How to Have More Fun: A Guide to Enjoying the Holidays

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Hey, it's your friend Mel. And welcome to a holiday edition of the Mel Robbins Podcast.

Woo hoo.

All right, everybody, I don't know what you're doing right now, but let me tell you what I'm doing. I am cruising into the holiday season. And in fact, today, the day that this releases, it is Thanksgiving here in the United States. What does that mean? That means cue the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving music. Isn't that special? Families getting together, turkey on the table, Uncle Bill talking politics, Aunt Irene getting drunk. Okay, wait a minute here. Hold on, hold on. What are we going to talk about? Well, you know, I thought a lot about this. What do I want to talk to you about? Given that this is gonna come out on Thanksgiving, and whether you listen to this on Thanksgiving or not, at some point or another, you're gonna be cruising into the holidays with your own family and loved ones. And when I started to scan the possibilities for what you and I could talk about today, and it's kind of sad, when you Google the holidays and holidays with family, the first thing that comes up are not articles about how to have more fun with your family. You know what comes up? How to avoid toxic family members, how to have boundaries, how to do this. If they're that toxic, don't go. There's the only boundary you need. You have permission from your friend Mel Robbins to decline any invitations this holiday that involve hanging out with narcissists or people that have been abusive to you or anybody that triggers your trauma. Okay? That's just rule number one. Because I want you to have fun. You deserve to have fun. And here's the reason why we have to talk about this. We had been planning on showing up at the holiday gathering, hoping it was fun. Can we have a confessional moment here? I know you're excited to see your family, or at least I hope you are. But let's tell the truth about what happens when we all get together. We're all excited. We send the emails. We can't wait to go. We bundle up, we pack the car, we board the planes, we drive to each other's. We give each other a big hug. We're super excited.

And.

And then what do you do? You hang out with your favorite cousin or your favorite aunt, and you ignore everybody else within a couple hours of getting there. You've caught up on college and work and your dating life, and you've talked about the weather, and then everybody's on their phone within a day. You're itching to go back and see your friends and get back into your routine, and you're ready to kill your sister or your brother. It's not just happening at my house. It happens at everybody's house. I'd like to change that this year. I'd like to pull up in the fun bus. I would like us all to walk into our family holidays and our family dynamics this year with our arms open. You know, you kind of walk into the holidays with your arms crossed going, we'll see how this goes. And you carry in your expectations and maybe the slights from last year. Oh, you know, it's gonna be the same thing every year. How about this holiday season? This is the one where you uncross your arms, you open your heart, and you pull up in the fun bus, baby. Honk, honk. And look, I'm sure that my family feels the same way about me. Oh, Aunt Mel, she's a lot. Talk about a control freak. God, I wish she didn't talk so loud. Hope she doesn't drink as much as she did last year. This is gonna be a train wreck if she does it. I'm sure I'm very triggering. So thank you to my family in advance for still coming.

But let's just promise each other that.

This is gonna be the holiday season where you and I open our hearts. We uncross our arms, we drop the expectations, and we pull up in the fricking fun bus. We bring it, people. Because when you and I get serious about having fun, you know what's gonna be cool? The fun breaks apart the old dynamics. It pulls people out of their shells, and you're gonna see a completely different side of everybody that you think you know so well. And this matters. And I realized that you might be introverted or maybe it's your mother in law who's hosting. And so it's like gotta be a certain way or your family's just not into that. Mel. Or maybe you don't have a big family, but it's your circle of friends that you're spending the holidays with that really need to mix it up. How do we change this? I'll tell you how we change this. Fun. Fun matters, especially when it comes to your family. Now this isn't just good old common sense. Here's the thing about fun. Fun lessens the stress. Fun helps you sleep better. Fun makes you happier. It makes you smarter. And it strengthens your relationships when you're having fun with other people. And you know that this is true. And look, you aren't the only one. Here's how sad the topic of fun is. Researchers have a word to describe the fact that you and I are not having as much fun as we should. You want to hear the words? It's pretty sad. Researchers say that you and I are living in a fun drought. I mean, my mouth is not just dry. Apparently my whole life is dry. 97% of us, according to the research, and that includes you and me, wish we had more fun. 60% of adults believe that their life is just way too grown up. I know I feel that way. Don't you wish you could go into a time machine and sit back at the kids table again and be elbowing your cousins and laughing at all the adults? Well, that brings me to the next piece of research. 73% of us miss aspects of our childhood like birthday parties or family celebrations. Let's just talk about your own family for a second. Forget about what your relationship is like right now. I want you to think back through time. What are the best memories that you have with your family? I guarantee you what popped right into your mind were the fun times. When I think about my family, the Schneebergers, you know what I think about? I think about game night. I think about the fact that we love playing euchre and backgammon and we always divide up into teams. And my mom and I are a great team because we love to smack talk. And then it's like the ladies against the guys and we will play cards for hours. Cribbage, euchre. I just love those nights. And we laugh and we're competitive. Or I can think of like another memory that comes to mind. For me is Wiffle Ball. When my little nephews were tiny. They're twins and they're 14 now and they're taller than I am. Well, I'd get out there when they were little and I would always have to drop out of the Wiffle Ball game because I haven't had my bladder surgery yet. And then everybody would laugh about how Aunt Mel just peed herself. Ha ha ha ha ha. And they'd try to make me laugh so I would pee myself. Or when we go visit my parents, my dad always rents a pontoon boat. And not just any pontoon boat. There is only one place on Muskegon Lake where you can rent a pontoon boat. This pontoon boat is like 30 years old. We have rented the same thing every year that we go back and visit, but we always have fun. And I guarantee you when I go back this summer, it'll be that same 31 year old pontoon boat. And we'll all wonder if it will actually be able to have enough horsepower to do tubing now on Chris's side of the family, when I think about memories there, it's always fun stuff too. Like how excited all nine cousins were when they get together. And they would spend hours and hours and hours, particularly in the winter, building jumps on this huge hill that we live on. And then they would sled on it. And honestly, the last time they all did that, it's kind of sad. I bet it was about 15 years ago or another memory. We had this epic Lip Sync Battle one Thanksgiving where all of not only Chris's family got together, but all of his cousins came too. And it was. Every family was a band. It was this incredible battle. Absolutely amazing. Do you know when that was? 13 years ago. So it begs the question, if you always remember the fun times, why aren't we having fun anymore? Especially during the holidays? And so before I talk about how we're gonna do that, I wanna reveal the three big reasons why we aren't having fun, especially around the holidays. And these are reasons supported by the research. So the first reason why we fall into a fund route is because of guilt.

And.

And this may sound weird, so let me explain it to you. I think it's been a hard few years for a lot of people, and maybe you or members of your family are having a hard time. And so what happens when somebody has just gone through a divorce or maybe you've lost a loved one, or somebody just lost their job or they're struggling or whatever, you feel guilty prioritizing fun I mean, if somebody that you love isn't gonna be able to make it to the celebration or somebody's passed away, don't feel guilty about having fun, or maybe we shouldn't have fun, or this has gotta be serious. Do not let that guilt prevent you from bringing the fun this holiday season. Having fun honors that person. Secondly, and I think this one's really important, you may have ideas for having fun with your family. Like maybe you heard me say we used to have these epic big lip sync battles. And you're like, oh, I'd love to do that. And then I guarantee you, you know what? You felt, my family would never do that. And that's the second reason why we don't bring more fun. You're afraid you're going to get judged. While I can take care of that fear right now, you will get judged. Your family is going to tease you. Your family's going to roll your eyes. Your family will judge you when you show up with a huge armload of foam hats that you expect everybody to wear at the holiday table. Guess what? When you bring the poster board and the markers, when you bring the wiffle ball, when you bring the face paint, I want you to expect to be made fun of. You want to know why? Because that's your family. That's what we do. And you know what else?

Who fricking cares? They're going to complain anyway.

So you got a choice here. Do you want them to sit around and complain about relatives that aren't there, or about politics or about the weather or about how their back hurts? Or do you want them to complain about the foam hat that you brought that we're all now laughing at? You get to choose. And I'm going to ask you, please choose the fun. And here's the third reason why we don't have enough fun. I'm telling you, and this is the single most important reason, and it's dead simple. We don't plan for it. You and I are making a huge mistake. We think fun needs to be spontaneous. I get it. Fun was really spontaneous when you were a little kid, or at least you thought it was. But if you really stop and think about it, when you were a kid, all those fun moments, the adults planned. They planned the birthday parties. They planned the get togethers. They invited your friends over for playdates. They bought the Legos and the puzzle. They turned on the fun movie. They popped the popcorn. And what I'm here to tell you is, now that you and I are adults, you and I need to plan those fun experiences for ourselves and the other adults around us. Don't just plan something fun for the kids this holiday, plan something for everybody to do. So here we are, you and me. I have lifted up the skirt. I have shown up here. I don't even know what other metaphor to tell you. I'm just freestyling here with you right now on this holiday edition. The bottom line is, let's admit it, we're in a fun drought. We had been planning on showing up at the holiday gathering, hoping it was fun and then just being critical when it's not. So here's what we're going to do. You and me, we're bringing the fun. And rule number one, stop focusing on all the logistics. Focus on the laughter. I want you to weave laughter into the logistics. If you did the work ahead of time, to plan for fun and to make sure it's fun, it will be fun. And you know, when I say don't just focus on the logistics, also focus on the laughter. I want to tell you a quick story. So we're hosting Thanksgiving this year and my husband, thank God, is handling the logistics. And so he put together an email and he assigned all the things out that everybody was doing. And yeah, bring the dogs and bring a bathing suit and ba ba da ba da ba da ba. And everybody replies back, excited to see you. And we are. We're so excited to get together. And so now as the emails are starting to fly, I'm starting to feel excited, but everybody's just kind of commenting on the logistics. We'll be there Thursday. We'll be there Wednesday night. We're gonna bring the dog. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, our son Oakley replies. And he replies in all caps. People, we are going to destroy this feast. And I just laughed out loud. That could be you. Why not reply to the family logistics text chain with a hilarious gif of somebody dancing with a turkey? Why not put in a hilarious photo of somebody in the family? Why not bring the fun? So don't just focus on the logistics. Make sure you focus on the laughter, too. So that's step one. And when we come back, I'm gonna.

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Now, let's talk about step two. How do you stop falling into the oh, funnel just happened spontaneity category and you fall into the I'm going to make this fun thing happen category?

Well, let's look at the research.

People who are happy do things that make them happy. That's one of those studies where I'm like, yeah, duh. But then you're like, oh, no wonder I'm not happy. I'm not doing anything or prioritizing happiness. They work at things that make them happy. And it makes sense because when you try things that make you happier, you're a happier person. Well, guess what? The exact same research relates to fun. It's seriously so obvious. It's kind of stupid. But let's have some fun with it, right? Let's not be embarrassed. Your life becomes fun when you plan things that are fun to you or even when normal things, you just bring a fun attitude like our son did to the email chain. All caps, exclamation. Let's go, people. And on that note, I want to share a story with you about the power of bringing the fun. Okay, thankfully we have somebody in our family who's incredible at this. Our oldest daughter, Sawyer, who's 23 years old. This woman always brings the fun. I mean, she Is always doing something really fun with her friends. Let me give you a few examples. Just some inspiration that you can use during the holidays or. Absolutely. Anytime you want to bring a little fun or a lot of fun to your friends and family. There was one year where she and her friends were out in breckenridge, Colorado, and I was looking at the photos online, and they were out at bars in these colonial costumes.

Literally.

Like, think Holly hobby bonnets, prairie dress apron. They had gone on a bar crawl in costume, looking like women from a colonial era, like little house on the prairie. It was such a riot that people all over Breckenridge were stopping them. They were featured on the Breckenridge Facebook page. People were taking photos with them. I mean, talk about bringing the fun. That's hilarious. I never think to order costumes and go on a themed bar crawl. Who does that? Well, apparently, people who have fun do that. Another thing that she did recently is we had all of her. Her college friends from Boston college up with their moms for a big mother daughter weekend. And when we found out that one of the moms, who was a widow, had just gotten engaged to her boyfriend, Sawyer turned to me and said, let's throw a wedding. I'm like, throw a wedding? She's like, yeah, we're gonna throw a wedding. And sure enough, they made a sash for the mom. We made a veil out of a paper towel, like, you know, like a long thing of paper towel and flowers out of, like, foil. And then we blew bubble. And we had her daughter, who was wearing this huge foam hat, walk her down the aisle in our living room. And then Sawyer, like, it was hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. Why she brought the fun. When she heard something, she leaned into it. It was just amazing. And she also did this repeatedly during quarantine. So quarantine was actually a really awesome time for our family Once we got over the grieving and we settled into the routine of being together because our kids brought the fun. Sawyer went through and made an entire chart for the month of March, and she came up with theme nights. Every other night. There was a family Olympics night. There was a bake off where we divided up into teams, and we had to bake desserts, and we also had to dress up as chefs. I mean, it was super fun. But the most fun night was a night that I had never heard of. This is a theme you should steal. I love this. It's an anything but clothes dinner. And what does that mean? I didn't know either. It means you have dinner with your family. Wearing anything but clothes. You're not supposed to go nude. You are supposed to wear something other than clothes. So Sawyer, for example, took two huge king size pillows and duct taped them all around her. So she put one on the front, one in the back, and then duct taped it. So that was her clothes or her outfit.

I can't remember what Oakley wore and.

I can't remember what Kendall wore, oddly enough. But I took a champagne bottle box and I put it across my chest. And the way that I fastened it to me is I poked holes in the top of it and then I put a ribbon around it and hung it like a necklace and then put duct tape on the side so it stayed in place. And then I made a pair of pants out of brown grocery store garbage bags, like one bag per leg, and then taped the front together. Now Chris, Chris's outfit was something. Chris took a rubber pot lid. So you know how you have like a metal pot lid? Well, somebody gave us once these like kind of rubber lids that you can put on top of dishes like in the summer so that flies can't get them. And it had like a little knob on it. He hung this thing across the front of him in front of his private parts. And that's all he wore except for a pair of clogs and socks. I mean, when he came down the stairs, I almost had a heart attack. He had on a pot lid across the front of him with a ribbon around his waist and clogs on. I'll tell you, we have laughed about that moment forever. And every time we get into a fight, Chris threatens to wear that to the rehearsal dinner for one of our kids weddings. What you're gonna learn is that it's not that hard. It only takes one additional person to cause a major shift with you and have the fun. Be what everybody remembers. That's what we're gonna do this holiday season. In fact, this is called the first follower theory. When you're the one person doing something out of the ordinary, people think you're crazy. Like think about if you were to go in at the holidays and you're wearing some silly outfit. One of my favorite things to do is to buy themed blazers. You can get them really cheap on Amazon that are just ridiculous. Whether they have turkeys all over em or they have like, you know, holiday decorations or they blink or whatever.

Hilarious.

If you're the only one wearing one, you might feel like an idiot. When two of you show up. Now there's a party. That first follower that joins in with you Turns you from you're an idiot to this looks like fun. Same's true about a dance floor, right? The first person that gets up, you're like, ooh, bad dance move. The second one, you're like, mm, maybe I'll go right. That's how you go from being the lone nutjob to being the leader of the fun Train, everybody. That's how fun becomes a movement. And so I'm going to take the first follower theory and I'm going to recruit someone to help me, and I want you to do the same. I am going to get our daughter Sawyer on the line because she is the cfo, the chief fun officer of the Robins family. And so as I get Sawyer on the line, I want you to think of your chief fun officer, the person you're going to drag in to help you. Because if you both are like, come on, guys. Everyone will be like, all right. And the fun bus will run. The resignation and the cynicism right on over. And make sure that fun bus has a good music dance party mix too, because that'll also bring the energy up. So, ladies and gentlemen, when we come back, I'm going to introduce you to the CFO, Chief Fun Officer of our family, Ms. Sawyer Robbins.

And we're going to talk about how.

The hell we're gonna make our holidays fun. And in the process, we're gonna give you some amazing ideas for how you can do the same.

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All right, ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Sawyer Robbins. So soy, thank you for being here because you have the wittiest and driest sense of humor, but you also bring the fun and you make our family so much better because of it. And I just love that about you.

Thank you.

I want you to help me figure out how to have fun as a family this year. Because everything that I plan, like, oh, let's go look at the exhibit at the mfa. You guys are like, I don't want to go. Or, you know, yeah, I used to love going to the movies on the day after Thanksgiving. I don't want to do that.

Well, first of all, never suggest the MFA or go to the movies. No No, I don't know. I just think it's always really hard to come back for the holidays with the family, and it's exciting at first, and then by the end of it, you're like, okay, I'm ready to get back to my regular routine. I feel like all we talk about is the boring stuff and what everyone does for work, and then Uncle Tom does his accents and everyone laughs, and we have the exact same memories told over and over again. And then that results to, okay, we're gonna watch eight Harry Potters and drink an entire bottle of wine and be on our phones all day.

You just described the holidays at our house. Oh, my God.

So I don't know. I'm down for some more fun this year, for sure.

So do you have any ideas, as our cfo, the Chief Fun Officer of our family, for how we could mix it up this year over the holidays?

I think there's ideas that can be.

Super out there and wild.

For example, like the anything but clothes dinner, which I really wish honestly didn't happen after dad walked down in a, like, pedal something over his junk and nothing else but clogs on. Oh, perfect. But, I mean, that was, like, a little too out there. And we do that with, like, our friends. And I didn't anticipate you guys taking it that seriously.

And God knows I don't want to.

See our grandmother JJ with a VUV.

Box over her uplifted tits, but.

So how do you come up with your ideas?

I get inspiration from, like, online. I'll see a photo of, for example, like, a colonial costume and be like, oh, my gosh, it would be so fun to incorporate that into a bar crawl. And then you plan the whole bar crawl. I just make sure that I go 100% all out so that if you.

Don'T do so and you show up to the party or you show up to the bar crawl, like you're the one who looks out of place.

Which.

Sounds horrible, but I just feel like if you're the one planning and you're.

Not the one going 100% or even.

Like, being super outgoing or rowdy about it and making sure everyone feels comfortable.

Like, in and around the group, whoever's.

Participating in it, then it's just. It would never work. I think when there's at least two people that's literally all you need that genuinely want to do something and present.

It to the group and really push.

For it, then it is so much more likely to happen.

Okay, so how about we plan in real time what Our family's going to do with the 14 people that are showing up over Thanksgiving here at our house. Okay, what are we doing?

Oh, my God. I feel like so put on the spot.

What if this were the year, Sawyer.

That we did a huge capture the flag game with the whole family?

Yeah, that would be really fun, actually. That's a great idea. Like games, et cetera. I think that always brings people together.

What about a karaoke machine? We could rent one. Yeah, that's a no. Okay. I feel like no enthusiasm there.

I think karaoke's fun when everyone's a bad singer, But I can see that.

Turning into Kendall just taking over.

Oh, yeah.

We could do, like, a cocktail making contest or something where everyone brings their own fixings and makes, like, a unique drink based on family.

That's a cool idea. And since there's a couple people that don't drink, we could force you to have to do an alcoholic and a non alcoholic version, which is actually quite hard.

Yes, absolutely.

I like that. As a Thanksgiving thing, that's an assignment per family. Okay, check. We got that one done. Now let me focus us on the actual Thanksgiving table.

I think every table, it's fun to, like, make creative, handmade name tags for everyone and potentially have, like, flowers, little presents. I've done parties where I ask individuals to bring different types of decorations, and then we all get together and decorate the place together and then essentially destroy the place.

Oh, another thing that we used to do is we would have the poppers.

Oh, yeah, poppers that you pull.

Like, everyone holds them crisscross, and you pull those. Those are always fun having, like, crowns or.

Oh, I like the idea of crown. What if we make our own crowns?

Yeah, that would be fun.

Or you get assigned a crown to make for somebody else to wear at the table. I like that.

Oh, I like that too.

Let's do that.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Pull a name out of the hat. And you got to make somebody a crown to wear at Thanksgiving dinner.

Yeah.

So to me, that means we need to have at least the crown shape cut out for everybody so there's no shenanigans of, like, everything's ready, is what I'm hearing correct.

Yeah. We have the paint, we have the markers, the glitter, jewels, whatever we want people to decorate those with. That's all on us.

And you just, like, that's why planning these things are fun. I love to, like, go to Target and get all the supplies and make the crowns and have it set up for everyone. And when other people Come and they don't have to lift a finger, but they can participate. I think that that's when they have the most fun. And while that requires planning on our end as the host, if we want to provide a fun environment, we need to commit to doing that with costumes. The key thing is if you want everyone to go all out, obviously, in the invitation, make that known, but you need to give them, like two weeks, three weeks to order the costumes, whatever, so it's not the night before. And they're looking for a Santa Claus costume where they essentially just wear red leggings and a red shirt.

Got it. Okay.

The final thing we didn't talk about is music. I think having playlists ready is critical. Our family always brings the disco playlist, and it goes on the second we start clearing the table for Thanksgiving. And there is an all hands on deck family disco dance party cleanup situation. That happens.

Yes, that is true. Very fun. Makes all the dishes way more fun.

One more question. What do we do about the phone situation?

Bring a basket out and just say, hey, we really want to be present with all of you. Would everyone feel comfortable if we put everyone's phone in this basket and just put them away for the next three hours? I think it's just one of those things where you're the host. I think you have that power to kind of say, I want to be with all of you. I'm hosting you all here. Would you please, in return, give me your phone and actually be present?

Who is going to resist that the most?

I feel like the adults. I don't want to call out anyone in particular in our family, but in general, I feel like adults who, oh, I want to take pictures or, oh, I have a work call, or I'm Mel Robbins.

So you think I'm gonna have the hardest time with it?

I mean, it's your idea, so I'll.

Hold it to you, but okay, the basket's coming. We'll get the five nuclear family on board, and we will drop a fun bomb on the rest of the family.

Perfect.

So can I ask you to take on the crown project?

Yes.

Thank you. All right, I love you. Love you too. Bye. Well, I don't know about you, but I got a lot of planning to do. I hope you got some great ideas. And if you've got other ideas that we should all be considering, let's crowdsource them. Please put them in the comments. DM me, hit me up@melrobbins.com in the forums. I would love to get together a list of fun things you can do with your family, and then we could share it with everybody. How cool would that be? All right, listen. Before you head into those holidays, let me tell you I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life and have a lot more fun. So go enjoy those holidays with your families and I'll talk to you in a few days. Stitcher.

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