The Benefits of Incorporating Fun in Your Life

Do you have fun in your life? Not the occasional fun activity, but is fun a regular part of your life? If it is not, you should consider how to incorporate it. Even though it may seem there is no time for it, or life is currently too difficult, fun can be essential in promoting your overall wellness.

Let’s face it! Fun is usually the first item to cut in hectic times. For many people, there is no time to have fun, whether long work hours or family responsibilities. With too many tasks to accomplish, you simply cannot afford to add one more thing. Isn’t fun just frivolous anyway?

Other times, life just feels too painful or hard. You may be facing a draining work environment or trying to navigate a challenging parenting season. Maybe you are struggling with depression, or you experienced a loss that has you wrapped in grief. Illness, stress, financial burdens, and relationship problems are all examples of the weights that push fun out of life. It is easy to understand why you would not have the capacity for fun.

Fun, however, can be helpful. This is true even in the most difficult situations. Incorporating fun is not about pretending the problems in life do not exist. You can still feel all the things you need to feel in hard seasons and create space for fun. Doing so can offer many benefits that make life’s challenges easier to handle.

To better understand its purpose, it helps to know the benefits fun brings. Here are some ways having fun can help you, no matter what season you are in.

Fun Reduces Stress

One of the things people want the most when they face challenges is to feel less stressed. Fun can help you achieve that in two ways.

First, fun facilitates eustress. This is a positive type of stress often correlated with successes or wins like finishing a project or experiencing something exhilarating. When you participate in activities like enjoying a hobby, riding a roller coaster, or achieving a milestone, you feel a thrill. This positive stress provided by fun activities is beneficial for your whole health.

The second way fun reduces stress is by changing your attitude. “Having regular fun in your life can help you feel less overwhelmed by the stressors you face. This can help you change your attitude toward your lifestyle stressors so that you are less reactive to stress when you experience it.” (Elizabeth Scott, Ph.D.)

Fun Helps You Sleep

When you experience the benefits of fun that lead to reduced stress, an ancillary effect is better sleep. Less stress in your life can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep. Better sleep will help you handle whatever you are facing in life. These can be little disturbances that crowd your mind or a more significant issue through which you are working. Regardless of the problem, healthy sleep habits will help you deal with it. Fun can promote the healthy sleep habits your body needs so desperately.

Fun Helps Reduce Pain

When you enjoy something in life, other things tend to feel better. Even if you experience pain, incorporating fun can help ease the pain you feel. This may be a psychological effect as it changes your mood, or there may be physiological effects like stretching muscles taut from stress. While it will not eliminate pain, fun, even in tiny amounts, can help ease pain in your life.

Fun Keeps You Feeling Young

Nothing can stop time, but fun can help keep you feeling young mentally and physically. Science shows that stress speeds up the aging process resulting in an increase in physical and cognitive health issues. Because fun reduces stress, the incorporation of fun helps you feel youthful. Cognitive activities, like puzzles and games, keep your brain active and healthy in the same way physical activities like walking and yoga keep your body fit.

Fun Improves Relationships

A fun person naturally draws people toward them. Making connections with other people is beneficial for your mental health. As you have more fun, others will be more likely to feel close and connected to you. These positive bonds can improve your relationships. This is especially true when people have been enduring a difficult circumstance together.

Having fun can give you the positive connection you need with one another. “Connection refers to the feeling of having a special, shared experience with another person. When we develop stronger social ties, we are more resilient during stressful times.” (Catherine Price)

Fun Makes Work Easier

There is no doubt that work can be a stressful part of a person’s life. Whether it is the responsibilities, the monotony of repeated tasks, or a tricky coworker, there are plenty of ways a job can bear heavily on a person. However, when your life is sprinkled with the activities that bring you joy, you are better able to handle these unrelenting situations. This prevents you from feeding them and making things feel even more impossible.

It is amazing that when amusing or enjoyable activities are shared amongst co-workers during the workday, studies show an overall improvement in the work environment. “These strong bonds developed with our colleagues have been linked to improved performance and productivity.” (Michael Rucker, Ph.D.) Strengthening connections, along with improved output in the workplace, can soften even the hardest jobs, making them feel a little easier.

Fun Makes You Smarter

You can improve memory, understanding, and focus with increased time committed to the enjoyable activities you love in life. For example, “The British Cohort Study — a study that has been following 17,000 people born in 1970 — found that reading for fun improves our language skills, and more surprisingly our proficiency in math as well. It appears that fun activities that introduce us to new ideas and concepts foster self-directed learning.” (Michael Rucker, Ph.D.)

Fun Welcomes Creativity

Many people love engaging in creative pursuits. This includes a variety of possibilities such as painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, crafts, knitting, sewing, dancing, singing, and music. It does not matter what your skill level is in these pastimes, it is simply the act of engaging that fosters fun.

Pairing fun with creativity provides benefits such as emotional or physical release, stress reduction, and understanding. As you engage in creative pursuits that you enjoy, you can feel the benefits in other areas of your life.

Incorporating Fun in Your Life

As you read these ideas, you may feel inspired by the benefits of incorporating fun into your life. Others, however, wonder how they could possibly add anything new when they are struggling with so much. You could even find yourself somewhere in the middle, understanding how fun is helpful, but unsure of what that looks like for you.

No matter where you are, it is okay. Reading through these ideas, you may not immediately know where to locate yourself or how to proceed. You may need time and help to think about these ideas and how they apply to your daily life.

For example, if you are in a season of grief, the idea of fun can seem revolting. It may feel like having fun is disrespectful to the person you lost and impossible for you to pursue. This is normal.

Fun looks different for each person and in each season of life. Fun in a season of grief may look like watching a favorite television show with someone else or going for a walk outside. Fun in a season of stress and busyness may be a five-minute phone call with a friend or reading a joke of the day.

Help is available for you to explore what fun looks like for you in your unique season. Talking with a counselor can help you piece together where you are in your journey towards recreation in your life. He or she may offer strategies for identifying and increasing joy-giving activities as a daily practice. Reach out to our office. We will connect you with a counselor that will help you incorporate fun into your life, promoting your overall wellness and so much more.