Yearly Fun Joy Play Index
Every year around New Year’s Eve, our feeds are clogged with personal year-end reviews designed to help encapsulate your year and create a plan for our future selves. And like clockwork, I end up writing down some “accomplishments” and creating an ambitious laundry list of goals for the new year, only to lose this list sometime in late February.
What is never captured in those reviews is how much fun, joy, and play I experienced that year.
So I’ve decided to create a different review called the Fun Joy Play Index. The FJP Index because everything needs an acronym. This is America.
It measures how much fun, joy, and play came into your life this past year. Whether you’ve had a hard year, a string of rough years, are in a transition year, or it was your favorite year EVER, we should all take time to recognize these moments. As the musical Rent asks “Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year?”
There are seven FJP questions. Why seven? Because there are seven colors in the rainbow, seven Harry Potter Books, and seven days to have fun in a week.
If you need a guide on how to best answer these questions, you can see my personal answers below. Enjoy the FJP journey!
1. What moments bring you happiness when you think about this past year?
2. When did you laugh the most and who were you with?
3. What day or moment made you smile the most?
4. What was your most awe-inspiring, surreal experience of this year? (If you can’t narrow it down to just one, go ahead and list more. Why limit yourself?)
5. What did you learn this year that blew your mind?
6. What adventures did you go on this year and what made them so much fun?
7. What FJP moments do you want to create in 2019 and who can help make them happen?
Bonus Question:
How do you feel now about your year after answering these questions?
If you are up for a fun challenge, take the answers you came up with for 2019 FJP Moments and reach out to the people who can help make these moments happen in January.
Anticipation is sometimes as much fun as the actual event.
I wish you all of the fun, joy and play that you deserve and more in 2019.
_________________________________________________________________
Here’s how I answered these questions:
1. What moments bring you happiness when you think about this past year?
• Celebrating my birthday with a play day with my friend Harris
• Creating a dance video of my family for Thanksgiving
• Getting a crowd of strangers to high five, hug and play in Oakland, NY, LA, and China
• Singing Christmas carols at the cemetery for my dad with my family
• Helping people figure out what their next steps in life are by doing a fun play brainstorm, connecting what they loved to do as a child with what they want to do now as an adult
2. When did you laugh the most and who were you with?
I was at a woo woo retreat called Soul Camp and instead of going to a night time meditation, I ate ice cream with my friends and got into an uncontrollable laughing fit which we term orgaphter or lorgasms (Laughing Orgasms). One should have at least two of these a year, which cannot be planned. You do have to surround yourself with people that make you laugh the most though.
3. What day or moment made you smile the most?
My birthday play day where we hosted a human balloon soccer game, a Sumo Wrestling Challenge, a basketball skills competition, and it culminated with 90’s hip hop dancing all night.
4. What was your most awe-inspiring, surreal experience of this year?
Signing Autographs for kids in Wenzhou, China. It made me really happy because even though we couldn’t fully understand each other, I got them to play, and they appreciated it.
5. What did you learn this year that sort of blew your mind?
I learned that you can extend your life by simply watching more sunrises and sunsets. By savoring these moments, you can actually slow down time in your mind and begin to appreciate other experiences in a powerful way.
6. What adventures did you go on this year and what made them so much fun?
· I took a 4 day trip to China for work, which included sleeping in a Shanghai airport overnight
· I attended a bunch of woo woo retreats that challenged me to be vulnerable, address feelings I’ve been avoiding, and allowed myself to be seen, which was quite liberating
7. What FJP Moments Do You Want To Create in 2019 and who can help make them happen?
• High five at least 300 people this year (That’s one per day)
• Watch more sunsets and sunrises than in any previous year
• Four play-filled trips are already planned with my friends in the first 6 months and currently searching for more
• Choosing to collaborate on multiple fun play work projects for 2019
