“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What’d you do last weekend? Anything fun? Anything “story-worthy?”

A common regret at the end of life is that you lived a life others expected of you and weren’t always true to yourself. That you had ideas but didn’t listen to your gut. Some of this comes from being raised to “get along.” And some comes from the ease of doing things that are expected rather than really thinking about what you like to do. And then having the courage to do it!

Even though you’re an adult, you still get to have fun. Right?

If you’re ready to get back on a fun track, take 10 minutes and write down as many things as you can that you love to do. You don’t have to be good at them. Just use your gut. If you’re not having fun now and need a prompt, think about what you used to do that was fun.

Here’s my quick-hit list for the day. Warning: Once you get started, it’s kind of hard to stop!

• Travel
• Read
• Draw
• Paint
• Write
• Run
• Meditate
• Go to the theater
• Act in the theater
• Sing in the theater!
• Listen to live music
• Work out
• Play music
• Take a class in something I know nothing about
• Play outside
• Play cards
• Hang out with the cats
• Hang out with the kids
• Hang out with friends
• Create whimsical bags from scratch (after I find really cool material!)
• Walk around in a city
• Go to a museum

Your list may be vastly different from mine. That’s kind of the point! But now what? You have a “love to do list.” How do you make this happen?

I’d suggest posting your list on a wall – somewhere you’re going to see it on a regular basis – and let the ideas brew. My experience is that once I write stuff down, certain things just happen. Opportunities come up to travel. I feel an incredible urge to write. Friends call with ideas for going out. My “fun list” doesn’t usually make it to my planner which is very strange for me. But this isn’t work. It’s fun.

So how can you make your fun list happen? It just does. It may be that a list like this stirs your brain and makes you more open to seeing and hearing about fun stuff. Or, as Liz Gilbert writes in Big Magic, a list like this may be magic and may actually create winds of opportunity and change.

I hope you have a fun week just thinking about fun stuff! Namaste.

I’ll leave you with two contrasting texture shots from a recent trip to Broadway.

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