On Making Things More Fun

It’s 8:15am on a Monday morning and I’m standing on the train bound for Paddington. From there I’m going to board a London underground service going right into the heart of the business district.

The day is going well so far. There’s not too many people on the train, the train came on time, the walk to the station was a pleasant one and to top it off, we’ve not had any emergency stops or random slow-downs the whole time.

Then we’re at Paddington and as we walk towards the platform to catch the tube into the city I notice that there’s a lot of people around this morning. It dawns on me that It’s a Monday morning and i remember what it’s like on the tube at this time on a Monday. I see the sardine like tube pulling into the station with people pressed up against the windows. I see my feet as they shuffle along with the rest of the 200 people wanting to get on this train also and i see myself cramming into the carriage amidst a hoard of other folk intent on pressing themselves against me in the vain hope that I’ll merge into the person next to me and create a new space specially for them.

There I am, crammed into half a cubic meter of madness and it gets worse. I can smell something a bit funky, something seemingly like a mix of old man, chip pan oil and a taint of something worse….and i realise it’s the guy in front of me. The one I’m pressed up against unable to move as he grins at me with a set of teeth even queen Elizabeth the first would have been ashamed to have.

It’s at this point I catch myself thinking this and as i do, a voice booms in my mind… “NO WAY!!”.

Now there are some things we just have to do and getting on that tube was one of those things. I could have turned back and gone home, quit my job, found something closer to home that pays enough to cover the rent and the food and completely avoided the situation and i considered it for a moment. This also seemed like a lot of hard work and so i decided against that course of action.

Instead I asked myself – What can I do to make this into a really pleasurable experience. Sure I can make pictures in my head and disgust myself at the bare thought of what has to be done but then there are always other options.

So instead I decided what it was i wanted. I took a moment and I asked myself, If I’m going to choose to get on this train, what am i going to do, given that I’ve experienced being in the situation i imagined, to make this into an experience i can enjoy.

As soon as I’d asked myself this question I knew what i had to do. I look around at the people I was stood with and sure enough the guy from my imagination (and a few of what looked like his apprentices) were there. So I took a walk down the platform and wondered which people I really wouldn’t mind being a bit squished up with and sure enough there was a group of lovely people at the other end of the platform.

I went over and stood with them and admired the view a little and as the train came, the movie in my mind was very different than the previous one. As we stepped onto the crowded carriage each person was doing what they could to make sure the next person could easily get on. I stood facing a lovely young woman and the breeze from the window carried with it a faint scent of something sweet and fresh. The proceeding journey was still cramped, still full of people, took just as long and i still had to stand instead of sit. But something about it was just different. Something about it was more fun, more pleasant, more…what I wanted.

You see there’s always going to be things we need to do in order to maintain the kind of life we want, and some of those things might seem like hard work or a terrible chore. But when you Stop….and take a moment to notice what you’re doing, you can make other choices.

There’s always a fun way of getting to where you want to be, and it might take a little more time than the other way, but when you start to do what you do in the most amazing and enjoyable ways, things will change.

Take a few seconds today to change how you do at least one thing to make it more enjoyable for you. If you want to post about your experience that’ll be fantastic.

Love, Jamie