Are We Having Fun Yet?: Mike Rucker on PYP 548

Plant Yourself - Embracing a Plant-based Lifestyle

Mike Rucker is a behavioral psychologist and enthusiastic practitioner of "positive psychology."

And one day, it occurred to him that his obsession with maximizing happiness was making him miserable.

What was missing in his intensely quantified life was a simple, humble concept; one that he had been able to ignore, even as a positive psychologist, for his entire career:

FUN.

Just thinking about the word can bring up feelings of guilt and obligation.

FUN is something we have to earn after we've done all the important stuff.

FUN is trivial, wasteful, and self-indulgent.

FUN is what people chase when they don't have ambition or passion.

When Mike began to extricate himself from his self-constructed happiness trap, however, he discovered - both in his personal life and in the research literature - that FUN is a key to a well-lived and meaningful existence.

And boy does the world need that message right now.

In our conversation, Mike and I talk about his epiphany about chasing happiness at the expense of life satisfaction.

We discuss the concept of hedonic flexibility, and the fact that some forms of leisure are inherently unsatisfying, while others can enrich our days and our relationships.

Mike shares strategies for infusing more fun in your life, and offers lessons from research about how much leisure is optimal for a satisfying existence.

We explain how walking during a marathon is a metaphor for a skillful balance between work and play.

And we talk about the enemy of fun - comparison and ranking - and how to overcome that conditioned perspective on life.

Enjoy!

Links

The Fun Habit, by Mike Rucker, PhD

MichaelRucker.com

Finite and Infinite Games, by James Carse

The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein

Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari

Jeff Galloway's Marathon Method

Alan Watts on YouTube

Greg Brown, "Who Woulda Thunk It?"