Life Moves Pretty Fast - It's Vital To Plan For Fun

00:01 In this video, life moves pretty fast. It's why you've got to plan to have fun. It's a vital part of your happiness and success. Welcome to the Team Super Dad podcast. Let's roll. Welcome to Team Super Dad. Real dads creating their best lives ever. More time, more money, more fun. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad. Hello, dads. Welcome back to the hot seat here at Team Super Dad HQ.

00:40 You know where we are at. I might be looking a bit shabby today. I'm trying to generate, generate after two nights out in London having fun, which is what we're going to talk about today. If you have been part of any of the last three years lives and podcasts, you will know that I've talked about the importance of having fun on more than one occasion. And that's what we're going to do again today. It is Sunday, so I was not here yesterday. So apologies for those. But if you're on the live, then drop in. You can comment on any of the socials where you're watching this. And I will endeavor to see that as we're going along. And if you're watching on the replay, hashtag replay.

01:23 So we give the algorithm a little tickle, but also so I can see who's in and who's watching and it can invite you in to the Team Superdad world. We are a community of modern, motivated dads creating the life we desire rather than the life that we feel stuck in. And that is about the core five areas of focus, fitness, finance, family, and fun. If you're feeling like you don't have the kind of success you want at home, like maybe you're smashing it in business, but your family life is just on the rocks. It's because you don't have balance in these vital areas. It's because you're not putting enough of the right energy and attention across the board.

02:04 And when you focus on one area to the detriment of the other, it's no bloody surprise. Sorry about that. Just punched the microphone. It's no bloody surprise. Something is eventually going to go wrong. You can dive into a team superdad call with me, a free 15-minute call. Just go to teamsuperdad.com forward slash 15 call. That's 15 call. And we'll have a chat. We'll get to know who you are and what you're up to and get you back on track. Back on track. If you've been following the last 10, I think we're only 11 weeks. We are 11 weeks into 2023 now. And we've been going through the power code.

02:45 But this weekend, I was up in London having a weekend away. We've seen friends, we went to a gig. I'll tell you all about it in a minute. But so I'm taking a jump out of the correct order of how the power code works. The power code is my methodology, my process for bringing dads back to their best selves. And we have done purpose and we're in the middle of ownership. But I'm jumping into engage and reward just to keep it topical because this is what we've been up to. Planning for fun is literally as simple as making sure you are connected to your friends, that you're doing the things that you enjoy doing, that you're being to some degree spontaneous, that you're creating the opportunity for fun stuff to happen, which might sound a bit trivial and a bit like, well, we are going to have fun all the time.

03:37 I play golf every week or I'm always at the pub. And you know what? That's kind of okay. But if you're doing the same thing all the bloody time, is that really pushing the limit on your own creativity, on your own energy levels, on the opportunity for you to do and experience either brand new things or things that you just love doing, which is conveniently a good combination of everything I'm about to share with you about this weekend. As I said, feel free to comment on the live if you're watching. And of course, hello to our podcast listeners. You can subscribe to the podcast at any of the usuals. If you

04:21 just search for Team Superdad on any of your podcast channels and you can get subscribed there. So yeah, so this weekend, London, I booked the tickets for Frank Moody about six months. Going to gigs has always been one of my favorite nights out. I just love the energy, the noise, the whole, so the fact that you generally go to the pub beforehand, then you've got the gig concert, and then there's some level of going out afterwards. And so it just ends up being a real mixture of experiences across the night. And yeah, going back to our sort of 20s. 20s and 30s living in London, that generally was absolute carnage.

05:06 If it didn't start with carnage, which invariably it did, but even if it didn't, it definitely ended in carnage. And so, yeah, so Frank Moody, of course, we're all pushing 50 now. How easy is it to just get out to get to London, to book the tickets, to coordinate? I probably invited, I don't know, I told about 20 people we were going and to get tickets, and so there ended up six of us, something, something like that, which is okay. It was the favorite old suspects: Emma and Anna, and Athos, Mark, and of course, Ben, Emma's fella, and Joe, my wonderful girlfriend.

05:46 So, so, Frank Moody, epic concert, out for some dinner beforehand, booked somewhere to stay as an Airbnb. So, there's a lot of coordination that goes into this, but you've got to notice how often when you get an invite, as we're parents, as we're busy in our business, the everydayness of life, people talk so often these days, oh, what are you, what are you doing? Uh, we're going to come up and see you next next week, next month. Oh, yeah, diary's full for months. And then you actually start to ask them what's in your diary. It's not that much fun stuff, and so the everydayness of life just gets in the way. We're like, really? What does that stuff have to be done?

06:30 Or, or even if it does have to be done, why is it to the detriment of stepping outside of your comfort zone to having some fun to getting back to doing some of the things that you love doing, to seeing some of the people that you love spending time with? And the important, the real heart of this, and why it's so important is that when you stop doing the things that you love doing, you become less of yourself. When you stop stretching your day-to-day life and putting in things that maybe don't fit, then you don't stretch yourself. You know, you're the comfort zone, as you've heard me say before, is a shit place to be. It's not actually that, it's not comfortable like it's safe and secure and it's going to serve you for all time because it won't.

07:17 It just is so comfy and cozy, but it's because you're not doing anything, and so you're going to shrink as a person. The world around you is going to shrink this weekend, as well as probably drinking a bit more than I than I normally do. Uh, that's a definite, by the way. But it's not about getting pissed every weekend. If you're doing that every weekend, then that's a distraction, that's an avoidance. You know, if you're sniffing it up your nose, playing golf every weekend, doing the pub every like if you're doing the same thing every weekend, there's a good chance that's a distraction tactic. It's stopping you dealing with something that you're bored or fed up with or resenting

07:56 because you're shrinking because you're not stretching yourself and going and doing new things or doing things that you love. So, we had a lot of fun. We got we got to the Hammers with Apollo, good, good venue, love, love it there. Uh, it's been again, obviously, it's been a while since I was there. But Frank Moody, if you haven't heard them on Spotify, it's a bit like Jamira Kwai and Groove Armada had a baby, basically, but their lives are good, they're a good festival band as well, so there's a lot of energy to it. And um, and clearly, everyone that was there knew who they were because as soon as they came on stage, it just went off basically.

08:36 Uh, and I, as is my way, I'm chatting to all number of randoms around me, and uh, and so these four, five, five lads, and I just they just clocked me, clocked. It just occurred to me, I clocked it how much fun they were having. So, one of them's taking a picture of the other four, and they look like extras from a wham video. So, I jokingly said to the guy in front of me, I was like, That's I goes, that's the gayest photo I've ever seen. So, then he turns to me and he goes, We are gay. And in that second, in that second, it was blatantly obvious.

09:16 Um, you know, they're kissing and having a laugh, basically. So, so we ended up having a lot of banter with them throughout the gig, basically. Um, and then after the gig on to different parts of London, getting the tube, ending up in a pub. I was on my phone looking for other places to go, but it did get pointed out to me that it was after midnight. Oh, so late, but uh, we we were pretty pissed. And uh, the idea that it was going to carry on somewhere, I think I was probably living living out old old experiences. But uh, woke up on Saturday, and uh, as everybody else went. off, Joe and I stayed up in London for another night.

09:57 And this is this part of the story is what I want you to realize is that when you create the space to go and have fun to put yourself in a different place, whether it be London, it's not about spending loads of money. Okay. Joe and I camping in the summer. We've done Airbnbs for weekends. you know, in random places. Went to Guildford for a weekend last year. So, but on Saturday, as we wandered into town, we ended up grabbing a coffee. We passed by a theater where Joe had seen a show a couple of weeks ago. And there were some people queuing and signs were up last day.

10:39 You know, there was X number of tickets available. We didn't say how many. It said like there are some tickets available. And so we said, oh, on sale, 12 o'clock. So we queued up. We had about an hour to stand and queue. Turns out it was literally the last day of this show. So all the super fans were there. And as we waited, the cast were turning up. Joe got a photo with the lead woman and the lead guy. It's called And Juliet. Brilliant, brilliant musical. And there we are. Got tickets, £14.50 tickets. So there is, when you put yourself in the space of, we're going to go and have fun. I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen, but we're going to have a great time. Stuff happens.

11:24 Opportunities come your way. And this isn't the podcast. This isn't the episode to talk about relationships and to talk about what's going on for you as a couple that, you know, whether you can actually go and do those things and it not end up being a stressy argument about whatever's happened the previous three months. But in a healthy relationship, you know, you might be going and doing that without your partner because it's catching up with old friends, or you might be going and doing it with your partner because that's what you want to do. You want to have these experiences and create, as I say, it's about having plans to look forward to and memories to look back on.

12:03 And so we did have a couple of things organized that we went on to do later on on the Saturday night. But in between that, it was your classic searching up Google, looking for what bars were doing, the kind of music and stuff that we wanted to do, and just going with the flow and enjoying it. And when you wake up on a Monday morning, having had a weekend like that, maybe you might be a bit tired than you perhaps otherwise would have been. But the amount of fun, the new experiences, the broadening of either your horizons because you're doing new things or just tapping back into doing stuff that you love will increase all those feel-good chemicals that we talk about, the dopamines, the endorphins, the experiences that come from

12:48 walking. We must have walked flipping 10 miles this weekend with the laughter, the energy of the show and the concert. It's taking that into your family life or back to your family on a Sunday afternoon or into your work on a Monday morning. It's that energy and creative seeing new things. It will spark your creative juices. We will have you think about problems in a different way. Even the conversations that you're able to have with the people around you will spark off different

13:28 outcomes, just a change to the normal routine, even for the people around you as well. And that's where, as we always talk about, these ripple effects. You don't know exactly what's going to come of doing these things, but you can be certain that the ripple effect is going to go further and wider than if you hadn't done them at all. So I referenced Ferris Bueller in the show notes today. And it's a classic 80s movie. You've got to love Ferris Bueller. But as well as just watching that film, right? When he says life moves pretty fast, sometimes you've got to stop and take a look around or you're going to miss it.

14:07 I may have paraphrased slightly there, but that's the whole point. And so the whole essence of that film is how other people, like his sister mainly, it does her nothing how he can just have, he can just get away with stuff, how he can have fun. When they go out on their day trip and he says to his friend, ah, what's his name? Oh, it's gone. There you are. That's what old age will do to you. But you can comment in the notes if you can remember who Ferris Bueller's mate was in the movie. But as they go out on their day, just the mindset and the idea that stuff.

14:49 stuff's going to happen. We don't know exactly how the day is going to go, but it's going to go well. We're going to see what occurs. We're going to bump into old friends. We're going to see the show that happens to be on the last day. And even though we're going to queue for an hour, there might be some tickets. Do you know what? Even as they got to the end of the line, the two couples behind us were the ones that got the last tickets to this show. So it was worth it. How many other people would have gone past that theater and said, I'm not queuing for an hour. What's the point of doing that? We might not even get them. It's about, as Ferris Bueller pointed out in the movie, it's about putting yourself in the position to have the day unfold, to expect great things to happen, to have a laugh, to meet random people, to get pissed, to

15:40 hike up a mountain. You know, it's about the experience and it's about being willing to have it happen. Because I want you, as I wrap up this for today, I want you to notice how many times you're not saying yes to having fun or how many times you, or how long it's been since you called that old friend, or how long it's been since you booked gig tickets or caught a festival this summer, or when it was the EasyJet sale, did you jump in and buy four flights to a random city because you want to take the kids there? Like what, how much emphasis and focus and importance are you putting into this side of your life?

16:24 Because that's if that's who you are to yourself, that's who you are to other people. You know, you want to feel that energy. You want to have plans to look forward to and memories to look back on. And when you're thinking about your experience of being around other people, believe me, how they experience you will be the experience you get back from them. So if you're dull as dishwater, don't expect too many people around you to be lit up. Sounds kind of obvious, but when you're looking at where the fun has gone in your life, you're looking at why things feel a bit crap, it has to start with you. So planning for fun is absolutely vital. And you've got to be the difference. You've got to be your own hero.

17:05 So jump on the teamsuperdad.com forward slash 15 call. Get yourself lined up with a Super Dad Discovery Call. We'll get you back on track with clarity and confidence, putting the power back in your life so you can be the man and dad you want to be, creating success at both home and work. Thanks for joining me. Subscribe to the podcast if you're listening. Click the like and follow and share this if you're watching the live or the replay. And I will see you next week back here. Team Super Dad out. The video. Roll them. This has been Team Super Dad. Find us at teamsuperdad.com.

17:50 Join the program and create the best life ever for you and your children. You are not alone. You're on Team Super Dad.