BR 03: Balance ReDefined Between Fun and Functional...

Hi everyone! This is Connie Sokol, and you're listening to Balance Redefined Radio. I've spent over 20 years teaching people how to redefine what balance really is, meaning a more purposeful and joyful life.

They’ve paid off credit cards, lost weight, organize their homes, and created a meaningful life plan and they've managed their time, changed habits and experience greater success both at work and at home.

So now I decided to take the plunge and help about 100,000 new people who want to redefine balance in their lives. People ask me all the time, “How do I go from an overwhelming and chaotic life to more purpose and organization and joy?”

That's the reason why I'm doing this podcast, to give you trusted answers and create a space where you could find balance. My name is Connie Sokol and welcome to Balance Redefined Radio…

Welcome back! I am thrilled to talk to you today about something near and dear to my heart, which is the balance, redefined, on fun and functional because I think in our daily life, especially as we get older in life, do I even dare say that word, but we lose the fun...

Have you noticed that? We get the furrow brow and even when we're doing something fun, we're really functional about it. We're going to a picnic and especially I know women do this. We're going to a picnic and we have everything packed and did you get that in the car and did you get that right?

And did you get that out of the fridge? And then you get there and you put the blanket down and you say, wait, don't get the crumbs on their turn. So it goes all over onto the grass and okay, make sure you eat...

Now you can go and play, but make sure you finish your sandwich and we just squeeze the fun out of this fun picnic…

Right? So I am encouraging you to consider your fun factor.

What's your fun factor? Are you having fun on a daily basis? Because I believe in that adage, if we're not having fun while we're doing it, then we're doing it wrong.

Now, that doesn't mean every day is skipping through the daisies with a basket, you know, to fill and take back and there's little woodland creatures singing in the background. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying yes, cleaning toilets can be fun.

We can put on music, we can jam to it. We really can add the fun factor to whatever it is that we're doing...

So I encourage you to consider what is my fun factor on a scale of one to 10 on a daily basis, how fun is my life and how fun am I to be around?

Maybe there's a little self assessment information you can glean there. For Myself, I have felt this too. I have realized lately that I am not as fun as I used to be and it's occurred to me that my personality is actually wired to be more fun.

So I did one of those personality tests. You know, there's all the color code. There's a variety of them, but the one I took had numbers one, two, three, four, and essentially I came to be a one slash three, which I thought I was more of a three/one which is the three is more productive.

You've got ideas and you make it happen in your results oriented and let's go. Let's do that kind of a personality. I'm really distilling this down to just basics, and then the one is more fun and energetic and delightful and we're going to make this an enjoyable experience.

Okay, so I am all about joy as you well know, but it shocked me. I thought it was a three one, but I'm a one three, which means I'm actually more fun than I typically make myself out to be and as I pursue my life I realized, yeah, this is now a thing.

I need to actually consciously choose ways that I can have fun and then allow myself to have fun in my daily life…

Have you found that for yourself? Maybe you look at that fun factor and you see disparity between the fun that having in the fun you want to be having or the fund you know you should be having and you see that disparity, but then you come to the next fork in the road, which is, do I allow myself to have that fun?

I can't tell you how many times I've had 10 minutes or 15 minutes that I've been able to do something that I would love to do and guess what?...

I look at that stack of books I want to read, I look at that fun walk that I want to take, I look at that game I wanna play, or go jump on the tramp with my kids, and then I go, “Oh, I'm now overwhelmed with what things I should do and things that I think would be productive fun versus just have fun. Not Clean out my purse, kind of fun.” Right?

Do something that is actually fills my soul with giddy joy. Fun…

So it hit me again. The reason why I'm sharing this now is because I went to stop by and visit a friend last night, which was great. I'm sad to say the reason why is that I needed to get some information even though I've wanted to chat with her forever. Socially.

Isn't that how it goes? But then when you need something, well then you go connect with that person...not the best basis for a friendship, but luckily we have a great friendship that we understand one another that way.

But after my apologies may a colpa for that kind of attitude, we had this wonderful moment where I looked over and saw this board that she had made…

It's one of those trifold that your kids do for a science fair, and it was beautifully written out-nothing fancy, no doodads, you know, so she is after my own heart, but different markers were used in nice deep printing of all these ideas-probably 30 ideas of their bucket lists for summer what they want to do.

And it was darling and I stared at that and I went, “Okay, I am getting the message that I need to have more fun,” because it said things we want to do and these are some of the things that they listed out:...breakfast, picnic, planetarium, escape room, pizza party, forte…(etc).

And she has kids that are young, but then some that are a little bit older-so horse rides, chalk messages, food trucks, movie in the park, summer concert, spa day five hikes, five parks, obstacle course, popcorn party, mini golf, Koolaid candy…

I mean, so much fun. Now of course this is more geared obviously for when you have children, but I saw this beautiful, perky, fun poster board and I remember doing that with my kids. And as they've gotten older, we don't do that as much, but we had just written it out.

We had a family night like a month ago and we just written out some ideas, but it was on a yellow sticky note and I don't even know where that is…

And do you see what I'm saying? I wasn't valuing the fun.

So my first point is valued the fun...

It's important. It isn't just we think that production means that there's an end outcome that's measurable by some quantifiable test or we have finished a mosaic, we have done a craft piece and that's not true.

It's fun. It should be woven in and through and around what we approach and create everyday.

So again, value the fun. When you have a moment aside from creating it, but first and foremost, when the moment comes to you like that had happened to me the other day, I should have sat and read for five or 10 minutes not thinking how productive is this?

Is that when my heart yearned to do that sort of Marie Cobo, does it spark joy? Does that what made me feel happy? If it did, then do that. If I have that option, yeah, do it so value the fun.

That is so crucial...

Second is to make the fun, make the time for it...

So we valued it. Now we're going to do it. We say, okay, I'm going to take a minute to have fun. Now I'm actually going to take that fun. I'm actually going to do it, or I look in my day and I say, you know what? Three 30. There's a little opening there. I'm going to have some fun. How does that feel? I'm going to have some fun.

You can get through most anything in the day. If you know you have something fun to look forward to. So what does that funnel look like to you? What does that feel like to you? So jot down some ideas. What is pure, unadulterated fun? Just, “Oh, that sounds like a fun thing to do,” and you'll know it because you'll say things like that.

“Well that sounds really fun! Wow.” Wow. You did that. That sounds like fun. You went camping just for the fun of it...

Now some people would rather have a root canal than go camping. My favorite kind of camping is in a beautiful fifth wheel. You know that somebody else is going to clean when we get home. That would be awesome. My even better version is just going to the Marriott, which is my favorite hotel, but you know, I digress...

But I do do the camping and the tent and it is wonderful. You get out by a crackling fire now if you say, okay, I want to have fun, but I don't have the time and energy to do all that fact. That makes me feel exhausted before I even start.

Well then scale it to what you can do. Just scale down the fun so that it remains fun.

So what does that look like? Well, for me, scaled down the fund means we would, instead of going camping for a couple of years, we would just pile the kids in the, in the car and we would just head up to the nearby mountains and all we would bring is something to build a fire and smores.

That's it. Oh. And wipes. Baby wipes. Because you know, smores, you got to have baby wipes to wipe everybody down before they get back in that car. But see there, I'm just losing the fun. Let's just all be sticky in the car. No, that is not fun. That is anti-run. And I will bring wipes and still be a fun mom...

Okay, I digress. So back to scaling it-scale the fun…

So scale it to what still seems fun to you when we were talking about going camping and the whole overnight thing, you know what it's like, it's like a three hour tour, three day tour for day for you to actually get everyone prepared to go camping.

Then, it's all the setup and everybody's having a great time while you're running around spraying everyone down, tick spray, and mosquito spray, and checking everyone at night, you know, for potential lyme disease, and then your cooking, and your cleaning, and you're getting people to help you clean and then when you get it all packed up and come home, then it's all cleaning stuff out and everyone says they're going to help it...

Nobody does. So anti-fun...

So keep it fun. Scale it to fun.

When we stopped doing that so much and did more of the let's just go up for two and a half hours, sit around the campfire. It was easy. It was great. We'd have chats, the crackling fire. Oh the other thing we did bring was chairs. So it was easy setups.

Everyone brought their chair. I just brought up the bags and the wipe and did not sweat the small stuff…

Oh, easy peasy, lemon squeezy, singing some goofy songs, talking, chatting, seeing what wildlife we could find that wasn't going to kill us, that kind of thing…

So scale the fun, and I can tell you that when you do these things, you value the fun and you make the fun new scale the fund. Guess what? You end up having more fun. Now I am talking about the balance between the fund and the functional.

So let's give a nod to the functional really quickly and then I'm going to come back to this fund. But the functional can actually be partnered with the fund. So functional is important. Functional is the part of the camping. If you don't have the functional part of camping, camping is zero fun, especially with a family.

So you really do need the partnership of functional and fun. Functional is the thing that makes the way smooth. It's remembering the pieces that will avoid sunburn and if you have it, you've got the aloe vera. The functional is the making sure people get fed and they're at least somewhat comfortable at night when they go to sleep or whatever that might be.

With the fun, I'm using the camp camping idea just as an example, but whatever it is that is functional, is what paves the way for the fun, so it really is a marriage of the two.

So when you partner these two together, the important thing is to determine and decipher what part of the functional actually is needed here versus what you just are used to doing and think needs to happen in order for everyone to have fun because this is kind of what we do as women and mothers.

Now men, you do it in a different way. You bring along a new gadget and your fun is set right. If there's something that's moving with wheels... you're having fun. It's great, and if you're hitting a little golf ball, then you're having fun.

Okay, for women, it's a little bit different when everybody's in in play. Then they're fun is a little bit subsided, and the functional has to supersede because we're mothers or aunts or sisters or whatever. We might be caregivers and so our first role is, “Whoa, who has what needs and have they been taken care of?...”

So that's where we women tend to have less fun and tend to not be able to block it out as well as men do. We can learn a lot from men. Ladies intend to not block it out. We tend to just react to whatever's coming out is whatever needs need to be filled and especially when you're in a new environment doing something, quote unquote fun.

Then people are out of their comfort zone, so they're gonna come to you and say, oh, I need this, and Oh mom, I want to go here, and whatever that might be. So remember the partnership of fun and functional.

You get to decide and you can tell when you're off kilter, when it's not balanced, because you start having those feelings that I talk about. Resentment, anger, irritability, impatience, denial. Blame if everybody would just help, and then the martyr complex begins.

“I'm doing this all by myself because I love you. I'm doing it for you so that everybody can have a good time.” You know what? They don't want your whining.

If you literally just said “No, go get it yourself,” then they may have a moment where they're like, “Hey mom, your being such a pill.” They'll get over it because the next thing they're going to do is go for a four wheeler, right?

So all is well and you will move on. They will move on and life will be good and you'll still be able to have two minutes to sit down and rest. So fun and functional. You determine what keeps that imbalance.

Sometimes more functional is needed in order for you to have the pay-off of the fun and that's okay. As long as we're not going ad nauseum and thinking the fallacy that “If I take care of every single functional detail, then everybody will have fun.”

That is not true. It doesn't matter how well you plan. Everyone is still responsible for their own fun. You are not the fun Meister, so you may be functionally helping facilitate that, but you are not the one responsible for everyone to have a fun time.

You help create that environment with hopefully everybody else will buy in to the people saying, “I'll help and you delegate.” Can you do that piece? You do that piece and then you go with an attitude of fun, and you let the chips fall where they may and involve people in the solving of whatever comes.

So remember that balance between the fun and the functional is really vital to so keep an eye on that. Keep a pulse on it because if you find yourself in the middle of an experience, whatever it is, a family reunion, a camping trip a vacation, and a beautiful exotic destination, and you're finding yourself wanting to pull your hair out...

Then step back and say, “Is my functional to fund ratio out of balance? and how can I shift that?”

And I will give you one last key, a little bonus tip. Usually at that point, what you need to do is something totally giddy fun that's just fun for you, and you just say, “Everybody, you just deal with it. Mom is going swimmin’ by herself, or a mom is going to go take a hike, and is going to go and get something at that yummy buffet bar. Don't anybody follow me?”

Whatever it is, you do something fun for you. For me, I realized I want to read more books. I've got a stack of books by my bed that I'm just chomping at the bit to read.

I love, love, love to be able to read books because I learn new things, so if I haven't sold you on this concept of fun, let me share with you what I read in my 15 minutes of reading a book, a fun book, which you may laugh...

It's called Brain Rules by John Medina, who is fantastic neuroscientists and it was so fun for me to read and get new information, but I want to share this with you because I know there's people out there listening, men and women who will say, “Yeah, that's a great idea. I just don't have time for fun right now. I do not have time for this kind of concept. It's a great concept, but I got to get something done,” right?

No, no, no, no. Because when you have a lack of fun and your uber functioning, then you have stress. Fun is the stress reliever and it's usually really inexpensive, so I want you to consider this…

I was reading in this book and it was talking about the impact of stress and how stress affects our immune system, and it affects our health, and it affects our memory, and it also affects the way that we're able to learn.

It affects so many things, but this one bit was really interesting to me. He was saying that stress when it's kind of a good kind of stress, if it's not too severe, your brain actually performs better than when it's not stressed because you got a little bit of that grit. You got a little bit of that traction. That helps should be able to move forward and do something and actually get something done than you wouldn't if you weren't very stressed.

And just be, “La, la, la, la la,” kind of like when you're in Hawaii on the beach, there's zero stress, especially if you're not with all the family. So anyway, but he says, “When it is too severe, when it is too prolonged, then stress begins to harm your ability to learn and to adapt and this is what parents need to do every single day. We have to learn and adapt.”

...This is what employees need to do, business owners need to do, but they found that when they did these tests on these rats and they found that when people were stressed and when they had these rats that were stressed out, they found that they couldn't adapt old pieces of information to new situations. They couldn't concentrate. They couldn't have. They had high levels of stress that they performed 50 percent worse than adults with low levels of stress.

And these are tests like declarative memory, that means you know, things that you can say you can declare or executive function, which is the type of thinking that involves problem solving and being able to have self control and guess what?..

Those things are all of the skills needed in order to do well and be successful at school and at work and in relationships, so the very skills that we need are hampered by stress.

So the next time that you're thinking, “I don't have time for fun and I've really got to be functional,” I want you to consider that, that if you'll take just a few minutes, and it can be as simple as three or four or five minutes, up to 15, 30 minutes, an hour...

If you can take time for fun, then your stress levels can decreased so significantly that it can immediately improve your what you do, your performance in school, or at work or in your relationships, and isn't that what it's all about?

Ultimately, relationships, our quality of life? Isn't that what we want is a healthy work environment and an experience there? Don't we want to succeed and feel happy at school, and feel that we're learning and a joyful environment instead of a super stressed one?

Then, my friends find that balance between the fun and the functional. So remember your fun factor. Scale that on a daily basis, just take a pulse. “What's my fun factor today?” And then value the fun. Make it a priority in your life. Say, “Today I'm having fun. Doesn't matter what I'm having some fun.”

Second is make the fun, create it, seek it, actively choose it, and take it when it comes, and if not, then create that space...

And lastly, scale the fund. Something that seems fun to someone is not going to necessarily be fun to you. You still remember the camping metaphor. If you don't like the camping and all that goes into that, we'll then just go up into a fire and eat some marshmallows, and have fun with your family, or significant other or whatever.

So scale it to fun. Alright?

And remember that last one-you're balanced ratio of functional to fund. Do a little pulse check. If you're fearing feeling irritable and frustrated and angry and resentful and blaming and martyr complex than take a moment and say, wait, first of all starts with me.

“What's my fun factor right now?” Go try doing something fun and then come back and see if that's shifted your lens at all, maybe will maybe won't, but it leaves you having tried that first concept.

You've tried doing it with you, which everything begins with us, our own personal selves to make a different choice and to do that self assessment.

So try that and then check your balance too between the fun and functional ratio. Okay?

So I am giving you some good nuggets today. Get out there, and try it, and then comment below, and let me know what happened because you know I want to know.

So keep me posted and join us for another podcast on great information so you can have a more wholesome life and have more balanced redefined.

You got it. Thanks for listening and remember to rate and subscribe. And if you are feeling the need for real balance in your life, get your free five step life plan, and get started today! Just go to conniesokol.com/download.