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Posts tagged with “fun”

10 Ways to Enjoy More: What’s Your Guilty Pleasure?

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“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.” ~Leo Tolstoy

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an epic list of guilty pleasures.

As a young girl, my top three guilty pleasures included dressing up and dancing in my living room to Madonna (“Annnnd…VOGUE!”), watching over-the-top nighttime dramas with my mom over bowls of Breyer’s vanilla ice cream (“Kevin…I’m pregnant! And you’re not the father!”), and penning addictive, soap-opera-worthy novellas about the kids in my fifth grade class (they’d line up and beg …

How Simple Little Happy Habits Can Make a Huge Difference

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“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness.” ~Charlotte Brontë

Habits are a double-edged human habitual practice—they can be healthy and unhealthy, and can bring us happiness and unhappiness.

We’ve all read about the importance of healthy and successful habits, and how to choose and practice them. But I’ve also recently read about how healthy and successful habits alone don’t necessarily lead to good health or real success. There’s more to it.

What I’m reading now shows that happiness appears to be just as important to well-being and success as lifestyle choices, that happiness alone may actually lead to the …

Daylight: Fun Music Video To Start the Morning with a Smile

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I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched this video. It’s impossible to watch this and not smile!

3 Tips to Be Happier in Work and in Life

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“It isn’t our position but our disposition that makes us happy” ~Unknown

I am just winding down from a business trip that has been both trying and inspiring at the same time. I’ve recently been put into a role to manage a department in a functionality I know nothing about, working with people I’ve barely met, and changing a formerly toxic environment.

To say the least, I have a challenge ahead of me. Now six months into the position, I took my direct reports to breakfast and told them the sole purpose was for them to give feedback on how …

50 Cheap, Creative Ways to Have Fun

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“Never let lack of money interfere with having fun.” ~Unknown

Back when we were young we may have asked our parents for money to do things, but more often than not we found creative ways to have fun without spending a dime.

At least I know I did.

My cousins and I turned their bulkhead cellar doors into a slide—and the main attraction of our DIY amusement park.

We turned cardboard paper towel rolls and rice-filled soda bottles into instruments, and entertained ourselves for hours on end. Okay, maybe not hours, but you get the point.

We didn’t wait …

How to Have Fun Like Children: 15 Joyful Tips

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“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

Every morning my daughter and I go for a twenty-minute walk to my workplace. For me, in those twenty minutes, I’m in transit. For my toddler, it’s nothing less than a parade of flowers, fire trucks, pebbles, and friendly folk.

I walk alongside her, engrossed in my thoughts of concern that her bouncing body might fall down the stairs, or jump onto incoming traffic.

One morning, I noticed that a sweet old man, amused by my toddler, was watching her with a smile on his face. As we crossed …

Quiet Your Mind and Just Play (in 20 Ways)

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“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

I spend a lot of time contemplating and philosophizing about life. According to my mother, I spent the first year of my life silently observing the events around me with a serious stare and a furrowed brow.

I’ve always leaned toward reverent acts of self-discovery and introspection. In high school I studied Buddhist texts and on Sunday mornings. At age eighteen, when my college classmates were nursing hangovers, I was shopping around for a spiritual home, which I found in the form of my Unitarian-Universalist church.

For most of …

3 Things Tweens Teach Us about Living and Enjoying Life

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“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

Work, Eat, Sleep. Work, Eat Sleep.

We all get wrapped up in this humdrum cycle of life consisting of working, eating, and sleeping, then waking up a few hours later to do it all over again.

This year it’s been particularly challenging for me to find ways to create balance and keep ahold of my sanity when the grind includes growing my small business, completing a new home with my husband, and settling into our first year as newlyweds who have yet to take a honeymoon.

And then it …

Zen Your Commute: How to Get Started with Bicycling

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“I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Every weekday morning, I set off from my back gate on my bicycle, pushing away from the safe shore of home and entering the unpredictable current of urban life. Every morning, I look forward to the adventure.

Over the course of the ride to work, I watch the city wake up. I feel the particular nuances of the day’s weather—perhaps humid, with a storm building over the mountains, or maybe a faintly warm breeze crosscuts the morning chill, carrying a hint of spring.

I …

Stretching Yourself and Creating Smiles

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“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” ~Neale Walsh

Have you ever thought about doing something way out there—and then done it?

I became intrigued with Patch Adams and his philosophy of medicine and healing after seeing the movie about him, starring Robin Williams.

This came on the heels of my daughter Nava’s miraculous survival and full recovery from a medical crisis that involved a year-long hospitalization. As her mother, I felt a renewed sense of life. Or, as I like to refer to it: I truly felt I had received a second lease on life.

I was …

Childhood Dreams That Are Attainable Now

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“A man is not old until regrets take the place of his dreams.” ~Proverb

Something beautiful just occurred to me.

I spend so much time stressing over my future adult achievements—a good career, a home for life, getting published, an adult relationship, possibly a kid and a large dog—that I don’t often revel in the things that seven-year-old me would have been stoked about.

How many of us do?

I try to treat my inner child with something every week, like painting, playing with my cat, or indulging in some candy—a very rare thing! But I don’t often think of …

How to Have More Fun in Life: Keep Your Thoughts from Pulling You Down

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“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” ~Bob Basso

A couple weeks back, my boyfriend and I went to our local county fair. I love—love—fairs.

Forget for a minute that adult-me now gets vertigo just looking at a roller coaster; and that my thirty-year-old digestive track nearly explodes when I catch a whiff of carnie food. When you factor in my increasing interest in crafts and farm animals, it somewhat evens out.

If you’re the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, thrill-seeker type, that might sound as exciting as watching paint dry. But I really do love petting furry little creatures …