In the first months after the accident I found DeepFun and Bernie De Koven. I wonder looking back how my life might be different if I hadn’t found Bernie. He spent time with me vitrually as a “Fun Coach” of sorts, although I don’t think he had a name for it back then.
Bernie was my personal fun coach back then as he worked with me on a strange concept Fun and Grief. He taught me techniques and gave me tools that helped start on the process of going through a major transition and helped me to focus on the fun aspects of life during a time when my life was focused on things that were anything but fun. I don’t think I can ever thank or repay Bernie for being there at a time when I really needed someone.
(more of Rod’s reflections on my work as a Fun Coach are available here.)
It’s not about efficiency or productivity or weight loss. It’s about enjoyment and appreciation and fulfillment. It’s an ingredient that is as vital to your happiness as your finances.
Having a FUN Coach is very much like having someone who not only listens to you, but also understands how to help you make things more fun.
Having a FUN Coach is not at all like having a sports coach or a fitness coach or a financial coach to push you harder, faster, out of your comfort zone.
Having a FUN Coach is almost exactly like having someone to share your comfort zone with, someone who respects your limits, someone who knows fun, and is trained in the art and science of making things fun. A professional who honestly, openly, wants nothing more than to help you make your world more fun.
You can meet with your FUN Coach, every week, for a couple of hours, every other week, or month or whenever you feel like going. Even if all you did was play together, it’d be worth it. Because it’d be fun – real, meaningful, personal, deep fun. And because this professional player always makes the rules negotiable, adjustable, the only goal being to find a way to play so that you can all enjoy the game, all be challenged, together – it’d be a lesson in how you, too, could make things fun again, even if they were only games.
Once you find something that you want to play again and again together, something that remains fun for you both, you can begin to explore other games, expand the repertoire of games that you can both play together. It’s not about what you want to play or what your play expert wants to play but about what you can play together.
But let’s imagine that you go further, you and this person, and you also focus on how you might make other things more fun. Not just games, but things like work, school, relationships. Let’s say that, G*d forbid, you’ve lost someone. Someone close. Or you’ve lost something important to you – like your money, your job, your house, your wallet, your pet. And you’re still grieving. And you go to this fun expert, and play.
It’s almost a miracle, you know, how you and this expert player can manage to set all that grief aside for a while, and actually have fun again. Which reminds you, naturally, how many ways are still open for you to feel whole again, feel at play, in play. That, alone, would be worth whatever it costs. Just being reminded, experiencing yourself at play again.
And if you want, you and this expert player could also spend some time thinking about other opportunities for fun in your life, for bringing fun to your children, parents, spouse, neighborhood, community. Or thinking about what you’ve already tried, and what was the most fun, and what you could do next.
Sure, things will come up, and you’ll want to talk about them, but the more that you can focus on having fun together, the more successful you will be. This isn’t therapy. Or if it is, it’s not about the talk. It’s the fun. That’s the whole point of it. It’s not about playing so that you talk about all the painful things in your life. It’s about playing so that you can learn to play more with the rest of your life. It’s what I call the practice of deepFUN.