Ever wondered why success seems elusive despite your hard work?

Are you trapped in the cycle of relentless productivity, feeling the weight of responsibilities, and dismissing the idea of having fun as an unnecessary luxury?

Picture this: You continue on the treadmill of life, accumulating stress, sleepless nights, and weakened connections, unknowingly hindering your creativity and motivation.

🌟 BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• Discover how injecting a healthy dose of fun is the secret ingredient to success.
• Learn the scientific evidence behind the transformative power of fun, and why it trumps the quest for more information.
• Explore five compelling reasons why incorporating fun into your life can be a game changer.
  
  

---

🎧 Apple Podcast: Listen and Subscribe
🎧 Spotify: Listen and Subscribe

---

Professional Bio

Are you a high-achieving, ambitious professional working mother, feeling trapped in the whirlwind of your demanding career and family responsibilities? Overwhelmed by stress, busyness, and societal expectations? Drained of energy and struggling to find balance while silently battling guilt and unfulfillment?

Welcome to a transformative journey a certified lifestyle medicine physician, experienced yoga and meditation teacher, and a mother of three. In this immersive podcast, she provides a path to authenticity, purpose, and vitality. Through tailored coaching programs, Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer equips you with the tools and strategies to regain balance and create a life aligned with your true self.

Our listeners, our clients, are high-achieving professional working mothers who have successfully transformed their lives with life design. They’ve overcome stress, found peace within their careers and personal lives, and are thriving.

Discover how to harmoniously balance your professional and personal life, relieve stress, and find your true purpose. Learn time management techniques, prioritize self-care, and regain meaning in life. Join Dr. Libby Schanzmeyer and begin your journey towards a life of ease, vitality, and impact, where authenticity leads the way.


Welcome to Living True By Design Podcast!

👍Liked this episode? Share it with a friend.

❤️ Love the show? Write a 5-star review (even just one sentence helps us keep bringing you the content you want to hear.)

📖 Want to learn how to design your life -start with self compassion? Sign up to receive the Ultimate Self-Compassion Guide here.

Join high achieving professional women like yourself in our FREE Facebook community here.

Connect with Libby:

• Website
• TikTok
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
  
  

---

Podcast Episode Transcript

Episode eight, today’s episode is fun.

I have good news for you today.

Today’s episode is literally and figuratively fun. We are gonna be talking about how having fun is a key element to success.

A lot of times we think we need information, but actually scientifically proven, we need more fun. And I love it that science is telling us this because it seems intuitively obvious. If we’re having fun doing something, we’re enjoying it, we’re gonna be more engaged and do a better job. Well,

Science actually backs this up now.

This is a secret to success that no one is talking about. Today’s show is literally and figuratively fun. We are gonna be talking about how fun is one of the major keys to success. And I’m gonna tell you about an article that talks about the scientific evidence of why fun, why and how fun can be a key in our success in making change in our life.

I’ve always been curious about motivation. And I did a year of family practice before I did my pathology residency. And as a family practice resident, I saw people in clinic. And I remember being fascinated by motivation and wondering what

Is it that causes people to be motivated to do things? And that’s what we’re gonna be diving into today. Fun, engagement, how to do things that will help motivate you and other people if you wanna try to motivate other people like your kids to eat vegetables, maybe yourself to eat vegetables. We’ll be talking about that more today.

So as a resident physician, talking to people, I remember them, you know, not taking their medications and not keeping their blood sugar in control and being, you know, what medical system calls non-compliant. And when people are non-compliant, it gets frustrating if you’re their physician and you’re trying to work with them to make their health better and they won’t participate. It’s really frustrating.

And so that was one of the things that I thought about a lot of how can you motivate other people and then also motivating myself, you know, there’s things I should do and I don’t feel like doing and so then I don’t do them. And so I’m always like, how do I motivate myself to do things too? So.

Then another aspect of fun as a professional working mom with a career and a family, I think we get into this frame of reference in life that it’s not, there’s just no time for fun. And there’s not only no time for fun, it’s annoying to even like hear about this. And if that’s the case for you and you’re like, I can’t handle this, then I understand.

And I want you to know you’re not alone. And if you find it triggering for someone to talk about fun, that’s okay and normal. And it’s a sign that maybe there could be some changes in your life. It’s a sign that you’re not meeting your needs, that there are needs that are in your life that are not being met. I don’t wanna say that you’re not meeting your needs. I’m saying it’s a sign. Here.

Do this one. It’s a sign. If you find it triggering for someone to say, we need to have fun, we need to have more fun, anything like that, which I did, I definitely did. That was my experience is if somebody was like, oh, let’s have fun, let’s lighten up. No, you don’t understand how much there is to do. You don’t understand all the things there are. And I contend that if that’s a reaction that comes up with you.

That there are needs that you have that aren’t being met. And it can be really hard. And so if that can’t happen right now, that’s okay. Again, you’re not alone and what your needs are matter. sometimes needs to take priority over other needs, right? Like if you have a brand new baby, it’s not gonna be fun. There’s different seasons of our life. We can’t take a nap when the newborn baby needs to eat. Like that’s just…

You know, our needs are colliding and we just have to do the best we can with our needs and our responsibilities all incorporated together. But if you’re in a place where you can have some fun, let’s keep talking. If you’re in a place that you are not able to have fun right now,

Do a mind experiment and think, what would it be like if I could have fun? Or what would it be like if I could have fun for, I don’t know, five minutes today? Or even smaller, what would it be like if I could have fun for one minute today? I think having a little tiny thought experiment like that can be super helpful too. And I think,

Letting ourselves have that sense of enjoyment is really important.

And now being in a different season in my life, I have a lot of compassion and grieving. Like there’s some sadness about that place in my life when I literally didn’t have the emotional capacity for fun. That’s a pretty low place.in hindsight, I have a lot of compassion for who that was. And

Or the person I was that believed that there wasn’t room for that in my life and believed that other people could do it, but it wasn’t available for me.that’s a very painful place and it’s kind of suffering when you’re. So if that’s you, then I hear you and things really can change. And I think

The biggest thing is to know that there’s space and time for you. And this might not be the time for you to go participate in a big fun activity, but even just having a little space to think, well, what if I did have something today? It’s, it’s part of including ourself in the equation of our whole life. Right. And, um, this is a big part of designing your life and living true by your design.

Is incorporating fun into it. And I love this study that I’m gonna talk about because we think that it’s this superfluous kind of frivolous thing, but it’s not.

So sometimes we don’t feel like we have time, but then just sometimes we just don’t think about it. And our culture has gotten so serious, especially our careers and working environment is so driven. We just do one thing, do the next thing, do the next thing that we don’t really make time and space to enjoy ourselves and think about the good side of what our job is or the good side of what taking care of kids is. We get really focused on doing one thing.

Then the next thing, then the next thing, instead of, let me look at that. And so that is all part of the mindset, quote, mindset that we’re talking about too.

So this mindset is a powerhouse for overall pleasant, wonderful wellbeing.

We’re gonna talk about why injecting a healthy dose of fun into your life can be a total game changer. And we’re gonna talk about five reasons why that is.

Five reasons why having a healthy dose of fun is an absolute game changer in your life. Number one.

Fun as a stress buster. So when we have fun, we release endorphins and that not only relieves pain, if you have pain and you have endorphins, so that’ll numb your pain, right? But it also gives us a pleasant feeling. So it’s less pain, more good feeling. And that’s what happens when we have fun. So which busts your stress If we’re having stress and

Painful emotions, even painful body symptoms, having fun can actually help with it.

Number two, this is kind of a implied benefit, but it’s having better sleep. We know that decreasing our stress can increase our sleep quality. And so we’re implying here that we can have better sleep. And I don’t know if you can find a good study that’s directly links fun with sleep, but we’re gonna connect it as decreased stress.

A better feeling in life and better sleep.

The third reason why having fun can be a game changer in your life is because it boosts

Community and connection and I am so all about connection and the importance of connection in our life and Having fun together is a bonding experience, you know like think about times when you’ve been with your BFF your bestie whoever and You just like are like rolling laughing and tears come to your eyes That kind of thing is good for our whole physiology and it bonds us together And so it can really create

Amazing connections when you have fun with each other.

Number four, the fourth reason that fun can be a game changer in your life is that it boosts creativity. So when we’re in a frame of mind where we’re able to play that is basically our ventral vagal state. So our whole nervous system when we’re playing is in a state of calm and relaxation.

But then you can add a little sympathetic nervous system in there, which is the active state of our nervous system. And that’s where play is. They’ve also found that play has its own network in the brain, which is, and I can’t find the reference for this. I heard this, that someone referred to this study that play has its own network in the brain. So it’s vitally important. And they say, we learn so much better when we’re playing,

Also helps us be creative and it helps us get into this flow state when we’re having fun and we’re engaged in something. So it can really help with creativity.

And then the fifth reason why fun can supercharge your life is because it really can boost motivation. And this is scientifically proven. When we’re fun and we’re engaged and we are perceiving the pleasure in the moment, then that really does keep us motivated to keep doing it. We’ll get into this in just a second about.

Lifestyle, which is going to be more about exercise and diet. But I really think that this can overflow into all areas of your life of motivation of what is important, like doing things that we know we want to do.

So this article and it is called, can exercise and eating healthy be fun and indulgent instead of boring and depriving? Targeting mindsets about the process of engaging in healthy behaviors. It was written in the Frontiers in Psychology in 2021, this article and they looked at three different studies about mindset and diet and exercise and how

Having fun, part of the mindset is perceiving an activity as fun and how much more motivating that is than just information.

You know, in our culture in the United States, there’s a thing, you know, there’s this huge, just education about, you know, there’s what to eat and what to do and how to exercise. And there’s so much information about it. And they were doing these studies and realized that people don’t respond to information.

You know, and I think even in this article, they have two pictures side by side of what they gave to the people in the study. One picture was the information and one was the benefits that are fun, that, you know, the mindset is a positive thing that is perceived as fun, basically. And the one with the information…

It was hard to even read because my eyes kind of glazed over because it was, you know, we need 150 minutes of exercise a week. And it was pretty dry. But then the other side where they told the people in the study, the social benefits of exercise and the enjoyment of exercise, it made it sound really fun and it was juicy. And I wanted to read it and it made me, it made me want to do exercise. It’s really changed.

Just this article has even changed my perspective. It’s changed my mindset going to the gym.

One of the points they made in this article is it’s sobering how much effort has gone into educating people and how little that has helped our health. There’s so many people with chronic diseases that are not responding to all this information and it’s kind of the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Well,

People think we can just give more information and people will change their lifestyle. And that’s not true. And when I say change your lifestyle, I’m saying, you know, that sleep, exercise, what we’re eating, and I’m just basically sticking to diet and exercise in this because this is specifically what this article is about. But I think there’s so much about motivation that can, you know, clearly go into other areas.

This article, it refers to this book by Murphy and Dweck that you’ve probably heard of, there’s a book called Mindset and they define mindset as a specific time, they define mindset as a specific type of constructural or belief.

They talk about mindset as a a core assumptions about the nature of things or categories. So these studies were talking about these mindsets. And one of the studies they did were these, they took college kids and they were in college athletic courses, you know, you can sign up for tennis or golf or whatever. There were several athletic.

Courses that they recruited their participants for these studies from. And their, one group was, they were looking at giving them information. So they said, this is how much time you should do it is that dryer thing. And then the other one, they gave them the sheet of how, beneficial it is. And they were talking about, I don’t want to say they were talking about. So

One of the important things with our motivation is that we’re very motivated by our immediate results and something that helps when we change our mindset. When we go from saying, gosh, I don’t wanna go to the gym cause I’m tired and I just rather sleep. When you change that to, you know, when I go to the gym, my muscles feel strong. I know that it really wakes me up.

And is really enjoyable. And I see other people in the gym that are really friendly and they’re enjoying it too. When we shift that mindset and think about the pleasure of our strong bodies and feeling our muscles move, you know, the different benefits we get from the gym, feeling sweat, like knowing that that’s giving us a good workout. That’s an immediate result versus

Some of the things that are informational are like long-term down the road. You’ll have less heart disease. So, you know, I don’t know if I would have got heart disease anyway. So it’s real indeterminate. It’s real vague. These educational things of, well, it will decrease your chance of a stroke or heart attack. Well, I don’t know if I was going to have a stroke or heart attack. It’ll help you feel better. Well, in 20 years, I don’t really care how I’ll be feeling, you know, because it’s…

– So far removed.

So basically we’re talking about mindset as something that’s appealing versus not appealing. And going to the gym can be appealing to some people or not appealing to others. So therefore going to the gym is not necessarily a objectively unappealing thing because some people enjoy it, some people don’t. So…

That’s why we’re saying it’s related to mindset and our perception of things. And this is motivated by us personally, by our families, by the whole culture at large. there’s kind of a thing in our culture of, ooh, vegetables are gross. Well, that’s huge in the way that we eat. If it’s not appealing and it’s quote healthy.

We’re doing it because it’s not really fun, but you gotta eat your broccoli, right? But instead, if we looked at, that was part of another study in this article that they told participants the enjoyment of the food and they referred to France of how in France, the culture isn’t so eat this for this health benefit and don’t eat this for not this health benefit. It’s more, we’re gonna experience this range of

Taste and healthful food and enjoy and appreciate it. So if you can like eat a grape and enjoy and appreciate it, instead of eating a grape because it’s good for you, even though you don’t really want it, those are the two examples of mindsets. And if you want long-term to really focus on your health and eat well, then it helps to have a mindset of, you know,

I’m going to try these different foods and I’m going to really enjoy the appealing nature of it.

And so they’re talking about motivation and they talk about capitalizing on our drive for the immediate pleasure of rewards. And this motivation is important because it really capitalizes on the immediate pleasure or the immediate reward versus a long-term reward. And so they found it really helpful.

To have a mindset where we focus on something as pleasurable, then it’s an immediate result instead of the long-term vague thing that doesn’t really make any difference to us. Because then when it’s long-term down the road and it doesn’t really mean anything to us, that’s not gonna get me to the gym..

Another thing with motivation is that there can be a conflict between our immediate temptation and our long-term goals and values. So the long-term goal could be, I wanna be in good physical condition, I want my muscles to be strong, I wanna lift weights so my bones are strong. But the immediate temptation is, I wanna stay in bed and sleep.

So when we shift the mindset to this immediate result of when I’m at the gym today, I’m gonna feel my strong muscles and I’m gonna enjoy that. And I’m gonna get to dance around because there’s music playing and I get to see some friends that I’ve made at the gym. When we have an immediate reward or immediate enjoyable experience that takes that conflict away from having a long-term goal that we want to do and

A short term temptation where we don’t want to do it. There’s a conflict between those versus if we have this impression that what we’re doing is going to be enjoyable plus this long term goal, our values is to take care of our body so we can be healthy to take care of our family. When we have the value plus our short term enjoyment of the moment, then they’re synergistic and they…

Help each other and there’s less conflict there. And so you don’t have this drag and you just like go for it.

So the long-term goals, they’re often distant in the future, they’re abstract, like hard to define, you know, like what is being healthy. And they’re indeterminate, you know, like maybe nothing bad will happen if I eat french fries and smoke cigarettes every day for 20 years. I don’t know. So those are like the things, those are those short-term temptations.

That are in conflict with a long-term goal. But if we can let go of those and reverse them, then they can act together.

Also in the study of the college students where they were in the athletic courses, they participated longer. They went to class, which is interesting to me because it really builds engagement. If we just, all they did,

At the beginning of the class was spend 10 minutes going over these sheets, 10 minutes. It’s not, it doesn’t have to be a huge thing. It was just a 10 minute, okay, we’re gonna be enjoying our tennis and it’s gonna be so fun. Let me tell you some of the things that they

Okay, I don’t know if you can see this, but those are the two sheets. This is the one that’s enjoyable. I’m holding up a picture of from the study and this is the one that was just the information. And so the, the enjoyable one, and then the information here. And the enjoyable one, if you’re listening, it has a picture, some people working on it says the power of mindset versus the information. It has a graphic of people, you know, riding a bike and

Doing sit-ups or something. But the power of mindset one is it’s like intriguing and it’s this juicy thing and you wanna read it. And we talk about how you assess your mindset, you assess the process and you change your mindset. And things that can be enjoyable is inviting friends, you have a mind body experience, exercise is more than reps, it’s about how you feel. And then,

Inviting your friends, exercise is meant to be social, workout with friends for extra fun. And then the last one on here is do what you love. Be creative and try new forms of exercise. That to me is so juicy and it sounds a lot of fun versus the informational one, which has aerobic activities listed, the substantial health benefits, one or two and a half hours, one and a half hours, just like…

Glaze your eyes over muscle strengthening activities. And it tells you how to do those. Those are boring. And so those two sheets, spending 10 minutes with each group separately had this huge impact of people staying in class, people being engaged, and signing up for more classes in the future. The ones that had this mindset shift actually signed up for more classes in the future. They went to more classes.

Were there on the last day versus the other ones who were given all this information. Think about this impact on our country. You know, we’re giving these, they were talking about the food recommendation guidelines that were given. Like that’s all information that does nothing to us. That doesn’t help us get engaged. That doesn’t help us get motivated. Think if we raised a generation of kids that had appreciation.

For different foods that were grown in a garden, right? It would just be a huge difference to our whole country, our whole world.

So feels like it’s kind of loosely tied to fun, but I think the mindset is that it’s fun and these different behaviors are appealing. And it’s not like a toxic fun thing of where if you’re not having fun, you’re convincing yourself. It’s actually finding a way to enjoy something that is good for you, you know? And it seems silly that that’s quite foreign for us, but it can help us

Live in a way where we do reach our long-term goals and overcome these short-term temptations of, I’d rather sit on the sofa and eat donuts than go to the gym. So by making it fun to be at the gym, finding one thing that you think is really enjoyable about it that makes it pleasant. Okay

By that mindset shift, what I mean is perceiving pleasure, fun, relaxation from the thing you’re doing in the moment. So if you, to translate it, I enjoy cooking dinner

To translate it instead of saying, well, I hate loading the dishwasher, it’s such a drag and these people just leave all their dishes around and it’s horrible. And I’m not saying they’re not responsible for helping because they are, that needs to be addressed. And if the kids are too young, not able to, whatever, it’s your day to do the chores, whatever it is, instead of just dreading it, if there’s a way to

Find something enjoyable about it. Find pleasure, fun, relaxation. Maybe fun, put on music. Maybe fun or pleasure. To me, it’s pleasurable to think about that long-term goal. I think if we’re conscious about the long-term goal, we can find pleasure in it. Like the long-term goal or the immediate goal is to have a pleasant home. So I’m gonna pick up the dishes out of the sink. That is an immediate…

Pleasure to have a clean environment. So if we think of it in those terms instead of this other thing, and it can really like make life a lot more fun and enjoyable and motivating, cause then you’re motivated. Like I’m motivated to go to the gym because I know it’s gonna be fun in that moment. I don’t have to wait for some day where I might not have a heart attack by going to the gym today, you know? It is a very different mindset shift.

And if we do overlook this, it can be detrimental to our health, you know, because we can fall into just succumbing to these momentary temptations. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. I find myself scrolling on social media when that’s not what I want to do. When I’d rather, I know I want to meditate. I’m going to get up to meditate and then I’ll scroll on social versus social media that can help with a motivation to do the things that really are important to me. We can get so distracted and there’s so many things that can distract us now. So this really helps with motivation and enjoyment and having the life that you want. It helps us live true by design, truly.

And if we don’t do it, we are living by this default. We are living by our being driven by our subconscious, which is okay, but that’s not gonna take you to the heights that you could have in your life of success defined by you.

So this week, I invite you to find an area, find one thing that you might not enjoy that much and try it. See if I’m just making all this up, see how it works for you. Just find one thing that you don’t enjoy and try, experiment with having a mindset shift, experiment with what if this was fun, what if this was relaxing and see if you can find one aspect of that. I’m not saying just…

Everything that you don’t enjoy, switch it around. If you don’t enjoy something truly, maybe that’s not the right thing to be doing. But if it’s something that you aren’t enjoying in the moment, but long-term you know you need to do it, that’s where you can try this.

And come over and join us in our Facebook group, Living True by Design. I would love to hear that one activity that you try this on. It would be so interesting to hear. And come over for some support too. I would be really happy to hear what you’re doing and.

And we can share with each other different ideas of activities we’re doing in ways that we’re finding ways to enjoy things that lead us toward the things we really want to accomplish in life.

Stay tuned for the next episode where we’re going to be talking about emotional intelligence and how it is even a stronger indication for success than IQ.

Get ready to be an emotional pro with us.

And remember to show up, focus and shine as you live true by design.