Let's bring back the fun

Light up your vitality

What elevates your vitality? 

Okay, here’s a fun tool that could change your life by making decisions much easier and quicker to make.

Let’s explore your vitality meter. This is meant to be a quick, intuitive way to check or test ideas or things. Usually, when we encounter something, we have an immediate and clear reaction. Then our minds come in to try to make sense of it. 

I love this process of running an idea past ourselves. In a quick second, we can feel it bring our vitality up or down. The vitality meter isn’t about thinking or pondering the pros and cons. This process simply allows us to experience what lights up our vitality. 

Try it. Read the following list and notice your energy/enthusiasm/vitality respond. Does it go up or down? Don’t think about it at all, just feel what happens in you.

• Horseback riding

• Auto mechanic shop

• Scuba diving

• Retirement planning

• Art supply stoe

The vitality meter doesn’t filter out fear; sometimes the things we want to do also scare the woohoo out of us. So we may feel that sense of thrill, danger, excitement all at once. We feel ALIVE. We feel our vitality. That’s what we are going for. My agenda in life is to feel fully alive. 

By bike, my happy place!

INVITATION 

Generate your ‘playlist.’

Start by gathering a list of what’s fun for you. And the word may not be ‘fun’. If a different word works better for you, use that for this process. 

These could be small moments. They don’t have to coset a lot, or anything at all. Fun can range from planning a big, daring adventure to greeting dogs on your daily walk. Instead of using the word ‘fun’, focus on what brings your energy up. 

Consider what’s fun for you and what’s fun for your artist. Where in your life do you notice your vitality perk up? 

Making your fun list will help you see where in your life you can get more enjoyment. It will also help you savor the moments you have already experienced. Seeing dogs on my walks always brightens my energy, without fail. But I might not have labeled this ‘fun’ had I not been looking for the small, fleeting moments in my life where I feel myself perk up. 

Make a list in your artist manual of 50 fun things. My list includes: 

• Going to the art museum

• Browsing gift shops at museums

• Visiting the library 

• Watching dogs frolic at the park

• Seeing dogs anywhere, anytime

• Getting on my bike and riding away

• Organizing stuff in my studio

• Searching for and booking the perfect apartment in another city

• Listening to podcasts

• Plucking weeds from my garden

• Going to the Botanic Gardens

• Looking at cookbooks and flagging recipes to make

• Perusing restaurant menus online¹. 

These things all contribute to my artist in ways I don’t need to be analyze. They all make me, me. 

Your artist’s fun

If I had a separate list for what’s fun for my artist, it might include the following. 

• Sorting and organizing my supplies

• Taking a class in a new medium

• Making notes for projects in my notebook

• Buying new notebooks

• Depleting the ink in my fountain pen and inserting a new cartridge

• Using washi tape randomly simply to enjoy the process and the look of it.

You will have your own felt sense of what is fun for you. Fun and play can evoke a sense of wonder, delight, and thrill.

Affirmation: My vitality is amplified by play. 

In the comments: What came up for you? Share one odd thing from your ‘playlist.’

1. About reading restaurant menus online. Some people think I get recipe ideas when I look at online menus. Nope. Pure voyeurism. Pure fun. Sometimes, if I am feeling frisky, I will put items in the cart, creating an order of things I would eat if my stomach and wallet were not a restriction. I share this to demonstrate the completely impractical nature of some kinds of fun.