Try It for 1 Week: 6 Small Ways to Bring Back the Happiness, Energy, and Fun

Hey. It's your friend Mel, and today on the podcast, you and I are talking about six simple ways, I've lost my five, to have more fun. (laughs) And why at a moment like this, it's more important than ever that you do. Fun is what makes you human. Fun is what makes life worth living. Fun isn't optional. Fun is how you feel alive again. Dr. Judith Joseph's research has found that small daily moments of joy and fun are essential for your life, for your health, for your resilience. Your fear of being cringy, your fear of being judged is the single reason why you're not driving the fun bus in your own life. You must stop caring about what other people think. Let them judge you. Bring back the chaos. Bring back the nonsense. Bring back the fun. So, how about you and I have some fun? Hey. It's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. (instrumental music plays) And I wanna start out our conversation by reading you this post that came across my feed. It's written by a writer and an editor named Barry Rogers at The Hindu, which is India's national newspaper. Let me read this post to you. "People are not fun anymore. Not in that wild, chaotic, laugh till your stomach hurts way. Everyone's just tired. Polite. Curated. You go out, and it's like someone turned the volume down on the entire human race. A few tables might still be buzzing, you know, people actually talking, cackling, being alive. But the rest? Couples eating in silence. Friends scrolling through reels while their drinks sweat on the table. Everyone just vaguely present but emotionally on airplane mode. We've somehow swapped personality for polish. No one wants to be the loud one or the weird one or the one who talks too much. Instead, we're all trading the same three opinions and saying, 'Oh, I saw this on Instagram,' like it's a personality trait. It's exhausting. People had quirks. They had ridiculous stories, terrible jokes, a sense of humor that wasn't borrowed from a meme page. Conversations didn't become disclaimers. You could say something stupid and laugh it off. You could be dumb, dorky, deeply unserious. And no one was trying to cancel you for not being aesthetic enough. We need to bring that back. The messy, the unfiltered fun. The art of talking complete nonsense. The joy of making each other laugh without needing to be clever. Honestly, some of the best conversations happen when you're just being silly and slightly unhinged, not when you're performing your best LinkedIn version of yourself over dinner. That's what's missing. Real people. Real personalities. Not everything needs to be intellectual or intentional. Sometimes it's okay to talk about the dumbest things. Sometimes a joke is just a joke. And sometimes laughing at yourself is the healthiest thing you can do. Bring back the chaos. Bring back the nonsense. Bring back the people who interrupt you mid-sentence with an even worse story. Bring back the fun." I don't know about you, but holy cow, did that post really hit home for me. And also just consider, this is a post written by somebody who is probably halfway around the world because they're a writer and editor for India's largest newspaper, which means everybody everywhere is kind of experiencing this. That there's been this massive shift, that we're all so weighed down by everything going on in the world. Like, just stop and think about it. How much time you spend on your phone, and you're so focused on how you're being perceived by other people that it just feels like life isn't fun anymore. Plus you're probably exhausted, so fun feels like it's gonna be a lot of work, and when you're exhausted, you don't wanna do anything that feels like a lot of work. And look, I don't wanna have a conversation about fun without saying, look, there's some very real problems in the world. But what we need to talk about is how do you bring back the lightheartedness, the joy, the playfulness, the silliness, the laughter that you and I remember happening? Because fun is not a luxury. It's not something that just is for kids or for birthday parties. Fun's a necessity in life. Fun energizes you. It helps you connect with other people. It lowers your stress. It makes you healthier. And I was inspired to talk about this both because of that post that Barry wrote but also because of my friend Char. My friend Char is so fun, I just spent a weekend with her, and she inspired me so much because she brings the fun everywhere we go. And so we were spending the weekend together, it was four couples, and they signed us up for this, like, three-hole... Or not three-hole, it's a nine-hole, three... Uh, no, it wasn't a three-par either. See, I don't even really understand golf, but I said yes. I'm gonna say yes, I'm gonna go play golf, 'cause everyone else is going, and I'm gonna have fun. And it was a golf tournament that was nine holes, and they had a theme. And the theme was the 1970s legends. And so it was not only a tournament, so here I don't play golf, and so immediately I'm like, "Ugh, a tournament?" I even wrote to the club and was like, "Are you sure it's okay? Like, I don't even own golf shoes. I can swing a club, e- I can have a lot of fun, I can drive the cart, but I don't wanna be in a tournament where people are gonna be super uptight and then they're upset at somebody really terrible." And they was like, "No, no, no, it's a scramble." I don't even know what a scramble means, but I think it means that if you don't play golf, you can play golf. But there was this theme to this golf tournament, and it was 1970s legend. And because Char was the host and because she is the ambassador of fun, she was like, "We're dressing up. Make sure you pack a costume." And so Chris and I racked our brains, we were like, "Okay, what costume are we gonna do? Plus it's probably gonna be 80 degrees, plus we need to swing a golf club," so I'm like, "Okay-"... '70s legends. I'm gonna go with Slim Aaron, you know, that famous, like, 1970s ski and beach photographer, and I'm gonna go full on 1970s ski outfit. I'm gonna wear the stretchy pants with the suspenders and a crazy yellow T-shirt, and I'm gonna wear my, like, kind of aviator blue glasses, 'cause those are kinda 1970s. The only thing Kris could find was a red sequin tuxedo jacket that was left over. We've got a box in our basement that's full of leftover costumes. I gotta tell you, we showed up for this tournament. I am not a golfer, but we are dressed for success, we are dressed for fun. We are dressed and rolling up to the tournament in our costumes. We had one guy dressed as Ricky Bobby. What was that movie that Ricky Bobby was in? Talladega Night, what is it? Talladega, yeah, j-