Follow the Fun

Learn to Trust Fun and Change Your Life Forever

When I was a high school English teacher many years ago, I would often wake up in the middle of the night fraught with anxiety. I was failing to reach my students, failing them horribly I feared, even though I was doing all I knew at the time to help them succeed and create a great life for themselves.

Twenty years later I know the truth was I had been failing them miserably, but not through any fault of my own, but that is another story.

This is the story of how I got tired of feeling horrible, sick to my stomach with dread at the thought of going to school in the morning. Instead, I transformed my teaching and my life in one session with my best friend, my journal.

The Power of Dialoguing

In my Journal Writing for Teachers class I had been taught a journaling technique dialoguing. You can dialogue with anything, I learned, including aspects of a dream or even voices inside your own head.

I decided to dialogue with that Voice inside my head that was waking me up at night and this was one of the first times I ever faced my shame, the fear that I was a disgusting mistake which needed to be eradicated, wiped from the face of the Earth.

Brave, indeed, I was when I picked up my pen and wrote:

• Me: Okay, Voice That Wakes Me Up at Night. What is it you are trying to tell me? I want to know everything.
• Voice: You are a failure as an English teacher.
• Me: I know. Why am I a failure? What should I be doing?
• Voice: Your students should be writing essays with footnotes.

Note: As a college graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English, I had never written a paper with footnotes in my life. 

• Me: Okay. What else?
• Voice: Your students should have their papers publish.
• Me: My students should write papers with footnotes that are published in academic journals, Right?
• Voice: Right.
• Me: And then that would be enough, I would be enough?
• Voice: No, of course not. These papers would be written about Beowulf, the Old English classic. Your students must read in the original Old English.
• Me. Right. My students in my Mass Media class should be reading Beowulf in its original Old English and writing scholarly papers, which are published in academic journals. Is that all?
• Voice: No. You and your student should win some awards, some national awards.

Perfectionism Kills

At this point I realized for once and forever that I would never please this Voice inside me. Every time I succeeded, this Voice would just up the ante and I would be a failure again.

A Vow to Follow the Fun

So, I sent this voice to Hawaii for a vacation and decided to have fun instead. From that day on, no kidding, my goal has been to have fun. If I am not having fun, I change what I am doing. I am willing to work hard, proofreading this essay is no walk in the park when you are legally blind, but it is still fun, even if I am occasionally frustrated.

Taking a Stand for Fun at Work

Once when I was an elementary school counselor, I was leading a musical, life skills assembly. The students were rowdy and I could not get them to quiet down. "I’m not having any fun," I said. "I’m working too hard. If you don’t settle down we will have to stop the assembly and try again some other time."

They did not quiet down and, with a smile on my face, I said, “Okay, the assembly is over. We will try again some other time when you are able to listen better."

My students were shocked. I'm sure the teachers and parents were shocked. I even shocked myself. Wow! I had taken a stand for fun and I stood my ground firmly and cheerfully, even in the face of mass disapproval.

I never had trouble at an assembly again. I had credibility with my five hundred students and, more importantly, with myself. I could count on me when I was being invited to do something that was not working. I had learned to Follow the fun.

Trusting Fun

So now I follow the fun. I trust Fun. Fun happens when I am living in the present and when life is juicy and creative. Because I follow the fun, if I am struck by lightening in the next second, I will have no regrets. I have not spent my life worrying and flurrying, fussing and fretting.

 Since that day in my backyard, sitting in the sun out on my weedy lawn, that day I faced the Voice of Shame within me and sent her packing, I have been more creative, effective, and happier than I was when I was allowing Shame to dominate my life.

Desmond Tutu invites us to Follow the Fun and save the world. He is full of laughter and is a Nobel Prize-winner. If you don’t believe me, you can certainly trust him

So there.