What Is Creative Fun? – The Key To Our Power

If you’ve read this past article then you know about the power of having fun to propel us to achieving our goals. At the end of that article I write about creative fun. This article will go into the details of it.

What is creative fun? It’s having fun while creating! Sounds simple, right? The most powerful ideas in life are incredibly simple, I’ve found. So read on if you’re interested in unlocking your potential with creative fun and becoming an active creator of your life.

---

What Do We Get When We Combine Creativity And Fun?

The answer? Growth. Tremendous, sustainable growth. I’ll elaborate

For the purposes of this article I don’t want us to think of creativity as “the act of coming up with original, helpful ideas”, that’s the sort of “mystical, inspiration-by-muse, pie-in-the-sky” definition of creativity which can put some people off. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just won’t serve us here, now.

Instead, for this article, when I write the word “creativity” think of “creating.” That’s it. Simple as simple can be.

Everyone creates things. When we cook we’re creating things. When we choose our clothes in the morning we are creating something. When we send messages to people through the internet we are creating. To live is to create. It’s part of being human.

So when I write “Combine creativity and fun” I am actually writing “Combine creating and fun.”

This Changes The Game Entirely

And I’ll explain why.

In the previous article I made the case for how having more fun in life actually promotes our success, but only if this activity is creative (not destructive like drinking, smoking or lying). This is because activities which we find fun we are more likely to repeat. This applies to any activity.

Why do people watch television? Or read books? Or go to bars? Or go to concerts? Or go to the movies?

Because they find those activities fun! And because they find them fun, people do tend to do them over and over and over again. A person who watches television or one who reads books or one who goes to bars, or another who goes to concerts or the movies will probably not engage in the activity just once. That person will do it multiple times.

How do you know what a person does for fun? Watch what they do with their free time. We use our free time to do the things we feel are fun. Whether that’s watching cat videos on YouTube, making cat memes or making cat videos which other people can then watch online, each of these activities is performed because the person doing the performing finds them fun.

This leads us to a powerful conclusion: what we find fun/enjoyable/pleasurable we tend to repeat.

Why Is This A Powerful Conclusion?

Because our life circumstances are the reflection of our habits.

If our life circumstances are some of powerlessness, lack of agency, stagnation and worry, that’s because our habits have led us there.

If, on the other hand, our life circumstances reflect freedom, growth and lightheartedness, that’s also because our habits have led us there.

So if we make the habits which lead us to freedom, prosperity and health, fun, then what will be the outcome? We will practice the habits and allow them to take us exactly where they lead us: an awesome, unique and memorable life.

In order to do that we need to know the why most of us are unsatisfied with our lives, which I’ll get into now.

Why Most Of Us Are Unsatisfied With Our Lives

The answer is simple: because most of us believe we are passive consumers of our lives rather than active creators.

All the philosophers, old and new, who argue against this simple answer and seek to complicate it can promptly go fly a hypothetical kite into a figurative black hole.

It really is that simple. Is that surprising?

We interpret events in our lives through the filter of our beliefs. And believe it or not, we have the power to change our beliefs, at will, given some time and energy (and a little guidance always helps). For example:

If we lose our job and our belief is that without a job we are in danger or worthless, how will we behave? We will be distraught at having lost our job, of course. We will be desperate for another one and narrow minded about our options. We will act from fear, which will prevent us from exploring. We’ll just get another job and stay the course, not playing to win but playing to not lose.

But, if we lose our job and our belief is that without a job we can now explore other possibilities and interests, how will we behave? We will be excited and ready to take on new challenges! We will look at the loss of our job as an opportunity, rather than a tragedy. We will discover new interests, new sides of ourselves which had remained in the dark until then. We grow and rise to embody more of our potential, which is limitless. We will act from love, we play to win.

I know this because I lived it. And I chose the second option.

What Is Active Creation?

When we become active creators of our lives and start choosing our beliefs, we start setting the course of our lives. Events, whether “good” or “bad” (good and bad are illusions), are then interpreted by our selected beliefs in the way which best suits our goals. This is why our life circumstances depend less on what happens to us and more on how we choose to respond to what happens to us.

And we are always choosing. ALWAYS. We choose to either create our lives or not.

To be an active creator of our lives means that we are in the drivers seat. We can’t control what happens to us. But we can control how we respond (because we can choose our beliefs). So, in this way, we actually do control what happens to us.

To have complete control over what happens to us, that is active creation. Viktor Frankl, psychotherapist, holocaust survivor and author of “Man’s Search For Meaning” put it this way:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one own’s way.”

This was said by a man who had (almost) everything taken from him: his family, career, possessions, dignity and freedoms. He was forced to do backbreaking work in freezing temperatures alongside other captives for years. He was beaten, starved and ridiculed. He managed to survive, where others perished, because he believed he had the power to interpret the events in his life as he chose to.

And He Did

He chose to find meaning in his suffering. And this choice allowed him to make it through the inhumane circumstances which were forced upon him.

So what are your excuses? What self-limiting beliefs are you unconsciously holding onto that prevent you from making the changes you want in your life? Do you believe you’re too uneducated? Too fat? Too poor? Too traumatized? Too dark-skinned? Too woman? All of these excuses are valid.

But accepting these excuses does absolutely nothing to change your situation. Try it and see.

So what do you choose? To actively create your life? Or not?

How To Start Creating

School conditions us to be passive consumers. You can read all about this in this article and this one.

Then, once we graduate from school we head on to college, where we get a little more freedom, but the core of the lessons imparted remains the same: do as you’re told and you succeed.

We aren’t taught to be active creators, because if we were then the economic model of passive consumption, of deriving life satisfaction through the production and consumption of material goods rather than internal, spiritual satisfaction, would crumble.

It’s in the current economy’s best interest to keep us as passive consumers. So the institutions of the world perpetuate that status by indoctrinating us into believing we need others to tell us what to do. That we have no other options but the ones which are presented to us. That we are powerless victims of circumstance.

But throughout all of this conditioning the flame of creation never goes out within us. It burns just as bright as the day we were born. It has just been buried beneath a mound of indoctrination. But such indoctrination can be dissolved.

 

How?

By creating.

What Happens When You Create

When you start creating things, ANY-THING, because you want to do so and not because you’re being told to do so, you start breaking free of the conditioning of passive consumption.

So when you create drawings, new food, poems, stories, doodles, sculptures, paintings, plays, crafts, funny videos, or anything else you are deconditioning yourself from being a passive consumer.

But the effect is not limited to creating material things. You can also create friendships, travels, music, conversations, ideas, jokes, opinions, etcetera.

Anything you create. ANYTHING. Deconditions you from passive consumption. As long as it comes from you, from your heart, because you enjoy it, because you want to share something with the world, because you have something inside you that wants to come out, then you are becoming an active creator.

You are taking the helm of your life and setting your course. To where? Only you can decide that! That’s part of being an active creator. No one tells you what to do. To be free is a great responsibility; most people choose comfortable chains over uncomfortable freedom, while being completely unaware of their choice.

But it doesn’t stop there. There’s more.

What Happens When You Share Your Creations

If you then take your creation and SHARE it, you supercharge your deconditioning. Think about it.

When you share any creation, anything, that came from your heart, it’s like you are sharing a little piece of yourself with the world. When you share, you accept that this creation came from you, from your depths, and that whether it’s beautiful or not, you made it and you are not afraid to show it.

So you share it so others can experience it. Whether they like it or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that YOU shared your CREATION. You invited others into your creative experience. You opened yourself up to the world that did everything it could to bury you. By sharing your creations with us you show us that you can do it, you give us permission to do so as well. You show us that you don’t care about what others think about you. You show us what can be done. You inspire us to become active creators.

And you did so because you wanted to.

That’s how you start creating your life. With one actively creative choice at a time. It takes to realize you’re becoming an active creator, patience pays off big time here. Keep going even if you don’t see results immediately!

So I invite you to create something and share it! It can be anything, even a comment on this post in which you express your honest opinion counts.

By doing so you are creating. And that’s awesome.

To our wealth and success.