Bill Riddell

Are You Having Fun?

I’m introducing the habit of asking myself several times a day the vital question ‘am I having fun?’

In that moment I question if I’m enjoying what I am doing. If the answer is yes then I’m free to continue.

But if the answer is a no, then I look further at just why I’m not enjoying myself and what to do about it.

Is what I am doing necessary in some way to achieve further happiness, if so I’ll continue after trying to find a way to improve the enjoyment or lack of.

An example of this is helping my dad build and maintain our race cars. Though I have an enormous passion for racing, I have very little interest in the mechanical aspects of the race car. Working on the car for me is not an enjoyable activity.

I don’t have a natural mechanical aptitude and struggle to understand some of the inner workings of a car. Instead I focus on how I can improve my performance while racing, through learning more about racing techniques, analysis of my driving and even mentally rehearsing laps like top athletes do.

My dad however is blessed with a mechanical aptitude and is an all around handyman who grew up around cars, his father and uncle were the same. My father loves working on the cars, pulling apart the engines, making changes, maintenance, and much more. He even built one of our cars from scratch using some plans. A tremendous achievement.

For me helping my dad work on the car from time to time is a fairly necessary evil, I don’t yet have the budget to pay some one to take care of race cars for me and if I fail to take care of them and it breaks down I miss out on the enjoyment I get from racing it.

So I do help out a bit to make sure the car works, to gain greater understanding and more importantly to continue a great relationship with my dad, If its important to him I should at least respect that.

If I’m not enjoying myself I also ask am I learning something important to me. Learning is not always fun and if I’m learning an important lesson I’m prepared to temporarily sacrifice some happy time to gain further important knowledge or life lessons.

I recently finished reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. The book contains an incredibly important message but to me is rather poorly written, I found it a chore to read despite the great wisdom it contained. Normally when time permits I read a book over the course of two weeks or so. It took me over three months to read, putting it down and reading something else then coming back to it. I also took the time to absorb the lessons.

The Power of Now teaches you to stay centered in the present moment, not projecting into the future (e.g. worrying about what may come) or dwelling on the past (e.g. regretting a previous action).

By reguarlly asking yourself ‘am I having fun’ you not only stay in ‘The Now’ as Tolle calls it, but you also ensure what you are doing now is benifical to you in some way. Wherher it be having fun or learning something important.

Are you having fun?