in the past little bit that that seems to be switching.

I don't know if it's because I'm always like, call my husband to the person on the phone.

But it's very very interesting.

It's very insidious.

And I think that all of those things combined start to make it more difficult for us to have fun.

I mean, with that said, I did a podcast recently and it was very interesting because the host was talking about how he felt men in particular in some ways had trouble giving themselves permission to have fun because of the traditional gendered roles that they face.

So personally, I think it is harder for women, but I thought it was an interesting point he made that I could see his.

argument that there are situations in which, you know, again, traditional gender roles like that also would be a limitation.

Yeah, Like the ability to be silly is not in line with what

men are supposed to be.

Yeah.

I do think there's many, many, many factors at play here.

And it's interesting to unpack them and then figure out where each of us lies on that continuum of what is getting in the way of our own fun.

I'm so glad that you brought up the mental load piece of it, the idea that if you're carrying in your head right now everything out for the next four months, because for me, that

really plays into it.

so much of what you talk about in terms of fun killers and fun magnets reminded me so much of the epiphanies that i was having during our episode 30 and it was with emily nagoski where she was talking about

the dual control model of sexual arousal and just bear with me here so if you listen to that episode you know that like that she explains how sexual desire, there is an accelerator and there's a break.

So it's not,

in order to become aroused, it's not enough just that your accelerator is turned on.

Your brake also has to be turned off.

So it's not just adding elements, it's eliminating obstacles.

And when I was reading your work, I was like, that is it.

That's why it's so frustrating.

We add in these elements of fun.

We look around.

We're like, this is supposed to be fun.

All of the things are here that are supposed to be fun, but we can't access it

because

our breaks are on at all times.

I mean, at least for me.

Like, and so that's what I think is so deep about this work is that it is bigger than just kind of dipping into things that should be fun.

You have to look at your life and look at your brain and look at your surroundings and say,

what in my life is making fun inaccessible to me?

It's not that I am uniquely a person who can't have fun.

It's that my breaks are on at all times for fun.

So what are the breaks that

we have

that are preventing us

from being able to access these things that should be able to allow us to access fun?

I think there's a lot of things that are standing as breaks or functioning as breaks.

I think that's a great analogy because you're making me think like you can light candles in the bedroom, but if there's a pile of laundry next to the bedroom.

Exactly.

You could like set the room on fire and it wouldn't help.

And that's the thing where we're talking about right now, where you're saying, like, I have this mental load.

Like, that's what women say, right?

They say, I mean, again, broad terms, but like, how is it that my partner can be initiating sex and feel super sexy?

And I'm looking around and the dishes are in the sink and I know that I have 14 things to do before tomorrow morning.

Like, it's not possible for me.

So I think the same thing happens with fun all the time.

How do you even get to the point where you desire that

when these 43 other things are in your head?

This is funny.

It does remind me a lot of the literature about arousal because, right, it's like, what is it, spontaneous arousal versus

responsive.

Yes.

So I never thought about it this way, but I think that that's true that it can be like that with fun, where you're like,

must I, you know, and you're like, oh, yes.

Like, I think Abby is a spontaneous desire fun person.

I am absolutely a responsive, like I don't wake up in the morning and say, what can I do for fun?

But if I'm in a moment, I can leave leave it after and be like, that was fun.

I liked that.

Can I have more of it?

Kind of just like when we have sex, I'm like, we should do that more.

But I'm never like, you know what I want to do today?

You know, it's just, I mean, the good news about fun is I think it's a little bit easier because like you were alluding to, Amanda, earlier in the conversation, if you've lost the memory of what it feels like, then of course you're not even going to think that you want this feeling of fun.

But with fun, I do find that once people remember it, they do want more of it.

They just might not not know how to do it or how to achieve that feeling, but it feels so good.

And one thing that seems very relevant to note is that there's a feeling of freedom and release that comes when people are having fun.

One of the characteristics of fun is that you are not thinking about your laundry.

You're not thinking about the mental load.

I mean, so many people have told me that one of the main characteristics of fun for them is a feeling of letting go.

You know, and that's what I was feeling in that guitar class.

It was an hour and a half where my identity was not as a new parent.

It was not as a writer.

It was just me.

Honestly, there was an authenticity to it.

It was me as catherine in a room just playing and like letting go so when you think about it that way i think we all could probably list some things that get in the way of that you know self-consciousness the feeling of not being enough the feeling of not necessarily deserving to enjoy things in the way that this involves just feeling like there always is a to-do list this non-stop pressure to achieve the equation of time with money so that we think our time is too valuable to waste and so we don't want to waste time on leisure even if actually i would strongly argue that it's absolutely essential to be not just any kind of leisure, but fun.

So I think there's a lot of roadblocks.

And then if you work in the circumstantial stuff, like most of us are overwhelmed and most of us are too busy.

You know, I don't want to fight back against people who are like, how can I possibly add something to my schedule?

Well, you might not be able to, which is why part of what I think a lot about for myself and encourage others to do is how do you make space, both mental and physical in your life and emotional for fun.

And that takes a lot.

But I also think there's ways to have fun that don't involve packing your schedule with more stuff.

But I also think that the state of distraction that we're all in now is a major impediment to fun.

It blocks fun because as I was alluding to, you have to be present to have fun.

You have to be in a state of what's known as flow.

And anything that kicks you out of flow will prevent you from having fun by definition.

And if you think about how most of us spend our days now, we're constantly being interrupted, especially by stuff on our phones, but just.

you know, tabs in our browser, like kids talking to us, calls, everything.

It's very hard to be in one place at once.

And I think that that exhausts our working memories and just the feeling of mental exhaustion you have at the end of the day, I think is because we're trying to juggle too many things and our brains are actually tired from it.

All of those things are going to get in the way of the ability to let go and be present and.

I don't know, be yourself in the way that will lead to fun.

And we've been conditioned not to think it's important.

So there's lots of reasons that we're not prioritizing it and not having enough of it.

So I would also encourage anyone listening who's like more on the

Glennon side of this equation, like, don't worry, that's not uncommon.

There's hope for you.

And you also may be having more fun than you realize already.

We need to rethink the way that we think about fun.

And then we do need to spend some time asking ourselves what leads to the feeling of fun for us personally and making some concrete changes in our lives.

But don't worry if it feels hard and if you feel like you're totally clinched up.

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Is there hope for people who,

because you're saying it requires letting go.

That rings very true for me.

Okay.

Right.

But I've heard of this.

Is that a privilege for some people?

Like, can a single mother

who doesn't have a partner or can a person whose partner is letting go?

Like, is there hope for people who are carrying the weight of the world singularly on their shoulders and have 70 million people who they're responsible for?

Do they get to let go and have fun?

Is it more important for them than ever?

How do they do it?

What do you see?

Because to me, when you say, I got to go let go for that hour,

I'm thinking that person has an equal partner.

So they can put the mental load down and not be split.

Is it possible for people who don't have

support?

I think it's a lot harder.

I think it speaks to a much bigger problem, which is that we all deserve to have relationships in which we have space for ourselves, right?

But we don't all have that.

So what you're saying, I mean, in order to get to that base state does require.

change in many cases.

And maybe that change is going to be impossible for some people.

But I would say that in many cases there is hope for change.

A couple of thoughts on that.

I think that you're touching on the broader critique that many people have that fun is for the privileged.

And that if you don't have an equal relationship, if you don't have money, if you're under emotional stress, you can't have fun.

I would say that, yeah, you do have to have a baseline of your needs met.

I mean, if you're in survival mode, it's going to be much more difficult and sometimes impossible to do this.

With that said, I do think that fun and humor is a coping strategy that we've seen throughout history that helps people get through hard times.

But I think that that's actually, there's a lot of misunderstandings in the idea that fun is just for the privileged.

I hear from a lot of people about fun, and I would say some of the people who seem the most privileged seem to be having the least fun.

Totally.

On the flip side, you see people who are able to let go and they're with their family and their friends and they're doing stuff and they're not from a privileged background.

They're not spending a lot of money.

They're not spending any money.

And they're able to give themselves that permission.

So I think that that can be a misperception that we have.

I would suggest that one thing I found really helpful helpful in my own relationship too, is that you have conversations with your partner about what is fun, what leads to fun for each of you, and then consciously try to give each other permission for it if you're in the kind of relationship that would support that.

And I'd also say that if all of this seems too overwhelming and you're thinking, I can't do that, there are little pockets of the day where you can let go.

And you guys were talking about this actually in your previous podcast about fun too, about listening to music.

And when you're listening to, I believe it was White Snake,

and really letting go.

It can be in these little micro doses.

So I think that everyone deserves more than just these micro doses, but I wouldn't say that you should let the perfection in this case be the enemy of having to sing along for one song in your car while you're waiting to pick your kids up from soccer practice or whatever it is.

Yeah, that's good.

It's so interesting what you say.

It's the permission and it's the belief, whether you have five minutes a day or you have a week of a getaway, depending on your privilege, like you have permission to do this in this moment and you need this, and this is good and edifying for your life.

Because if you don't actually believe it'll make your life better, you're not going to do it whether you have five minutes or whether you have the capacity for a whole lifestyle of it.

It's like you've got to feel it in yourself.

We're going to get to the practical: how do you actually start?

What does it feel like?

How do you know it's fun for you?

But something that I think is super important

is

your fake fun

concept because

I think

that the fake fun is like the biggest obstacle for many of us because we think that we are having fun.

And that goes back to all the things you said about, you know, we are overworked, we are over scheduled.

We have to be because our lives are insane, so focused on productivity and getting things done that we have created this fake binary that we think everything that isn't getting things done is fun.

We think if it isn't my work, if it isn't something on my to-do list, if it isn't something on my schedule that I have to do, then it necessarily is fun.

But that is not true.

A lot of those things are not only sucking our time, but sucking our life force.

But we're calling that fun.

We're calling scrolling on our phone fun.

And I think the opportunity cost of that is the real fun.

And if we took away the fake fun,

it would be a giant leap for us.

It would be a giant leap for us.

I feel like I should define fun before we get into it.

Oh, yes.

Okay.

It's very, I just did that thing where I feel, I don't just feel it.

I think it and know it.

We should define fun.

I'm going to claim my own authority here because women don't.

Okay.

All right.

What's fun?

What's fun?

So that was very interesting when I started looking into this project because.

As I said, I was having this kind of magical feeling in this guitar class, like went way beyond.

We were playing the theme song to Moana.

I mean, it was,

I'm like, how is this the most nourishing thing I've had in years?

Anyway, so it was this feeling.

And then I looked up fun in the dictionary, as one does, and it said that it basically was amusement or lighthearted pleasure.

And I remember thinking, that might be true.

There is that element to it, but that does not capture the depth of what I'm experiencing.

And then I thought, is that just me?

Cause I'm weird, which is often a follow-up question for me.

And so I was like, I'm going to.

ask people.

So for how to break up with your phone, I recruited people from my mailing list and had them be kind of guinea pigs for the ideas of breaking up with your phone.

I decided to do something similar with this.

So I asked people on my newsletter if they would, um, if they would share fun experiences with me, like share three experiences that stand out to you as having been, as I put it, so fun, because I couldn't think of a better way to capture this.

And I said, don't worry about it seeming trivial, but just what was so fun.

And I gathered literally thousands of stories of fun from people around the world.

Because I had them give me three stories and then I asked them to describe a experience or something that they could plan for the future that felt fun.

When I read through people's stories, it was very interesting because obviously the details were different, but the energy that ran through these stories was the same.

And it was a combination of pure joy and something that was deeply moving.

And to this day, if I read through those stories, I tear up and I feel this sense of joy.

And I thought that does not match.

the idea that this is just lighthearted pleasure or enjoyment.

Exactly.

It's deep hearted.

And I encourage you all and everyone listening to think back on your own life and see what memories come to mind as standing out as having been so fun.

Again, they don't need to be big.

One that pops up to my mind that I thought was really beautiful was someone who said that they had a memory of going outside with their grandfather during a rainstorm without umbrellas and just deliberately allowing themselves to get soaked.

And that stood out to them.

I don't know how old they were at this point, but I think they were a child when this happened.

And it was just so fun to them.

So a moment like that.

And what I noticed as I read through these stories is that they did seem to match up with the hypothesis I'd had in my head about what I thought the definition of fun might be.

And the definition was that fun occurs, or true fun, as I call it.

And I will clarify why I use the word true fun, because it's what you're getting at, Amanda, with the fake fun, is that true fun occurs when we experience the confluence of three states.

And those three states are playfulness, connection, and flow.

I made us a slide, which I can describe to your listeners.

Here's my slide.

It's a Venn diagram.

It's three circles, and one of them is playfulness, one is connection, and one is flow, and they overlap in the center.

And that center is true fun.

And

I then asked people after they shared with me their stories, I asked what they thought about it.

And the vast majority of people were like, that nails it.

That is the feeling that was in those experiences.

So to clarify, because I know that a lot of people clench up at playfulness, it's okay, but it does not mean you have to play games.

But it doesn't mean you have to be like childlike or my nightmarish charades.

Like, please, for the love of God, do not ask me to pretend in any capacity.

It's so horrible.

It's like a fun killer for me playfulness is much more about your attitude of having a lighthearted attitude not taking yourself too seriously not taking the outcome too seriously importantly you can care about the outcome you know you have to have some kind of drive if you're playing a game to somewhat care about the outcome but we've all been in experiences where it gets way too serious and suddenly that fun is killed so it's more about the attitude you bring to your life and to situations and interestingly i think that playfulness is a form of vulnerability and i think that's part of the reason a lot of people clam up when you mention playfulness because you're being your authentic self.

Your guard is down and you're being you.

That could be really scary.

Connection refers to this feeling of having a special shared experience.

It was very interesting because I do think occasionally people have fun alone, but in the vast majority, like more than 95, 97% of stories that people told me and tell me about fun, there's another person involved.

There's sometimes a dog, but it's normally another person.

And it's true for introverts too, which I thought was really interesting because I asked people, did anything about what you told me surprise you?

And a number of people said something like, I'm an introvert, but all the stories I just told you had other people in them.

So I think that it's actually a matter of what type of connection an extrovert might prefer compared to an introvert, but the feeling of connection and a shared experience is nearly universal.

And then flow, as I've been touching on, is the state you get into when you're actively engaged and focused in what you're doing.

to the point that you can often lose track of time.

So the quintessential example would be an athlete in the midst of a game.

The psychologist who coined the term flow, he did a lot of work with rock climbers, a musician playing a piece of music.

I would say when you're having an intense conversation or like in this podcast, for example, that can be flow.

But the key thing about flow, several key things.

One is that it's active.

It's not passive.

So you can lose track of time if you're sitting on your couch and you're watching Netflix for seven hours, right?

But that would be what Chiksemi Hai, the guy who coined the term, would call junk flow.

It's the junk food of flow.

It actually is not active and engaged.

It's more like hypnosis.

And the other key thing about flow is that anything that distracts you will kick you out of it.

And if you do, by my definition, that it's playful, connected flow is true fun, that also means that if you're distracted at all, you'll be pulled out of your experience.

You will not be able to have fun.

This is backed up by scientific research that each of those three states, playfulness, connection, and flow, is actually very good for us, not just emotionally, but also physically.

But then when you have all three together, That's when I think the true magic happens.

And that's this euphoric, energized feeling, this joy of true fun.

To answer your question, Amanda, about fake fun, I came to the same conclusion you did.

It's like, oh, wait a second, a lot of what we do for fun, quote unquote, actually doesn't result in this feeling of playful, connected flow.

It doesn't make us feel alive.

It actually leaves us feeling dead inside.

And I was like, oh, that's fake fun to me.

And that's the term I use to refer to anything that's marketed to us as fun, but that actually doesn't result in playful connected flow.

And definitely social media is by far the biggest defender for most people.

So if you can identify the fake fun in your life, it's kind of the low-hanging fruit to not spend your time on because we do have limited leisure time.

You don't want to waste it on stuff that's leaving you feel dead inside.

That's not like when I say it like that, right?

It's like, that's obvious, but like we don't kind of internalize it.

And I'd also like to point out, so I've got these buckets, right?

You've got things that might result in the feeling of true fun, things that are fake fun.

There is a big category.

of things we enjoy that are more quietly nourishing that often happen alone like our hobbies or our interests like reading a book or painting or taking a bath or going for a walk or meditating meditating, you know, all these things that are nourishing in a different way.

It's kind of in my mind, a quieter form of nourishment that fills you up, but it's not quite the same exuberant way that true fun does.

So in my mind, when I think about my own leisure time, I try to think about those three buckets.

What are my sources of fake fun?

Try to get rid of those.

What are my sources of quiet nourishment?

What are my sources of true fun?

And those latter two buckets are things that should be prioritized.

And then the next step is to ask yourself in any given moment, which of those do you need?

Are you in a a state where you want to have that energized, fill you up kind of thing?

Or are you in the mood or in the need for something that's a quieter sense of fulfillment?

Wow.

That's so good.

Quiet nourishment, or because also because of the wellness world, fun is never like inserted into the idea of wellness, right?

That is usually quiet nourishment.

Like do the yoga, do the reading, do the breathing.

Exactly.

That's quiet nourishment.

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You asked us, Catherine, to

come with something, a memory in the recent past that was so fun.

I did.

I did ask you that.

Do you have one, babe?

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot.

Give us one.

She has one from this morning, probably.

I prioritize my fun.

Okay, so I have to like think about the most fun because I'm competitive.

And when I think about this, because I do try to insert some sort of fun into every single day.

The most fun that I've had in the last couple of years was I went snow skiing

and it was the first time I'd gone snow skiing, like really snow skiing in 20 years.

Like I learned when I was a kid and I had to quit because I was playing soccer and it's like so bad for, you know, your knees, et cetera.

And I was kind of scared because I had never been on a mountain in the west.

So there was like this kind of anticipation.

And When I got up to the chairlift and we got on top of the mountain, I mean, I had only skied in upstate New York my whole life, so like those are hills in comparison to the western mountains.

And the clouds hadn't yet cleared, and so I was above the sunrise, it was just like the most magical thing.

And I was with a friend, but honestly, there was just like this sense of divine yes-ness.

And it was like,

I don't know, we do, we talk in our IFS talk.

So, like, when my knowing and my big capital S self is completely online and in charge, it feels to me like all the cells of my body are lit up.

And so when I was skiing down the mountain, I was like, am I even going to be able to do this?

I just was like, oh my gosh, I never want the fun to end.

I wanted to keep going, keep going.

And it's fun beforehand, it's fun during.

and it's fun after.

It's fun to remember it, to you know, look forward to it.

So skiing for me, and then surfing and golfing, those are the three things that I have the most fun doing.

100%.

Do you have, as a follow-up question for this surfing and the golfing, this is one thing I think about is how fun is a feeling, not the activity itself.

Because I do think a lot of people will instinctively respond with a list of activities that they like if you ask what's fun.

But I'm wondering if you can give an example of a time where you did one of those things or something else where it's the same activity, but one time was much more fun than the others, like a golf game that was like much more fun, even though technically you were doing the same thing.

Yeah.

So, this one Thanksgiving two years ago, my whole family went out surfing.

So, all the kids were in the water, Craig was in the water, and Glennon was watching on the beach.

And whole family.

I just had this moment where it is actually really hard to think about an activity of fun that you can all collectively do together as a family.

And I just, I mean, my heart was like exploding.

There wasn't great waves that day.

It wasn't anything special.

It was just so special to be collectively doing it together, something that I love to do and I'm learning to do it.

It was just incredible.

But Catherine, isn't there like,

what is the element of risk?

Because what I hear when you say it's the feeling, not the activity.

That's very important because

Abby could say to me, surfing is fun why don't you want to surf it sounds like she has said that to you perhaps yes many times but it's because we're having different feelings like I'm scared

that's not fun scared is not fun for me I mean scared is not fun I feel like what's happening is I'm in the ocean and for me I felt very brave sitting there watching all of them because those are my children and I am supporting this.

That's my level of risk.

Right, right.

And there's creatures in that ocean.

I mean, you don't know.

There's waves and creatures.

You can't see the body.

I mean, yes, there's.

You don't know.

Yes, I think that that's a very important point that touches on the idea of how we each find fun differently.

So I think that even though fun is a feeling and it's not an activity, right, with that in place, each of us has a collection of activities and settings and people that lead to that feeling more often than others.

And I think of those as being our fun magnets.

So again, the activities, settings, and people who lead to fun generate this feeling of true fun for us personally.

I can already tell the three of you are fun magnets for each other and you have a lot of friends who are fun magnets for you and it seems like you are prioritizing spending time with them.

But the same is true for activities.

Golf is clearly a fun magnet for Abby.

It's not for Glennon.

And that's okay.

right but i think it's interesting to talk about what our respective fun magnets are both so you can if you're in a relationship explore where they overlap and where they're separate and give each other space for the separate ones and then find more ways to do it together but since i am a a big dork, I also like to take a step further and think, what are the characteristics of these things that make them feel fun, right?

What are those?

And I think of those as fun factors, like what goes into the fun for you?

So, for example, one of the fun factors that is probably the biggest dividing line is risk.

Some people really love risk and some people hate risk because it scares them.

And risk, interestingly, is different from thrill.

like something can be risky and thrilling like race car driving something can be just purely thrilling like a roller coaster ride.

I think, Amanda, you were talking about roller coasters, right?

There's no risk, or hopefully, hopefully, there's no risk in the roller coaster ride.

It's the semblance of risk.

It's the thrill of it.

It's the adrenaline ride.

But other fun factors would be things like music.

Music is a huge fun factor for me.

Physicality, like physical movement, like dancing.

And Glennon, I think that's one for you.

The type of interactions with people, a big group versus a small group, intimacy versus strangers.

They're these characteristics you can generate your own if you kind of look through your own past memories of fun and look for themes that come out.

But I think that's really important to think about about because, yeah, I actually just did a family surf camp with my own family last year.

And yeah, I don't like risk myself.

I like thrills sometimes, I guess.

I like the physicality as a fun factor for me, but each of us have different ones.

And also the beach is a huge dividing factor.

That's not a technical fun factor, but so many people just randomly brought up beaches in my research.

Like, I hate the beach.

I hate everything about the beach, the sun, the sands.

And some people are like, all of my happy moments in my life have happened on a beach.

And it might be interesting for you guys to reflect back on times both that were fun for for all of you, but also times that weren't and kind of investigate it through this lens.

Is there a difference in fun factors and fun magnets that are coming out here?

And how does that help you understand each other better?

And then also, how does it help you understand what new things you could try together?

And then what things you can try apart and what you should support without judgment?

I see that in a lot of couples where someone's...

fun magnet the other person's like that is a total waste of time i don't understand why you're doing that or that's stupid or whatever and then they're labeled as not fun yes oh yeah yeah that sucks because it's like a language you're speaking.

So someone could be like, this is amazingly 1000% fun.

And the fact that you don't like it makes you not fun, but there is no objective fun.

Right.

Two people could be equally

fun,

but one hates the thing that the other person likes.

Yes.

This is a question I have because I think we label ourselves.

Well, I'm fun or I'm not fun.

I'm so not fun.

I'm so not fun.

Is that a thing?

Do people have different capacities or is it just like the obstacle issue and we don't know what it is?

Yeah.

Some people think they don't like sex and then they just realize, oh no, it's just I've been having bad sex my whole life, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I would assume, I want to believe that everyone has the same capacity, like,

but then you add trauma and life experience and all that.

I don't know.

One of the questions I asked was, describe someone in your life.

whom you consider to be a fun person and then tell me what about that person makes them fun.

And I think I thought what probably most of us would assume, which is that those would be the extroverts, the people who are the life of the party, the class clowns, people who are cracking all the jokes.

And that was true in some cases, but it wasn't true at all universally.

It was things like they're always up for trying something new, or they make people feel comfortable in their presence, or they find ways to laugh, or they laugh with people.

It didn't mean that they were generating the laughter, but they were making people feel comfortable and laughing with them.

There were these things that actually introverts are very good at, like reading the room, making sure people feel comfortable was not something that is something that's inherent.

So I actually found it to be very heartening in the sense that, yeah, you're going to have some people who are born more extroverted and more quote unquote life of the party in a stereotypical sense, but when it comes to the ability to help generate a feeling of fun, you don't necessarily have to have those qualities.

You have to be someone who supports other people and also someone who helps other people feel comfortable in their own skin.

That was something that came out.

And I think that's really important because not only does this suggest that in some ways being a fun person is a learnable skill but it also means that many of us already are way more fun than we give ourselves credit for and i would dare say all three of you are actually very fun it's just that abby seems to tend to be in the more kind of like traditional vision of what quote-unquote fun is but i think that's the beauty of all your relationships is like you guys are able to create that feeling.

You know, we just went for Abby's fun.

We all know she's having fun.

How about you two?

I was thinking about it.

The first thing that came to my mind, because I wasn't thinking back throughout my life, I was thinking, like, what is in my life right now that I have fun?

And the interesting thing that came was coaching.

I coach my elementary school, basketball, and lacrosse teams.

And I think the thing

that I love is

I

sort of blackout during their games.

I lose myself in this way of I

am just in it and reacting to them in our little like ecosystem of our team.

And it's so exciting, and we don't know what's going to happen.

And sometimes they suck, and sometimes they're amazing, but they're all like just trying so hard, and you don't know what they're going to do.

It's like the only time where I feel like

I'm almost just

on autopilot doing what the moment calls for.

And I'm not

aware of myself.

I'm so emotionally in it

that

I'm just reacting to them.

And I leave and I'm like, was that, oh, the game is over.

Okay.

Oh, the game is over.

What happened?

I don't know what I said.

I don't know what I,

yeah.

Anyway, that's a thing that came to mind.

I was just noticing your face as you're telling that story and how you're totally lighting up.

But it was just this warmth that people radiate when they talk about fun that makes the people listening feel a sense of warmth and energy.

I think it's really interesting some of your word choices, though, about how you blacked out and you were on autopilot, right?

And that you were not acting like yourself in some ways, because I think that's something we often think with fun, but I would argue that actually you were being your true self in those moments.

That's right.

You weren't on autopilot.

That's right.

Yeah, that that was you.

And it's not blacking out.

You were actually, that's the opposite of blacking out.

You were fully present.

And the reason you look up and don't know how the game's over is you were in total flow.

I just actually got goosebumps.

The part of your book, I think it was Winnicott, the quotes from Winnicott.

Yeah.

You were saying, it is in playing and only playing that we are able to use the whole personality.

The part of us that emerges in play is the whole authentic self.

Yes.

Yes.

That makes sense.

So it's less of a a blacking out and more of a total lack of self-consciousness.

Like more of an I'm not calculating

the decision of what I'm going to say.

I'm just saying

what my body and heart says I need to say.

Yeah, your inner critic is shut up.

That's what's happening.

Can we talk about inner critic?

I think for me, that is the biggest factor.

Yeah.

Because the origin of fun

is Middle English origin that is to make a fool.

And that to me, I'm like, that is

the only times I have fun is when I am

willing to make a fool of myself.

Like if I look at the things where I'm not worried, am I going to look foolish?

Is this going to look dumb?

Is that just like a my fun factor?

Or is that a factor for everyone?

You mean in the sense of like when your inner critic is quiet, if that's a fun factor?

Yeah.

Is that a universal part of we cannot have

fun unless we are able to squash the inner critic?

Yes.

No, that's universal because it gets to the point both of playfulness and of flow is that you can't be playful if you're judging yourself.

You're your most authentic self when you're playful.

And then you can't be in flow if you're existing in two states at once.

You know, I mean, you might come out of flow for a second and be like, whoa, I can't believe two hours pass.

That happens to me a lot when I'm playing music with friends.

I'm like, whoa, I normally go to bed quite early.

And I'm like, what?

Who am I?

Who is this crazy crazy 40-something-year-old woman in a parking lot at like midnight?

What?

What's going on?

But you can't do that if you've got this little voice being like, what do I look like?

What do I sound like?

I mean, it goes back to what we were talking about in the very beginning of this conversation about this: are you the subject or the object?

Right?

Like, if you're looking on the outside at yourself, then you're not going to have fun.

And I think that that's why it feels so free and why people feel this real deep sense of letting go in a way that surprises them often and then feels so nourishing.

It's why context is so important for fun, because I can say a concert is where I feel fun,

but no,

it's a lesbian concert that is like, there's 10 options of the people who are on stage

because the context of all the people that are around me is when I feel safe, I don't feel self-conscious.

I'm not a split consciousness, right?

So it's very, okay.

So here's another example.

Painting, so fun for me.

When you showed your Diven diagram about the three things, and one of them was connection.

So Abby is like, her life now is just following me around with a drop cloth because I am not neat and I've never been and I don't know how to contain things.

Did you get an actual drop cloth or are you still just strewing like random towels?

I was doing that.

Okay.

I was doing that.

We have since gotten drop cloths.

She's bought a lot of drop cloths.

She's trying not to squelch, but also to not ruin our homes.

I don't envy her.

Yeah.

So she said we could like change a room.

I don't know where this room is going to be, the bathroom.

And that could be your room, your painting room, because right now I'm in the middle of the living room.

I don't want that because I like

doing my thing.

by myself, but with my family around.

Like I still want the connection.

If it were in a different room, it would not be as fun for me.

But

if someone else is in my house that is not my family and is upstairs, I will not do it.

I will not just go up and start painting.

Like then I feel like they're watching me and I feel self-conscious.

So that's context too.

It's fun for me when the people I love the most are around me, because then I'm not self-conscious thinking, oh, what are they thinking?

This painting is shit.

But the second someone else is present, the inner critic comes in.

So context is very important for fun.

Yes, because there's a vulnerability to it is what you're also tapping into is that who do you feel comfortable being vulnerable and playful around?

And it sounds like in the context of painting, it's your family.

But yeah, someone else comes in and you're like, oh, okay, now you're going to be somehow silently judging my hobby or my painting or my colors or whatever it is.

Yeah, that will, the minute that happens, that's no longer fun.

Then you just kind kind of feel self-conscious.

Like that self-consciousness makes me want to physically retract, you know, as opposed to the openness that fun, true fun brings out.

Yeah, it's like when I have my family's gaze or my kids' gaze when I'm painting, I feel like,

look at me.

First of all, I'm shit at this and they know that, but I'm doing it anyway,

which is showing them this other part of me.

Yeah.

Like, look at mom, she's alive.

The other day, I don't know if I mentioned this, but Tish was in the kitchen with her girlfriend.

I'm painting this kindergarten thing.

And Tish goes, mom, you're so cool.

And I was like,

what?

What?

I retire.

I was like, oh, my God, we should, it's a shame that that's not in every parenting book.

Like.

We think it's like this extra thing.

We teach them responsibility.

We teach them education.

We teach them, but nobody tells us that we could also consider modeling being fully human in front of them as part of parenting and not something that we do on our own in our free time separate from them.

And then I did want to mention to you that I did your little exercise, the so fun one.

And one of the reasons why I think it might be so important for people to do this is that I was trying to think of what was so fun that wasn't by myself.

Okay.

And I thought of going horseback riding with my family.

I thought of going hiking with my son,

going for walks with Abby.

And I thought, oh my God, I think I like nature.

She says with horror.

Horror.

Nature.

My sister looks shocked.

But that's so interesting because the stories that we've always told about you and that you've always told about yourself is that you are in Dorsey.

But it's not true.

But also, I want,

are there people, Catherine,

who part of fun

is structure?

I don't want nature forever.

I don't want to fucking camp.

I don't want nature with no boundaries.

I want nature with an end time.

Okay, so is there containers for fun?

Yes, yes, I think that there is.

I'm enjoying this revelation.

Fun in moderation, Catherine.

Right.

That's what she's looking for.

I love that nature with boundaries.

nature with boundaries or like i like my friends but i want to know that they know when they are to leave

yes well i think that um that touches on a broader aspect of fun that i find fascinating which is that often there is a structure to it and we think of fun as being unstructured and always totally spontaneous and like wacky and whatever and for those of us who may or may not have control issues that feels deeply uncomfortable and we don't want that but when i started looking into the research on play because again, there's not much research really at all on fun, but there is research on play and reading these very academic historical texts about play, it was very interesting to read about the idea that play happens within a structure and fun happens within a structure.

Like if you are playing a game, there are rules.

Rules don't sound like they're fun, but it tells you how to behave in a certain context.

And it gives you By adding that restraint, it actually provides freedom because you can let go within the structure.

You would not want to go horseback riding for 17 hours a day and come back with like saddle sores, but to do this for an hour or two is a special experience with your son.

It's a structure.

But even something like a dinner party, there's a structure to that.

There's a beginning, a middle, and an end to that.

Obviously, an athletic game would have structure and rules.

But in some of the historical works on play, this points out that most

things in life almost have the structure of a

play space.

We actually have way more kind of structured spaces and interactions in our lives than we realize.

And a lot of times the things that are fun have more of a structure baked into them than we would at first recognize.

And so instead of running from structure when you're trying to have fun, or if you're a structured person, running away from fun because you think it can't have structure, it's important to recognize it often does have structure.

And then figuring out which structures, I call them playgrounds in my book, actually are the most conducive to fun for you.

which contexts, which rules, which structures allow you to let go.

I love that.

Structure liberates.

Exactly.

Enough structure to be liberated within to let go is the thing, because it's too much to ask the human brain to let go inside of chaos.

You like have to have enough structure to be able to let go.

Glenn, I was thinking about you when you were talking about painting and how different that is

from some of the ways you talk about writing, where like, because the writing, you know, someone's going to read it and have a critique of it yeah writing used to be fun for me i started writing and it was fun like i did it by myself for myself

people came but it was low stakes and i

cannot have fun writing anymore i i believe that i'm gonna one day figure out how to again because it's so sad that i don't but I paint now with the same energy that I started writing with, but now it's gone because whenever I'm writing, all I'm thinking of is the millions of people who are going to be reading this.

And then I remember that I don't know what the fuck I'm saying ever.

And I don't know, what do I know?

And it's impossible.

And on that note, we're going to wrap this conversation and come back for another one next episode.

So when we come back, Catherine is going to tell us whether it's possible to have fun doing something that your productivity is based on for those of us that are committed to multitasking.

So, when something that was a fun activity gets mingled with hustle culture and capitalism, can it possibly be fun anymore?

That plus thoughts about women and fun and why the right to fun might just be innately connected to the human experience and to activism.

So, until then, just go forth and think about fun.

No need to have it yet, we'll go slow.

See you back here next episode.

Love you, pod squad.

Bye.

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I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

I chased desire,

I made sure I got what's mine.

And I continue

to believe

that I'm the one for me.

And because I'm mine,

I walk the line.

Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

A final destination.

We've stopped asking directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to belong.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lights bring,

we can do a heart gain.

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

I'm not the problem,

sometimes things fall apart.

And I continue

to believe

the best

people are free.

And it took some time,

but I'm finally fine.

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Our final destination

directions

to places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to be known.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives bring,

we can do hard pain.

Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

We might get lost, but we're okay with that.

We've stopped asking directions

in some places they've never been.

And to be loved, we need to belong.

We'll finally find our way back home.

And through the joy and pain

that our lives

bring,

we can do hard things.

Yeah, we can do hard things,

yeah, we

can do hard

things