How to Have Fun Again as a High-Achieving Woman | Ep324

[00:00:00] I have a confession, and people are always shocked when I say it out loud, and that is Halloween is my least favorite holiday. And I know, I know, I'm a therapist who works with kids, I'm a mom of two, and I'm over here quietly counting down to November 1st. But there's a real reason behind it, and a lot of it has to do with why having fun as a grown woman can feel like a skill that so many of us never got to practice.

Here we go 

You're listening to the Free To Be Mindful podcast, the space for high-achieving women who give their best to everyone and are ready to keep some of it for themselves. I'm Vanessa, licensed therapist, speaker, and mom coach. I know what it takes to build a life you're proud of without losing yourself in the process.

Each week, we get honest about ambition, identity, and the parts of ourselves that we quietly set aside. Here we go

Hello and welcome to episode 324 of the Free To Be Mindful podcast. I hope that you're feeling good, looking good, and doing better in this world than you [00:01:00] were yesterday.

So if you're listening to this in real time, Halloween is this Saturday, and between the costumes still sitting in our online carts and the candy that we swear we're not gonna open early, it feels like it's a perfect week to talk about the concept of play. 

So today we're talking about how to have fun again as a high-achieving woman, why it gets so hard for us as adults, and how we can find our own version of fun again.

So here's where my Halloween thing comes up. My parents came to the US from Dominican Republic in their early 20s, And Halloween wasn't celebrated in DR back then. 

So when October came around, they didn't have a clue about what this holiday was or why all the kids in the neighborhood were suddenly walking around dressed as witches and superheroes. And as kids, my brother and I barely dressed up, maybe a total of, like, three or four times.

The first Halloween photo I can remember was of my younger brother and I walking around in the park with our [00:02:00] costumes on. You know, the plastic ones where you could barely breathe through. Back then, we lived in the Bronx, so we didn't really go trick-or-treating either. My mom would just buy us our own bag of candy instead, which looking back was her way of making sure that we didn't miss out, even on a holiday that made zero sense to her. And I mean no complaints from us because we didn't have to share it with anybody, and we didn't have a clue of what it was supposed to look like.

And now I'll share with you, I don't decorate for Halloween. In my house, you'll find pumpkins and leaves and scarecrows, so it's fall all the way, but not a single witch or bat or skeleton. And my kids absolutely dress up, but I'm not the one in charge of costumes because I'll admit it brings me zero joy.

And as for me dressing up with them, I've done it maybe three or four times, and only in the most minimal way possible, because the whole thing just feels so silly to me.

And I share this because we all have our different version of [00:03:00] what fun means to us. I didn't do Halloween, but I did do family dinners every single weekend growing up with a ridiculous number of aunts, uncles, cousins, where the food was always in abundance, the music was always super loud, and the love and laughter were definitely strong. And we may not have been playing Monopoly or games like that, but we were definitely throwing down in dominoes and dancing. it's still fun, but it just looks a little bit different.

As a child therapist, one of the things I really pay close attention to is the relationship between parents and their kids.

And something I notice all the time, without judgment, but just an observation, is how hard it is for some parents to get down on the floor and actually play with their kids. And these are loving, devoted parents. They'll drive to every single practice and remember every single appointment, but to ask them to get on the floor and play even for more than a few minutes, you can see them, like, start to squirm. It feels unproductive to them. It feels a little [00:04:00] silly. And for a lot of high achievers specifically, silly can sometimes feel uncomfortable.

And then there's the video game piece, which I'll be the first to admit, I struggle with a ton, 'cause I grew up on Super Mario Brothers, where Mario just went left and right. That was the whole game. That's it.

And now my son shows me the Minecraft world that he's building, and everything is 360 degrees with blocks and tools and creatures that keep coming at you from every single direction, and my 1980s eyeballs just can't keep up.

But play doesn't have to mean building a house out of Legos or building one in Minecraft. If that's not your thing, that's okay. And for kids, play is how they process their feelings and work through problems and calm their bodies down. And I want you to know that we need that as adults, too. We just stopped calling it play. 

Our kids are watching. When they see us get lost in something that we love, they learn that fun doesn't [00:05:00] have an expiration date once you grow up. That's a lesson that I want my kids to carry on with them a lot longer than any Halloween candy.

There's a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Stuart Brown, who is the founder of the National Institute for Play. And he talks about something he calls play personalities, and that's the idea that each one of us has our own natural way of playing, and once we find our own, then fun stops feeling like one more thing on the to-do list.

So some of us are explorers. We light up when going anywhere new, whether it's a new neighborhood or a weekend trip.

Some of us are creators, and play looks like painting, playing with makeup, or getting all dressed up for no reason at all.

Some of us are kinesthetics, or movers, where play is anything that gets our body going, like a Tough Mudder competition or a salsa class or a dance class.

Storytellers play through stories, getting lost in a good book or telling a story at the dinner table that has the whole table cracking up.

Collectors love the [00:06:00] hunt, so a Saturday spent thrifting for the perfect vintage piece feels like a win to them.

Jokers, my husband, play through laughter. They're usually the ones doing the funny voices and pulling the pranks and making everyone laugh .

And competitors come alive when there's a score, and whether that's pickleball, trivia night, or in my family's Dominos, it's always a good time for competitors.

And lastly, there's directors, and we love the planning and running the show from the girls trip to the whole party. But most of us are a mix of a few things.

For me, it is a dance class, right? A workout class that I take whenever my schedule allows, and I love it so much more than just the workout. It takes me back to my early 20s, my dancing days, Which with a two-and-a-half-year-old at home feels like a whole lifetime ago. But I do get some girl time with the other women in the class, and more than anything, for that hour, I get to express myself as a [00:07:00] girl and not just as a wife or a mom or a therapist.

And that's what I mean by play. It's something that has nothing to do With the work that we do for our families or for work.

So how do we know if something is actually play for us? Well, Dr. Brown describes a handful of things that real play has in common, and I've turned three of them into questions that we can ask ourselves about anything that we do for fun.

And the first is whether we're doing it for our own sake because we want to, without needing it to get anywhere.

The second is whether we lose track of time while we're in it, those moments where we look up and wonder where the last hour went.

And the third is whether we wanna do it again as soon as it's over.

And that's why those family dinners with the dominoes and the dancing counted, even though back then nobody would call it play and nobody was keeping score of anything, except, well, definitely the dominoes, because those games [00:08:00] got serious.

But there's a trap that I see in high achievers that we fall into all of the time, and it's sneaky because it looks like we're doing everything right.

We find something that is fun, and before we know it, we've turned it into a goal. The dance class becomes about how many calories we burned. The yoga class becomes about finally mastering that one pose. Or the painting class turns into a possible side business with its own Instagram account. None of those things are technically bad, but the moment our play gets a target attached to it, it stops passing that first question, because now we're doing it to get somewhere instead of just for fun.

So the thing to watch for is that little voice inside asking, "How could we make this count?" Because that voice is usually the first sign that our play is turning into more of a job. 

The other piece is that so many of us end up producing fun for everyone else, right? We plan the costumes, we buy the [00:09:00] candy, we take the photos, we make the memories, and somewhere in between all of it, we forget that we're allowed to enjoy it too.

Now, I'm a director at heart. I love planning an event and then watching everyone enjoy it from the sidelines. So planning the party can absolutely feel like play for me. The difference, though, shows up in those three questions. When I'm planning because I love it, when I lose track of time, and I can't wait to do it again.

 But when I'm planning because if I don't do it, nobody else will, and I'm watching the clock counting down until it's over, then it's no longer play, right? No knocks to being the fun maker, because it's a big part of why our kids have the memories they do, but we all deserve a turn, too.

So right now in this moment, take a breath after everything you've heard, and let's go back a little further than usual. I want you to think about yourself at around eight or nine or 10. On a day [00:10:00] where nobody needed anything from you, you didn't have any homework to do, you were just having fun.

And what were you doing in this fun? Maybe you were outside until the streetlights came on. Maybe you were drawing in a notebook, dancing in the living room, or getting everyone organized into a game that you made up. I used to be in my yard directing parades with my brothers and my neighbors.

Dr. Brown calls this our play history and it often holds the clues into what still lights us up today. Now think about the last time that you lost track of time as a grown woman, and notice what these two memories have in common. Which of those play personalities sounds the most like you?

And as we head into this Halloween weekend, picture one small way to bring a little of that back.

Maybe it's 20 minutes on a Saturday that goes on the calendar like any other [00:11:00] appointment, skipping the Halloween costume altogether and taking yourself to the class that you've been eyeing for months. Let yourself, allow yourself to want it, and then make it happen.

And if you're realizing that you can't remember the last time you did something just for you, that's exactly the kind of work we do together in my coaching for high-achieving women. Last week I mentioned I'm opening up three spots for November, and November is officially next week. So if you've been on the fence, consider this your sign. No matter where in the world you live, all of the information can be found below.

And I want you to think about the friend who came to mind while you were listening to this episode, the one who's always the fun-maker for everyone else. Share this episode with her.

And if you need proof that it's never too late to find your kind of play, take it from a woman who still can't keep up with Minecraft, but never misses a chance to dance. Until next week, always remember, in a world where you are free to be anything, you are [00:12:00] always free to be mindful.

Catch you next time. 

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