Sidenote: If you are a fan of The Cranberries, please don’t be upset with me that we’re sharing this title. But they are perfect words.
It can sometimes feel like there are others out there having WAY more fun, celebrating WAY more and generally having a blast with life. Somehow, they don’t seem to be as concerned about the things some of us are. They are out there having a great time, seemingly consequence-free. WOW!
So, why aren’t we all?
We’re not sticks-in-the-mud. But there’s got to be a reason some of us are holding back and there’s got to be a solution for us who want more.
Today, I’d like to read a book that allows people, like me, who can be more uptight to just freakin’ chill and find fun!
Overshare: I don’t want to live a life that I feel had huge gaps of fun… I want fun to be a daily event! That’s what I WANT FOR ME! But I still want to be responsible… Anyways…
Let’s do this!
Why can’t we have that life full of fun we so deeply and truly want?
Sidenote: I will be saying a lot of “we” in this MiniBook. I don’t mean to imply that you are boring or anything, or that I am for that matter. I am flat out saying that I know I’m not alone and that some of us look in the mirror, write our gratitudes, and go to sleep at night wishing we’d had more fun. If you’re not one of us, you’re not “not one of us”, you just figured a few things out more. I celebrate all of you!
Question 1: Are you a Party-Pooper?
There are a lot of reasons we might be party-poopers and feel that our focus is in the right place because we are being responsible, accountable and “on-top-of-it”. And I completely agree that our focus is probably in the place in needs to be because of past issues that nudged us to make our focus target what we needed at the time.
The question I want to bring forward is that perhaps the focus and those priorities might no longer suit our current life and deserve a review.
Overshare: Since I’m a kid, I’ve been somewhat haunted by the idea of one day looking back at my life in regret. At the same time, I admit that I wish I could loosen up…
Why do I want us to review once in a while? Because I want us to have a great life that we feel great about, not one filled with regrets that we missed out on fun-pertunities.
Frankly, I don’t think we need much of a quiz to figure out if we’re acting like a party-pooper; we feel it in our guts. But it does help to admit it out loud: I’m Karine and I can be a party-pooper. We can ask Ourself plenty of questions like: Are we the party-pooper of your own life? Are we happy like that? What is holding us back? What do we want out of life? What is missing? What are our Fun-pertunities?
We could build a bunch of check lists or we could simply ask Ourself how we feel.
Essentially, what worked then, doesn’t necessarily work now. A rotary phone was great to have in 1980, but doesn’t work with the current digital phone networks and is now a nostalgic paperweight – which, by the way, we don’t use paperweights anymore since we use less and less paper and we live with less clutter… so there.
What I’m saying here is that we curate and create our lives, right? Then, we can certainly curate and create a life that reflects what we want more truly.
I don’t want us to do what everyone else is doing. I want us to not even look at what others are doing really, because we’re having such a great time. Okay, we’re not jerks. So we should look around to make sure people are doing okay, but not comparing and trying to keep up. Agreed?
What are you scared of?
What’s keeping you?
I’m going to get a little dark here, but I think it’s important to have a feeling that we are living our own lives and not live in regret. For some, thinking about what others would say after they pass away is a way to feel if it’s in line with what they want in life. For others, it’s the idea that in the afterlife, they would look back at their lives and get to reflect. I feel that after we pass is a little late to make changes. I’m sure you agree. And I don’t want my view of myself to necessarily come from what others would say. I do my own life assessment in a much more realistic way and address it on a regular basis. One way that I discuss in other works is I think about what other versions of me would say about current me. I established a long time ago that my “me consultants” are me at 6, 16, 24, 60 and 80. I generally have a personal reflection with one of those “mes” and get some great clarity.
Curate and Create
To curate means to select and refuse items and themes and assemble them in one collection that expresses a specific flavor. To create is to make the items we want, the way we want them. We are the originators, the designers, the architects, the authors, the engineers, as well as the builders, the chefs and the actors who bring it to reality.
What we make our life out of is from our own sense of curating and creating.
Where to start?
The moodboard/splash page/think-tank/brainstorm. Call it what you want, but we need some words, images and anything that inspires what you are creating and what you want out of it.
Allow me to jumpstart with some key words:
- Lighthearted
- Carefree
- Freedom
- Fun
- Memories
When you feel stuck, ask yourself what you’re holding on to that you want to keep and if you’re holding on to things that aren’t you now. They might have been you then, but no longer serve you and your current vision.
When we curate and create, we have a vision. Sometimes it’s not clear. But we have a sense, a feeling of where we want to go and what we want to make. We generally know what response we want to create in others through our project. A decorator often starts with what feeling they want people to have when they enter a room. The same is true here. But it’s your feelings about being in your life.
When we curate and create, we often attach a theme to what we are making and I encourage you to do the same. I suggest you give yourself the flexibility to change your mind as you go on.
“It really kind of sucks that it can take most of our life to learn how to live it.”
-Unknown
ACTION PLAN TIME!!
Putting things into action can put the people around us on guard and they can feel thrown off if we change too much at once, plus, it puts a great amount of pressure on ourselves.
I suggest daily/weekly action.
Small things that steer you in the right direction of where you want to be. Something that is visual and you can see that makes a difference to you.
- Decluttering what doesn’t work for us anymore. One of the keys to changing things in our lives is to remove what doesn’t serve us before adding anything else.
- Speaking up a little more about what we like, want and don’t like and don’t want (be gentle with people who are used to you generally responding a certain way)
- Discover what your new limits are, and share them gently with those in your life
- Find something you love to do every day and every week
- Take a good look at your priorities and make sure you’re at the top so you can always answer that you are taking care of yourself, not neglecting yourself
Overshare: I have Pinterest Boards that reflect what I want for myself on an annual basis. I make a new secret board every year. I fill it with words, images and colors that reflect who I am and where I’m going. I like to have symbols of my theme here and there. Something as subtle as a wooden bowl and as quirky as a Luke Skywalker figurine have served as reminders. As you can see, I take my transformations very seriously 😉
On behalf of those around us:
People around us do not choose the changes we are making. They hopefully love, respect and accept us for who we are and not for who they want us to be. Our own decision to live our lives a little differently can come as a shock and throw them off. Children in particular. Keep in mind that they did not choose this change for us. They are along for the ride and we should remember that. Please be gentle with them.
Please remember that the value you put on your life is important. We can have less financial means and still have a great life and great health, wonderful memories and live with joy, happiness, peace and freedom.
Have fun with this life. It’s the only one you’re living and you’re the only one living it.
We can have fun every day, our way.
Enjoy 🙂
Karine
Do we need anyone else to make it great or can we do it on our own? (great question for people who feel that they need that “special someone” or all is lost)