Having Fun When You Should Not: Mindset Mondays

You are overwhelmed.

So am I.

The Information Revolution aims heatseeking missiles at our attention span, at our happiness, and challenges what matters to you.

I saw a celebrity complain about Mondays in a tweet this morning. Someone that obviously has the world by the short hairs, complaining about Mondays.  Really?  Is there any hope for you and I?

Better than hope, we are faced with a fascinating opportunity. We have the power to change our focus.   When things are going wrong, we can go complain to our co worker or we can search for the fun.

I went to a memorial service this weekend.  It was for a friend that died at the age of 32. He had been plagued with kidney disease and heart disease.  Illness plagued his family. The litany of things that were wrong with his life don’t belong in a mindset blog post. No one deserved them.  The guy always smiled.  Always was happy.  Never complained.  Person after person stood up at the service and told stories about this man lighting up a room with a smile.  He squeezed the fun out of every moment when he had every right to complain.  The amount of juice in his life was a fraction of what most of us have, but he squeezed out every moment.

Is your career bad after all? Is marketing yourself that dreadful? Hopefully, you are in a career that you enjoy overall.  Sure, it is filled with mundane tasks and tough conversations.  However is there fun in those mundane tasks?  I bet there is.   I bet there is fun in approaching new ways to make the grindstone fun.

Fun does not always have to mean laughing, joyful roller coaster screaming times.  Fun can be overcoming a challenge.  Fun can be doing something in record time or creating a new way to do it. Fun can be putting yourself out there because failure means the opportunity to get better.

So, be curious. Ask where is the fun in what you are doing right now?

Have a 1000 emails? Have a race to get them parsed. Spend 10 minutes and learn a new email system.

Have a bunch of client meetings? Challenge yourself to find out one thing about them you did not know. Todd Kashdan in his book “Curious” discusses studies that curious people seem more intelligent, friendlier and better looking.  That should be enough reason to be curious and have fun.

Have fun with your marketing.  If you are not spending at least an hour this week working on your marketing, it is because you do not think it is fun.  Think about your favorite client.  What was fun about working with them?  Now transform that into a message on twitter (mention them), a facebook post or a blog post.  Have fun with that.  I promise having fun is the best marketing strategy out there.

Standing out is the hardest thing we have to do.  You will stand out if you have fun.  Don’t be scared.  If someone does not hire you for expressing how you have fun at your job, do you really want to work with them?

Mindset Monday  Challenge: Have Fun When You Should Not

So, it’s Monday.  Look at the week ahead.  What were you dreading the most?  How can you have fun there?  Join me this week and commit to having fun when we should not, when things are tough and it would be much easier to complain. See if at least once per day you can catch yourself not having fun and turn it around!