The Psychology of Fun (& What It’s Got to Do with Being Happy) with guest Dr. Mike Rucker
About this Episode
Are you chasing happiness but feel like you keep coming up short? Wishing you could experience more joy in your life? Want to have more fun with your kids? On this episode of Brainy Moms, Dr. Amy and Teri interview Dr. Mike Rucker, an organizational psychologist who specializes in the research of fun. Dr. Rucker tells us that pursuing happiness might not be the right goal. He shares so much from research on happiness, joy, and fun…it’s a mindset changer. Join us! Don’t miss his Fender guitar made out of LEGOs at the end!
About Dr. Rucker
Mike Rucker, PhD is an organizational psychologist, behavioral scientist, and charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. Not only has his research on “fun” been published in scientific journals, his ideas about fun and health have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, mindbodygreen, and more. He currently serves as a senior leader at Active Wellness and is the author of the upcoming book The Fun Habit, available January 2023.
Connect with Dr. Rucker
Website: http://www.michaelrucker.com/
Instagram: @thewonderoffun
Facebook: @mike.rucker.phd
Mentioned in this Episode
Mike’s book, The Fun Habit, releases in Jan 2023
Give us a few days…we’re working on compiling all the research Mike mentions in this episode!
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Read the transcript for this episode:
Dr. Amy Moore:
Hi, and welcome to this episode of Brainy Moms brought to you today by LearningRx brain training centers. I’m Dr. Amy Moore, your host, here with my co-host Teri Miller, coming to you from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
We are excited to introduce our guest today, Dr. Mike Rucker. Dr. Mike is an organizational psychologist, a behavioral scientist, and charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. Not only has his research on fun been published in scientific journals, his ideas about fun and health have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, mindbodygreen, and more. He currently serves as senior leader at Active Wellness, and is the author of the upcoming book, The Fun Habit. Available next January, 2023.
Teri Miller:
So glad to have you with us, Mike.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m looking forward to this.
Teri Miller:
So I want you to tell our listeners just real briefly your story, and what brought you to the point of being a fun researcher where you are today.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Sure. So as you guys mentioned, I’m a charter member of the IPPA so when that got established, Csikszentmihalyi, and Marty Seligman were really bringing forth all these ideas. Around 2005, there was this big movement, and happiness as a construct really became popular with a lot of folks, not just psychologists, but life coaches, and I think that’s still prevalent today. And I certainly was a believer and still am, I still value happiness. And those tools really served me well for about a decade. I was also in the Quantified Self movement at the time. And so, not only was I looking at it from a psychological standpoint, but logging my happy days, looking for correlations, really trying to over-optimize my life. And I can say that now with a hindsight of 20/20, but at the time it felt cool because I was climbing this peak.
But to make a long story short, in 2016, I had a few pieces of unfortunate things happen. One, I lost my younger brother quite suddenly. He passed away from a pulmonary embolism. And I had been an endurance athlete up to that point. And so to mitigate stress, primarily what I would do was run. And I found out, right after my brother’s passing that I quite suddenly had, or news to me, was that I had advanced osteoarthritis. It really hadn’t affected me, but then all of a sudden my hip started hurting. And after getting an MRI, I found out that my femoral head was sitting on my pelvis and I wasn’t going to be able to run competitively again. And so, this big life event and then also the primary way that I used to mitigate stress was taken away from me. But I still had all these tools of positive psychology, and I definitely had a concern of maintaining this happiness state.
I just had my second child and I was a believer in these tools. But to make a long story short, during that time I found the more that I chased happiness and tried to hold onto it, it was actually making me less happy. And serendipitous, at that time, a bunch of different researchers were looking at, especially folks in the West, an overly concern with happiness. And so I started swimming from that research. One of the big folks that I follow in this area is Dr. Aris Mous out of Cal, but there are a whole host of others, certainly a lot out of Penn, too. And so, during that time there was a big research gap, and so like any good researcher, when you find this type of gap, and it’s affecting you, you tend to swim in it.
So I lived in PubMed, or excuse me, PubMed, and really started to align with the practitioners and researchers dwelling into this area. And Sonja Lyubomirsky is another one out of UC Riverside. There were these emerging studies coming out that a lot of what we believed to be true and a lot of what was getting consumed from academia, but sort of overprescribed, in a general sense, were actually doing harm, right? So one of the prevailing ideas during that time was you need to find something to be grateful for three times a day. And we know that gratitude is an amazing tool, so I’m not here to villainize it. But what was really interesting is Lyubomirsky and others found that folks that felt like that was a sense of duty that they had to do this activity were actually making themselves less happy.
And so I had this awakening, right? All of these things that were sort of part of my identity, because I wanted to be a happy person were actually working against me. And so, if that was the case, there had to be a better way, right? Especially for someone that was in a temporary state of malaise or melancholy. Because, obviously, a lot of these tools aren’t meant, if you have a biological or clinical disposition to depression, I’m certainly not telling you that you can find your way out of it. Right? I always try to make that clear, but if you’re going through a tough spot, you can have an action orientation to go find and invite joy and delight into your life and start to index these pleasurable experiences that lift you out. And what I found is that as an adult, it’s really hard to take that extra step.
We all sort of know this, but because of hustle culture and sort of systemic Puritan work ethic, it’s really hard, especially for parents, especially that feel this sort of dutiful sense for your kids. Teri, I know you have nine children, right? And I loved in your bio this idea that escapism for you might be binge watching Netflix. And the thing is, escapism isn’t necessarily bad, if you’re doing it in a manner that’s healthy. And so, I think that’s really the crux is that when we do find these areas where we’re either lonely or bored or burned out, that if you just use a little bit of mindfulness and take an action-oriented approach, you can start to have fun. So in that sense, fun is, as a distinction to happiness, which, as psychologists, we define as subjective wellbeing, which is sort of a lagging indicator, that if we just take a little bit off the table for ourselves and are a little bit more mindful of how spending the 168 in our week, we can actually generally pull ourselves out of temporary states of malaise.
And I think even though it’s not this profound thing that I’ve discovered it is something where you sort of need to rattle people’s cages like, “Wait a second. Yeah. Okay.” And now, there have been some really, really interesting studies that have backed it up. So it’s been a really fun journey. So that’s a long story short. I hope I answered your question.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah, absolutely. So let’s rattle some cages then.
Teri Miller:
Yes.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Let’s really dig into the difference between happiness and fun.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
So happiness, as we describe it, is an emotional state, right? And again, it generally takes introspection to get there, especially as we define it as psychologists, so again, sometimes it’s described at subjective wellbeing and those are often a battery of instruments where you take a survey and sort of how are you feeling about your wealth and your physical wellbeing and your relationships with friends. And so, that’s something that you’re kind of looking at in the rear view mirror. And even in a present state, you kind of have to take yourself out of the moment and be like, “Hey, am I happy now?” Right?
This section was deleted from audio but retained on video:
Teri Miller:
Uh-oh. We’ve got high wind here in Colorado, so probably just got a high wind alert.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Speaking of physical safety. I want to make sure you guys-
Dr. Amy Moore:
Are you getting one now, too?
Teri Miller:
I just did. Yeah. And I have my thing turned off, but apparently the alerts.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, I think those types of alerts.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Oh no. It’s actually a fire evacuation.
Teri Miller:
Fire. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
The wind… it’s so dry and then we have wildfires here in Colorado and the wind is spreading wildfires, and so it’s an evacuation order. We’re not in that-
Teri Miller:
Not for us. We’re good.
Dr. Amy Moore:
We’re out of here.
Teri Miller:
No, we [inaudible 00:08:37]
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Right on cue. Right into physical safety and they’re going off.
Teri Miller:
That is interesting though, who knew? Even if you have everything silenced-
Dr. Amy Moore:
Turned off. Those alerts still break through.
Teri Miller:
The alerts still go.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Well, you don’t want to sleep through those.
Teri Miller:
Exactly. Yeah. That’s good, because what if it was an evacuation for us. Okay.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Okay.
Teri Miller:
Go ahead.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Do you know where we were Mike?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, no.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Okay.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
We were being mindful of having the fun that we are in, right? It’s still great to be happy, but often when we think about it is when it becomes problematic. And so, again, want to make clear the distinction that valuing happiness and wanting to live that happy life is fine, but when we get overly concerned and start thinking about it is when there’s problems, right. And so, the simplest way to look at that academically, and this has been empirically validated, is that when we’re sort of concerned about happiness, we tend to think about the gap between where we are today and where we want to be, right? And if that is pervasive, what ends up happening is it bleeds into our identity, right? So you constantly think about that gap and you’re like, “Oh, well I must not be a happy person, because every time I think about my own happiness, I’m not where I want to be and, therefore, how can I identify as happy.”
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Where when you take a fun approach and sort of approach the activities that you find pleasure in more mindfully you can start to celebrate your gains, right? You start to index all of these kind of interesting things and you also understand that you have agency and autonomy over your life, which tends to be a nice upward spiral, right? Because you’re taking control over how you spend some of your time and once you do that, it’s sort of a learned skill, right? And so, this can be a skill that you develop over time. The problem, again, with adults is that we’re just not scheduling enough of this in our lives, right? So this research comes from Dr. Cassie Holmes out of UCLA who looked at how Americans are spending their leisure and she found that for a lot of folks, we’re not spending any of it. In fact, if you look at paid PTO in the Western world, we tend to be in the bottom 5%. I think we’re tied with Thailand, right? Most of us get, on average, two weeks per year.
Teri Miller:
Wow.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And what’s even worse is we’re not using it, right? It’s such a problem right now that Fortune 500 companies are actually incentivizing people to take their vacation, so that’s a real problem. And what we know is that when people aren’t indexing pleasurable experiences and having fun in their lives, really bad things happen to their personal wellbeing, right? Obviously, physically they start to break down because their limbic system is always in overdrive, because everything seems like a crisis. You’re always kind of living in your to-do list and now that we live in world of heuristic work and algorithmic work our to-do lists are never-ending, right? So that’s a whack-a-mole that just never stops, right?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
But when we’re not taking a little bit off the table for ourselves, our productivity also goes down, so it’s not just physical wellbeing, it’s that we start to produce less. And so, paradoxically, we’re actually getting less done when we overprescribe ourselves to work. And so, what Dr. Holmes found is that the kind of Goldilocks spot for feeling like at least you’re living a joyful life is two hours of leisure per day, which when you think about it, isn’t a lot. Right? That’s only 14 hours our of your 168, but a lot of us aren’t doing that, right?
Teri Miller:
Yeah, that seems like a lot. I think most people would say two hours of leisure a day seems like a lot, like for a busy parent? I mean, keep going, but I’m thinking, “Yeah, that ain’t happening.”
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Right? But the thing is, when you’re not mindful of trying to figure out what that means for you, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop parenting, right? I know in the second half we’re going to get into that a little bit, but you can use techniques to still be a parent and find pleasurable things for you to do either with your children or your partner or find pleasurable ways to engage with work. I would posit that that’s what you two have done with this podcast, right? I mean, this is still work, but I can tell you guys are having a boatload of fun, that’s probably why you kept it up, right?
Dr. Amy Moore:
Don’t tell our boss that on air. I’m just kidding.
Teri Miller:
But you know what? The sign I put on my door that says we’re actually recording. It says, “Brainy Moms recording,” and then it says, I have something like, “Is it really work if I’m having this much fun.” Because it’s true, yes. Go ahead.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
No, I but I think that’s right. Because for a lot of folks, for a whole host of reasons, because it runs the gamut. It’s hard to dig into one case, because people will be like, “Well, that doesn’t pertain to me.” I get it. Parenting styles and problematic work issues, especially after the pandemic are as specific to the person, but generally when you peel back the onion you can find ways to improve your situation, right? It can be as provocative as leaving your job, but obviously that comes from a place of privilege. Some people can’t. But most people can find a way to at least improve a few hours in their day, even if they’re in a tough spot. And then, non-work related, if you’re engaged in something like I was with loss or potentially a divorce or whatever, even if you’re in that state, so that there’s a lot of things where, emotionally, you don’t feel connected to joy, you still have the opportunity to go and have fun, right? Connecting with a friend and going to the movies or whatever activity lights you up, if it’s voluntary fun, reengaging with something you weren’t able to do.
Again, indexing those things we know it is able to bring you back up, even if you don’t necessarily feel happy in that moment. And then, one other thing I’d like to highlight is that we know that when you’re not having fun, you tend not to do the hard stuff, because there’s a lot of friction with regards to, you tend to keep yourself more busy. So there’s a great study out of MIT, Stanford, and Harvard that looked at this, and so it was a big study, 28,000 different participants and they used a pager to check in on people, what activity they were doing and how they were feeling about it. And what we’ve talked about with regards to folks that are coping with something, their hypothesis held true, right? When we’re coping with something really hard, we tend to find activities for pleasure that allow us to escape, right? And sometimes those are unhealthy and some folks are able to escape in healthy ways like exercise and things of that nature.
But the folks that were kind of in that Goldilocks spot and really did take time off the table for themselves, and even again if that’s in partnership with other folks, like their kids and their parents, or excuse me, their partner, they go and find the harder stuff to do. So when they have a little bit of time, they have the resilience to do more creative work or go find harder challenges or just do stuff that is for their own betterment, because their fun cup is already fun, right? If we’re not finding any joy at all, then we don’t do that kind of harder fun stuff that leads to betterment and peak experiences. Instead, we just want to relieve the discomfort that we’re feeling in that moment. And so, again, another reason why that stuff is so important.
Dr. Amy Moore:
I want to recap a little bit, because you just made a couple of really good points.
Teri Miller:
Right, like there’s some big stuff in there.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Right. So what you’re saying is, when we’re chasing the goal of being happy, then we notice the gap between where we are now and where we want to be. And so, then, in that gap is where we can start ruminating on all the things that are going wrong in our life or what we don’t have or what our neighbor has that we wish we could have or the whole woe is me. I mean, there’s a space there that we sit in between where we are now and where we want to be.
Teri Miller:
Right.
Dr. Amy Moore:
And so, you’re saying, if we, I think you call it having a bias toward fun.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
That’s right. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So if we have a mindset that there’s something that we can choose to do today that’s fun, that brings us joy, they more we stack those up in our lives, the closer we not only come to meeting our goal of being happy, but that produces the happiness all by itself.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
That’s right. And the best part of that is all you’re doing is exchanging that energy, right? So another thing that I think folks take for granted is what you just described, sort of perseverating on a situation that’s hard to change. That’s time and energy and so all you have to do is refocus that energy on things that you want to do and it’s just that subtle… it’s not even a reframe, right? It’s really just a shift.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yes.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Being able to move that energy into understanding that you have autonomy and agency over at least some things really is, again, an additive function of human behavior, but it’s hard to get there. The research comes from Timothy Wilson out of the University of Virginia, but there’s a component of human nature where it’s hard to prioritize pleasurable experience because we undervalue what we think they’ll bring to our lives, right? Again, it comes from that sense of duty and likely because whether you believe in evolution or not, this idea that, in prior times, our safety generally was being attacked, right? And so, to sit around and think about pleasure could potentially put you in harms way, but we’re in a very different place now. And so, whether you believe that to be true or not, it has been validated that it takes practice to value pleasurable activities and pleasurable thoughts. But as soon as you do, it’s an easily learned skill, because all of a sudden you realize you are producing more. Again, people tend to get more creative. We know it fills us up.
Certainly, after the pandemic, loneliness has been studied as a construct that really is affecting physical wellbeing, as well, if you believe the studies, it’s as bad as sitting and smoking. And so, fun is another great elixir, especially fun with friends, that is able to combat the loneliness problem right now.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Right. And this has a therapeutic aspect to it, too. I mean, I know in therapy, with depressed clients, I mean it’s behavioral activation, right? You have to choose something on your happy list, right? And even though you don’t want to do it, when you do it, then you’re going to experience some joy.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
That’s right. Yep.
Teri Miller:
Well, I think, also it’s so important to realize that we’re going to, as a parent, as a human race, whatever, as a human, we are going to soothe our suffering, our boredom, our apathy, whatever, we are going to find ways to soothe and I think especially during COVID, what we’ve heard so much about is there was this incredible rise in people eating too much, drinking too much, alcoholism, sex, I mean, just all the things that people do to kind of medicate or soothe just the hardship of life. And I think what you’re saying is, if we can shift that instead of, “I’m just going to soothe or comfort or numb or medicate or whatever,” and instead I can fill that physiological need that we all have, instead I can intentionally pursue fun. Different word, different concept. Is that what I’m hearing also?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
You’re spot on. Oftentimes, one of the first assessments I’ll have somebody do is a time audit, because it’s pretty easy to mindfully understand how you’re spending 168 hours. And so, just being mindful of those activities, right? So when we talk about fun in an academic sense, it’s really just positive valence, right? Anything on the positive side of the valence is pleasurable, which really it’s just fun. And anything on the negative side is not fun, right? And so, what are we doing that puts us in a positive valence state and once you sort of understand how you’re spending your time in this particular scenario that you’re describing, you can look at, wait, is drinking every Friday night, is this an activity of convenience that I think is fun, but really isn’t? It’s really just displacing discomfort? And, if so, could I replace it with something that’s more fulfilling and for my own betterment?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And again, once you start making that subtle shift, it’s so additive, right? I mean, there really is this compound effect where unless you have a predisposition to addiction or, again, a clinical issue, once you… Oh, wow. Yeah, this just feels a lot better. And again, I can’t wait till we get into it with regards to parenting, but those subtle shifts have such an impact with kids, right? Where people feel this sense of duty to parenting and they find, wait, why am I sitting in the park just scrolling Instagram where I don’t even really like Instagram and just letting my kid do what they want, when it really could be an activity that is pleasurable for both of us, if I just was a little bit more mindful of how we’re spending this hour.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So I think that’s a great segue. We’re going to take a break and let Teri read a word from our sponsor and when we come back, let’s talk about the application of this to parenting.
Teri Miller: (Reading sponsor ad from LearningRx)
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Dr. Amy Moore:
And we’re back talking to Dr. Mike Rucker, who is an organizational psychologist and behavioral scientist that studies and specializes in fun. And so, Mike, talk to us about the application of all that you found in this research, and it’s amazing research, to parenting.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, so I think where it’s been the most interesting is really allowing… it comes from transactional analysis, which I imagine both of you guys know well, and really this thought that we as adults don’t allow ourselves to be in that childlike state enough, especially in the Western world. And so, in my own research what I found that I think was interesting and then replicated by some researchers out of the University of Texas, is this idea that oftentimes when we’re engaged in play with our children, especially if it’s mean to be restorative, so again sort of the asterisk where I’m not suggesting that we don’t be parents and we don’t need to be adults, but that oftentimes we go in and when play is prescriptive we’re not allowing us to enjoy those moments with our kids. We’re not really having fun. We’re in that adult of that parent role and when we’re doing that, oftentimes we’re sucking out the fun from our kids, too, right?
So there are times where things are meant to be instructive and we’re meant to teach, right? But if we’re in an environment where the whole idea is for everyone to have fun, allowing yourself to be led by your kids, because kids can be some of the best teachers, has a whole host of benefits. And so, what I did and where this insight came from was initially I just wanted to look at, as behavioral scientists our environments had an effect having fun. So I, here in the Carolinas, went to a bunch of children’s museums where there were these experiential play centers. And so, I was watching the behavior of both children and adults and what was so neat was kids would run into these rooms, right? They always had blocks and certain things you could build with and they would start immediately figuring out what they were going to do, right? And nine times out of 10, the adults would sit there, kind of start to stutter step towards the back of the wall, completely frozen and not knowing what to do, right?
Because, as adults, and there’s a good reason for this, right? But we need bumper rails. In psychology, we call them heuristics, right? We need a set of instructions, because we have so much incoming information coming at us at all times. But it has really impeded our ability to have fun during playful exchanges with our kids, because we’re waiting around for instructions. And so, what would happen is, inevitably, they’d ask someone at the play museum, what do I need to do, and they would get the simple instructions. And then, all of a sudden it was this license to be able to play and oftentimes they would have more fun than they would with their kids, right? And so, the insight I sort of gleaned from this research is that just being sort of mindful of that, if you truly are in an environment where you want to co-create these fun experiences as parent, making sure that you stay in that childlike state and the easiest way to do that is letting your kid lead, as long as there isn’t where you do need to course correct. There are going to be times where danger or something provocative that you want it to be a learning moment, but if it’s not, don’t lead and guide, let them explain to you what it is that you’re supposed to be doing in this play environment.
And when you allow yourself to do that, you start to flex those old muscles that you used to have, creativity goes way up, nonlinear thinking goes way up, and it’s just got this whole host of benefits. And, in hindsight, when you check in with yourself, you’ll realize that you had a lot more fun, too. And then, kind of the added bonus to that is that the kids have a lot more fun, too. So what we’ve found is that in that state, as soon as you start to be a parent, the kid oftentimes will be like, “Oh, this is meant to be a learning activity, not a fun activity.” So they’ll sit around and kind of wait for instruction and so you’re kind of sucking the fun from them, as well. And so, yeah, that’s…
Teri Miller:
Well, I want to kind of toss in there, this is not disagreeing with what you’re saying at all, but I just want to kind of say, and-
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Sure, sure.
Teri Miller:
… I have nine kids, having had lots of children where I’ve had lots of opportunities to interact with playtime with them. Early on, so I’m thinking a mom of young kids, early on I used to really torture myself thinking that I was supposed to play with my kids in the thing they were doing. For example, my first three kids, my oldest three, at home, they would do this thing, they called it the herd and sometimes there were Barbies in it, stuffed animals, because I had a boy and two girls, dinosaurs, horses, collectible horses, and they would create all through the house this herd and the herd would migrate and different adventures would happen to it and storms would come and whatever. All these wonderful things, and they would want me to play with them. And I hated it. I was not into the herd. I would be like, “Okay, this is so fun. Mommy’s a good mommy.”
And I don’t know if it was a conference I was at or something and it was like, “If you’re playing Barbies and your kid can tell you hate playing Barbies, because you just hate playing Barbies, they know.” You need to do something else. So I think it’s great. Let the kids lead and-
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Rule number one is let kids lead. Rule number two is it’s not play if not both having fun. So you just [inaudible 00:30:48] my… Yeah, because that’s another thing that goes in line with what we talked about the first half. We have agency and autonomy to be able to pick those activities and these aren’t my thoughts, so in the book I kind of just present them. But this idea that we have to be our kid’s best friend is another Western social condition, right? And collectivist cultures, they parent quite a bit differently, right? I mean, sometimes you hear it benign neglect and not in a negative [inaudible 00:31:21]. And so, I accept that as a Western sort of ideal that I do want to be friends with my kids. It’s an important value to me, but it certainly is something fairly unique to North America, right?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And so, I just want to qualify that, that that’s something we’re kind of living in as a social construct, but there are a lot of parents that don’t feel like they have to play with their kids and find their fun outside of that, whether you’re a believer in benign neglect. But this work comes from Dr. Dunn out of University of Toronto. I think being a little bit selfless with regards to parenting does tend to have hedonic value with regards to being a more happy parent, right? So whether or not you want to engage in play with your child or not, at least valuing that they’re happy and giving up a little bit of yourself, if you want to, tends to be the folks that have that correlate with being a happier parent. So I think the takeaway from there is oftentimes I’ll try to be selfless with regards to how I can cater to my child, but if it means that we’re going to do two separate things because they insist on playing Minecraft and I can’t play Minecraft for another hour, then I’m going to do that.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And then, when it’s time for us to co-create something fun together, then we’ll do that, right? Just like your child doesn’t want to play with somebody that’s never into what they’re doing, you don’t need to feel guilty about you feeling that way either, right? If you want to be your child’s friend and engage in that then co-create that. And so many parents don’t, right? So that’s another just, again, a subtle shift into, “Hey, I don’t want to do that.” What are the options that we can do together where we’ll both enjoy ourselves. And, I mean, there’s always going to be something unless…
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. I think that’s a great point. I have three boys. And so, my boys were just into rough and tumble play, of course, and so it was dart wars or wrestling or whatever and Mommy was a delicate flower. So Mommy doesn’t do that. But I had to find ways to connect with boys that did not include my-
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Demise.
Dr. Amy Moore:
… pain and agony. Exactly. And so, I love board games. And so, you want to play a board game, then Mom is going to play a board game with you. I’m a movie buff. You want to go to the movies? I’m going to take you to the movies or I’m going to take you bowling. And so, there were no circumstances, none, in which I would engage in their rough and tumble play. That just wasn’t going to happen. Right? I am a delicate flower. But there were enough options where I could supervise and make sure they didn’t kill each other during that time, but still find ways to engage with them.
Teri Miller:
Yeah, that’s what you’re saying, Amy. I love that. That’s so great for our listeners to hear that, okay, so I didn’t like playing the herd, with all their animals and things, but I discovered somewhere along the line that I really liked Legos. And I liked building things, even with the blocks. And so, I could get down in there and play the herd with them, but I would create some kind of a block structure where, “Oh, look. Here’s the tunnel they get to go through.” And so, I got to be a part for a little bit. Or I would build some little Lego part that could be a part of the herd. So I could engage, but I had to gradually, over time, find ways. Like what you’re saying, Amy. Find the ways that you can actively have fun with your kid. Yes, let them lead, but if you discover, ultimately, the way they lead drives you berserk, it’s okay to then offer ideas that you can do, as well.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, switch up the activity, right? Yeah. And I think another thing, exploring that, what’s both enjoyable to you, especially if it’s… Like for my daughter and I, right now, it’s cooking, right? So the exploratory nature of that. So initially it was dancing, but then she sort of aged out of that, so there’s a longer story there, but the quick version is it was one of those things where she was six and it was really just an opportunity to get her out of the house, we wanted her to be active, and so she was in a tumbling class, but I was just sitting there watching her and it wasn’t really that fun. And so, I realized that if the main goal is just to get her active, I kind of wouldn’t mind dancing again. And so… you guys are about to…
This section deleted from audio but retained in the video version:
Teri Miller:
Sorry.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
I actually don’t even want to make light of that, because I’m sure some people are really scared.
Teri Miller:
I can’t make it stop, Amy. I’m so sorry. Whoa, there it goes. It said Stetson Hills. Is that close to you, Amy?
Dr. Amy Moore:
No. We’re still good. Is it a separate fire?
Teri Miller:
Apparently so.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So if it happens again, just press mute, that’s what I did, because I [inaudible 00:36:41]-
Teri Miller:
I saw that you did that and I was like, “Boom. Big brain.”
Dr. Amy Moore:
And so-
Dr. Mike Rucker:
As long as you guys are safe.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. It’s Colorado.
Teri Miller:
Yeah. Well, and Colorado recently-
Dr. Amy Moore:
… [inaudible 00:36:54] to fire. Okay. Where were we?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, we were talking about what I’ve done with my daughter, because I don’t want to play LOL dolls anymore. So we took a dance class, but then ultimately, she’s now 10, doesn’t want to dance with Dad, so we pivoted to cooking and all of that happened because we had open conversations about, I don’t want to play LOL dolls, but I do want to do something with you. What’s something that we could really do? And during the pandemic we did watch a little bit too much TV, so she really got into Kids Baking Championship. And I’ve never been a very good cook, so anyways, we go to cooking classes and it’s a blast.
Teri Miller:
That’s so fun. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So for those listeners where the idea of pursuing happiness and sitting in that gap doesn’t resonate with them, that’s not one of their goals, they’re not struggling with that, there are lots of benefits to fun. Yes? Can you talk about some of those.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Well, we’ve already covered some, right? So I certainly think if you’re not finding any pleasure at all, then generally, even if you aren’t feeling it acutely, we tend to see that folks less empathetic, so that if they’re in a service-based job like being a clinician, a lot of my academic research is with physicians, as soon as a physician isn’t having fun and lack empathy, then their clinical outcomes go down, that’s a pretty strong correlation. We know that productivity tends to go down, so if really what your ultimate goal is is being productive, so if you’re so true A type, then look at the multiple of how well you’re able to produce in any given hour. If you’re really grinding yourself out and not taking anything off for renewal, then maybe that’s one X every hour, right? And so, adding a little bit of fun could turn that to two X, why work 50 hours a week at one X, when you could work 35 and add some fun and that 35 times two is just 70 units of output, right?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And so, math is on my side when I make this argument. And then, I think, too, a lot of it is just that resistance, so if you’re feeling resistant to it, like, “I just don’t know,” and a lot of us in the sandwich generation, which is sort of my ilk, where I’m taking care of aging parents and then also have young children, we sort of feel like it goes against that sense of duty. Like, “Well, how could I have fun?” And I think if you are experiencing that, then that’s really a great opportunity to examine why you feel that friction. Okay, it doesn’t have to be two hours a day, even just an hour a day. Why do you feel guilty about taking one hour to yourself a day? We call it holidays, right? Why not a holi-hour? Just try that on for size.
Teri Miller:
Oh, I love that word. Holi-hour.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yes. I’m taking holi-hour along with my lunch.
Teri Miller:
We do, especially, I think, as moms. And especially as moms of young children. If you’ve got any at home that are five and under, maybe it’s Dad’s too, so Mike I don’t want to say it’s not Dads-
Dr. Mike Rucker:
No, no. There’s certainly a domestic slant. I get into that in the book. Yeah.
Teri Miller:
Well, and I mean I’m a woman, so I’m thinking moms. I just think that’s so weird. That’s exactly what we do. I mean, if you’ve got kids under five, we’re not taking an hour a day. The thought process, I’m not saying it’s right, but the thought process, I think the going standard is that would be ridiculous. That is completely selfish. It’s unreasonable. But what I hear you saying is, if we could do that, good heavens, if we could start out just 15 minutes and try to build on that, that that could really, really change our life perspective on happiness without having to pursue happiness, we’re just pursuing 15 minutes of fun. That’s it. Let’s just start there.
Dr. Amy Moore:
And then, experiencing joy.
Teri Miller:
Exactly.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah. And I think, to go back to your point, Amy, it’s again just challenging, really, you can’t? So let’s say you’re in the throes of young children, there isn’t a family that you trust where you could do a date night swap and it’s something as simple as that, so you’re able to reconnect to your partner. A lot of marital strife comes during that period, because we’re so giving, right? My wife and I talk about that openly. During our first child, we could block and tackle, so those problems didn’t present themselves, but our second was a little bit different than our daughter. It took a lot more time, and since we weren’t taking stuff off the table, that was rough. And as soon as we integrated that back, all of it just went back to normal. And so, again, it’s so easy for us as adults to discount how important it is, until sometimes it’s too late, unfortunately.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And oftentimes, if you don’t do it, again, a good reason to prioritize it is that what will happen, again, from that Stanford, Harvard study, is you’ll start to engage in negative escapism, right? So instead of doing something that lights you up, like a physical activity or connecting with friends, it might be drinking late at night. You’re not only going into a sleep deficit, but you might habituate a bad habit whether it’s overeating or something not good for you. So again, that’s why this stuff is so important.
Teri Miller:
Yes.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So there’s even some organizational psych research on workplace fun, right? Can you talk any about that?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, no. So the researcher in this area that I really have been enjoying lately, her name’s Kaitlin Woolley, she’s out of Cornell. And she’s been experimenting with just making activities more pleasurable, right? So if you have sort of an activity that you’ve habituated, but it’s become less pleasurable or even painful, as it were, psychologically painful, how can you reapproach it to have more fun, right? So there’s one tool where I’ve kind of coined it activity bundling. If it’s an activity that doesn’t take a lot of cognitive resources, could you add music to it, could you do it in a different environment that you enjoy? How can you take something that’s really become drudgery and make it more enjoyable. And then, she’s also experimented with just simple reframings, right? So if it’s something that you don’t necessarily enjoy, so your brain is taking you to that place of like, “Uh, this thing is just awful,” if you really enjoy the work, then focusing on, well, I’m doing this because I really enjoy what I’m doing and this is going to move the needle, just that shift, because again, pleasure is perceived, right.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
You can make that, “Okay, now I know why I’m doing it.” Right? And all of a sudden the friction of that activity becomes more enjoyable. So there’s a whole host of different things. And then, one the wellbeing side, how could you just change up the activities? So if it’s a really boring meeting, but you enjoy the company of everyone you’re with, could you turn it into a walking meeting. The kind of tactics are abound, but it just takes a little bit of, “Wait, oh yeah, I do have agency and control over my situation.” Right? So many of us, again, by the time… I just turned 50, but between 30 and 50 it’s really we learn to habituate things and we start to lose that creativity we’re just like, “Well, this is how you do it.” Really? I mean, we always have a little bit more control, maybe not the activity that we have to do, because again we’re assigned duties by our employer. But how we do them, generally, we have a lot more autonomy than we think.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And, if anything, that’s what really been fun about the pandemic, because I think this message was a lot harder to deliver before the pandemic. Certainly, having the autonomy to work from home, that’s just not going to work, right? And so, at a global level we’re like, “Wait, let’s test every idea in the workplace, right? Because what you said wasn’t possible was absolutely possible, right?
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. And then, what I’m also hearing is the importance of collaboration in all of these environments. I know that there is some research on workplace forced fun that actually backfires, right? If you’re forced to participate in fun day at work, it doesn’t necessarily bring you joy, right?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
No. Forced fun is awful. It’s unfortunate, because even in work that’s academic you learn because we’ll get paid for icebreakers and things of that nature and we now know that they actually cause a lot of strife, especially for folks on the Big Five that might have an introverted slant. So what I prescribe is that you really have a more inviting environment, right? So there’s some fundamentals with regards to organizational hygiene. If you don’t have psychological safety within your group dynamic, then don’t even talk about fun, figure out, first, how to get that going. But then, allow folks to organize over affinity, right? And so, especially in larger organizations, allowing folks to have fun through a biking club or a book club or organizing in ways, similar to what we were talking about with our kids, finding those folks that have similar interests, because we know that’s one of the pieces of glue for people to actually enjoy each other’s company.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And then, finding ways where you can make certain things that need to get done more enjoyable. So again, we already used the example of taking that meeting out of the room and actually doing it on a walk, so that everyone can enjoy nature. There are all of these low level interventions that can make things still happen, with regards to work productivity and make them a lot more enjoyable. But anything that’s contrived, yeah, I mean it just almost always is awful. And then, what we know is a lot of things that we’re prescribed as fun over the last couple of decades ended up really have more of a nefarious sort of underbelly, things like ping-pong tables and video games at the work place, it was really just to keep people there… keep them there longer. So a lot of these things that are more environmental tweaks have ended up backfiring, they don’t have a net gain benefit.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Interesting.
Teri Miller:
Right, yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So what have you not gotten to say to our listeners that you’d like to say today?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Well, I think the one theme that we’ve kind of touched on but maybe not said explicitly is this mindfulness component. So that word, where we cast a wide net, not necessarily mindfulness practice, but you brought it up Amy, was this idea that happiness as a subjective construct really does have some flaws, right? It requires us to compare ourselves to each other, right? Because we look at our happenstance and we’re like, “Oh, how am I doing against X individual?” Even our clinical instruments, with regard to subjective wellbeing can pair us against each other, right? And then, there’s also the adaptation standpoint, right? So we know, through research, about the hedonic treadmill is that if we’re not mindful of the things that really light us up, so they really come from the inside, and connect us to something bigger than ourselves, either our friends or what we really enjoy or nature or spirituality, whatever it is, that they have a real fleeting effect, right? It’s like we get that shiny nickel and then once the luster’s off, we’re looking for that next nickel.
And so, when we really find things that are meaningful fun to us through this action bias and little bit more forethought and being mindful of what we engage in, that’s the secret sauce. Because, again, that’s an unlimited resource, rather than sort of what’s been prescribed to us with regards to happiness, especially in the Western world.
Teri Miller:
That is such a good one, because I think about what’s the shiny nickel? Ooh, I’m going to watch the next episode of Netflix. I’m going to use my two hours, maybe we do, maybe we do those two hours more often than we think. I’m going to use my two hours, late at night, watching Netflix, binging Netflix, but that’s not really fun. That’s not really joy. So yeah, we need to make some changes.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Well, unless you’re a movie buff, like me, who finds that to be one of my joy producing activities.
Teri Miller:
Okay, that’s true.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
You hit it on the head, right? So that’s one of the interesting things. Oftentimes, folks will think I’m villainizing social media or television, and so there’s certainly studies that show that if you overly habituate, especially television, that it correlates, it’s a low correlation, but with depression and that’s probably a reverse correlation, right? When you’re depressed, you don’t have the energy to do things, so you need to be careful about that kind of stuff. But, to use the examples that you both brought forth, engaging in fun viewership, especially if you’re doing that with a loving partner or a group. Like I used to watch Lost, because I loved philosophy, so I watched it with a group of folks and we unpacked the episode and tried to exchange academic ideas. That was a ton fun, so I’m not villainizing that. But Teri, to your point, there are a lot of folks that are like, “I’ve watched this show for two years and I haven’t liked it for a year,” and all of a sudden it’s just like, “Okay, let’s do something else.”
Dr. Mike Rucker:
And sometimes it’s just calling their mom or connecting with an old friend, that was happy to do it, too, because they were in a similar circumstance. So many of us, even if it is coping, you’re not in a state where positive escapism makes sense yet, even just allowing yourself to commiserate with a trusted confidant, that’s better than mindlessly watching another hour that potentially deprives you of sleep, too.
Teri Miller:
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Absolutely.
Teri Miller:
I’m sitting here thinking, “You know what I need to pull out again is the air dray clay.”
Dr. Mike Rucker:
There you go.
Teri Miller:
The kids love it. I love it. That’s a fun thing that we do together and, generally, when I pull out the air dry clay. I have a bin of it, and of course every time I pull it out, 25% of it we have to toss, it’s all dried up. But we pull it out, we spread it on the table and, generally, it is fun for two or three days in the afternoon, three or four days sometimes, a long weekend. And it is so great and we really enjoy that and then, pack it away again, but yeah, things like that. I just need to remember and hold onto things like that that are fun and life-giving together and individually.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
I didn’t want to step on your idea, but I recently found Legos, so when you mentioned that, I kind of lit up. Unfortunately, it’s like 30 seconds away and I didn’t want to break the episode, but I just made a huge fender guitar with my son.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Okay, you have to go get that.
Teri Miller:
You have to show it.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Teri and I will keep talking while you go get it.
Teri Miller:
Legos are so fun. I love Legos.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Well, first of all, the worst pain in the world is to step on a Lego barefoot.
Teri Miller:
Oh. Oh, I know.
Dr. Amy Moore:
And so, my boys were total Lego buffs. In fact, Lawson’s first email address was legolaw.
Teri Miller:
Aw. Look at this. Okay.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
It’s so detailed, too.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Wow.
Teri Miller:
That is incredible. Wait, put it closer to the camera. You can’t even-
Dr. Mike Rucker:
It even has all the diodes and everything.
Teri Miller:
That is incredible.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, they did a collab with Fender, it was really neat.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Wow.
Teri Miller:
That is so cool and that was a kit, that was one of the sets?
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Yeah, yeah.
Teri Miller:
Way cool.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Very cool.
Teri Miller:
Okay. I may have to grab that idea for my son that’s a guitar player. That is awesome. He’s 26, but so what. He would love it.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
Like I said, I’m 50 and I loved the heck out of it.
Teri Miller:
Absolutely, absolutely. Legos are awesome.
Dr. Mike Rucker:
I think it’s better than watching Rick and Morty for the hundredth time.
Teri Miller:
Oh playing the herd for two hours.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Great. Or dart wars.
Teri Miller:
There you go. We got to find the thing or things.
Dr. Amy Moore:
I’m so [inaudible 00:54:10].
Teri Miller:
So good.
Dr. Amy Moore:
All right. This has been a really wonderful conversation. There are so many resources and research studies that you quoted, and so, listeners, we’ll put links to as much of that as we can in the show notes. So we want to thank our guest today, Dr. Mike Rucker. If you would like more information about his work, his website is michaelrucker.com. You can find him on Facebook @mike.rucker.phd and on Instagram @thewonderoffun. We’ll put all his links and social media handles in the show notes. It’ll be an extra long bit, because you were just so science packed. It was awesome.
Teri Miller:
Yes.
Dr. Amy Moore:
So thank you so much for listening today. If you love our show, please leave us a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts. If you’d rather watch us and see Dr. Mike’s really cool Fender guitar made out of Legos, we are on YouTube. You can find us on every social media channel @thebrainymoms. So look, until next time, we know that you’re busy moms and we’re busy moms, so we’re out.
Teri Miller:
See ya.