704. Make Work + Life More Fun

Go to your partner right now and say, hey, tonight I want to sit down and I want to have some fun. Asking ourselves the question, how can we make it more fun? Our day to day, everything that we do, how can we make it more fun?

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion, and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself, to later becoming a multimillionaire in love with my life. In 2007, my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. At rock bottom, we had no ideas and I had no education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development and learned everything I could about business. I not by choice, but because I realized no one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing. We're going to give you the tools to help you face your fears, take action, start your business, and grow those massive dreams that are keeping you up at night. It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so much on the line that your higher self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself. Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform, I want to feature you. So if you text the word podcast to 310-496-8363, you can get your questions answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out. And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, subscribe. We're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. And we're back with another episode of he said, she Said. And today this question that we're going to ask you came out of a question we're asking ourselves right now.

And that is how can you make it more fun? Now let me start as like as a baseline. I think we have a really fun life and I think we have a great life. And my daily gratitude practice does a really good job of me of keeping that in focus. Right. But I know it can be more fun cause we still have way too many days where you and I go meet in the Family room or outside, back by the pool at the end of the day, dragging ourselves there, exhausted from a great day's work and saying, gosh, I feel fulfilled, but I feel like I could have had more fun today.

You know, like just tired or a lot of challenges. Or when you sit down, you say, God, I had a day. And instead I really want to say, God, I had a good day.

Right.

And in order to say that, you have to change the questions that you're asking yourself. And I know that I get wrapped up in the question of why did I book myself so back to back, or why am I getting stuck in the admin again? And I just, you know, my friend Lindsey Sikornick always says this question. She just phrases it different. So I want to say it one more time. What would this look like if it was fun? So when you're in those moments, what would this look like if it was fun?

And I actually really quickly want to add, the answer isn't, you have to change what you're doing. I think too many times people think, oh, I must hate my job. Oh, I must. Hey, what I do for a living. Oh, I must have to switch everything in order to start having fun again. No, that's usually not the answer. Believe it or not, most people actually, if they examined it, have a good life, have a good career, like, what they do, but the monotony of it has made it. The repetition of it has made it so it's not as fun anymore. Right. And so the answer isn't blow everything up and start over. Maybe it is for a couple of you, but for most people, it's, hey, let's just be way more conscious about asking ourselves this question. How can we make it more fun?

Yeah. And I just want to add to that because I have had a lot of different dream careers that I've created for myself. Like, God, I wish I could be doing this, and then went and pivoted into it and created it. And I will tell you, it all ends up being hard work.

It all ends up being a job.

It all ends up being a job. And I want you to know that in the best way ever, it is a job, that you get the outcomes that you want and that you're doing the thing that you want to do. But sometimes it's even harder than the thing you were doing, because it's up to you now if that result happens or not. And I think that's the difference is just understanding that we really, really have to take a powerful stance on reframing that we get to. That we get to do this, not that we have to, but that we get to do all of this beautiful hard work. And without it. I really believe that humans do not operate well. I really think that idle hands are not a good thing.

So how are some ways that we can make it more fun?

The first one is to give what you want first. And whether this is out on a walk and you want to experience more joy, you want to experience more happiness around the office, more dopamine. If you want to experience people being friendlier, you have to be that person who starts it.

Yeah, right? So be the first to smile, be the first to say hi, to say hi, Be the first to wave. Be the first to, like, if you start the interaction, then the person who's walking by you in a zone, right, they're totally zoned out, all of a sudden, they wave back, they smile back, they say hi back. Guys, I do this all the time. I actually, I kind of pride myself on being the first one to say hi, the first one to smile, the first one to wave. And the reactions I get back are ones of like, they're almost like shocked. Like I snapped them out of the zone that they're in and this huge smile and they wave back and they say hi. And then I get the dopamine hit from that, right? I get the dopamine hit from, oh my God, that person looks so happy when they waved and said hi. Or we had a great interaction. But I'm creating those interactions from scratch. Otherwise I go by in my zone, they go by me in their zone, and we have no interaction. And it's not the fact that the lack of interaction is hurting you, it's the fact that by adding in a positive reaction is making it more fun and more enjoyable.

Yeah. You go from days where you're like, God, every day is the sameness feels so robotic to actually adding these really special moments that life, it's the only thing that life is about. And I just want to say that this morning, you know, we woke up and because we did have not a challenging day, just a long day, just a back to back long day yesterday, both of us and this morning I woke up and I said, you know, when your dad passed away, we would always say to each other around that time, for kind of that first month or two that we, we just wished for even. We wish for all the bad days back with him. Like, we wished that we could just spend even the bad days with him. And this morning on our walk, we Said, you know, at the end of our life, it's gonna come down to these walks. It's gonna come down to these little moments that we took to savor and enjoy and really drop into the fact that we get to have these moments, we get to have these hard times.

Well, it's gonna come down to not, what did I do for a living? For most of you, it's gonna come down to, did I make it fun? Did I actually do that little something extra to give it a boost and to make it feel the way I wanted it to feel? So what's another idea that we could do?

The next one is to set the environment. I know that every single day I wake up, and I used to be so good at putting on music and lighting candles in our other house, and I'm starting to do it a little bit here. I just have to remember, because it's the little things that make you enjoy more. I love Brazilian jazz. I'm literally obsessed, and I love candles and all of those things. And even if I just take 30 seconds to, okay, five minutes to clean up where I'm at, but to really set the environment to enjoy it just a little bit more, even if you.

Think it's small, this is so true. So, like, I don't know why it switched in this house, but I remember in the last house, when people would come over, the first thing I'd say to them is, hey, we have music on in here from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed. And it was true every day. It was just, like, by default. And so here's what happened when you got good music on that you love. And by the way, Lori's is Brazilian jazz. Mine is what I call Saturday music. It's yacht rock. It's like Christopher Cross sailing, you guys. It's the best music in the world anyhow. We always have it on the background. So here's what happens. You leave your home office, you walk to the kitchen to get a snack, and just having the music on in the background makes that a more fun, more positive experience. Or you dip off of a call, and you go take a quick break. And just having that music on makes it a better atmosphere. Mm.

So the next one is change the environment.

And what do you mean by that?

Change the environment means if your energy is stagnant, let's say you're even in your office, or maybe you even have a beautiful office, and you're like, oh, God, my energy is like, it. It drops, right? You're starting to feel that frustration in your body, like it's a default of kind of sitting for too long, you'll start to notice frustration. And that's simply a sign that you need to go change up the energy. You need to go move it around. When energy gets stuck because you are sitting in one spot or you're in one room, you need to do something to go switch it. So sometimes I even do something small. And we're going to tell you some big things as well. Um, and this is probably the hardest one because it. It feels easier to stay where you're at. But even if you do something small, as switching into another room, moving outside, going into your kitchen, maybe to work, it's huge. It's just going to change what you're doing. Do a reset.

Yeah. Change your location. Right. So you call it change your environment. I call it change your location. This subtle change makes a big difference. Lori. Nailed it. Go work in your backyard. If you're, you know, if you work at home, go work in your kitchen. If you're used to be just being locked in your office all day. If you work in an office building, go see if they'll let you work in the office park or out in the lobby. You know, as long as you're not on call or something like that. Or let's take it a step further, go work at your favorite lounge, your favorite restaurant, your favorite day club, your favorite whatever where you can be around people coming and going. You know, in la, I loved going to Soho House. And here, you know, we have yet to find our places, but there's all these great locations where you can go and work and know that other people around you are kind of sharing in that buzz. And if you really take it to a real extreme, for some of you, not all of you, I understand this, but we're sharing the whole perspective. For some of you, why not change? If, you know, you have a hard work of phone calls or writing or, you know, being on your laptop, why not change the location? Literally? Like, do it from Hawaii, do it from California, do it from New York. Do it from wherever it is that you think would fill you up. Like, if you have to be on your laptop, be on the laptop staring at the ocean. Now, I understand that's not for everyone, but we're showing the whole spectrum from going to your backyard to going to Hawaii. You have a lot of options.

Yeah. When I was writing my book, I did not love writing. It's bizarre because I actually love writing and I hate it. It's Like, I love it to a certain point, and I love it on the good days, right? But when it was challenging, it's like, I wouldn't want to go back because you have all of these emotions of, I suck, I'm not good enough. I don't think I'm going to come up with anything today. And what I would do is start to make positive associations with writing. So I would start going to different coffee shops and letting myself get a amazing almond milk latte. And I'd bring these all natural chocolate bars that I would eat half of every time I would write. It'd be my afternoon check that I would use for also writing. So I'd have these really positive work associations with, like, oh, that's when I get to go to blank and get my delicious coffee and have my chocolate. And then when that got old, I actually found another place. I went to a place called La Paine in la because they would play this amazing French music. They had great lattes, and they had these incredible parfaits that would be like my little afternoon treat that I'd be like, okay, I get to go right in this beautiful cafe, kind of people watch, listen to music and do this thing. And it would be the thing that got me out the door to go sit and write that, like, okay, even if my writing sucks, today, I'm going to be at this cafe enjoying. And I would set up a schedule to that. So that was really powerful for me.

I've got another one you can build in mini breaks and mini dates that you aren't already doing. Let's be honest. Most of us, we put our head down and we just are in the habit of booking all of our appointments a half hour at a time or an hour at a time instead of maybe limiting them to 20 minutes instead of a half hour, or 45 minutes instead of an hour. And our work will always swell to fit the container that we give it. So what if we gave it a little smaller container, created a little more impact in a smaller container, and use those little mini breaks to do something fun. Like, I've got these great cars sitting in the garage where I know for a fact I could build in an extra half an hour each day to go and take a little ride in the car just to get out of the house, you know what I mean? I know for a fact that I could build in a little break and listen to one of my favorite books right now that I'm listening to for 15 minutes on audio. I know for a fact that I Could build in a mini break and go take a walk that I'm not taking right now or do something else fun. Everyone has a different version of what would be fun for them if you actually worked in smaller containers and intentionally built in these small mini breaks to make it more fun.

Yeah. What I think that we need to learn how to do for sure is to get better at compartmentalizing. Especially as women, we leave every single window up so that when we do go take these mini breaks, we're worrying about not working and we're not enjoying. I used to take walks in the morning with Chris. We've taken walks forever since the beginning of our marriage. And I can tell you that probably the first eight years of our walks, I didn't enjoy them because I let all of the anxiety of what I should be doing be in that moment when nothing was there. Nothing was in that moment besides us outside and nature and all of these amazing things that I wasn't looking at because I was just stuck in the anxiety. And it's learning how to compartmentalize that is really going to let us drop into the joy on the walks, on these little breaks, on like, oh, my God, I'm starting to worry and think about work again. And it's like, how about you just think about that amazing latte that you're enjoying right now and that actually these breaks are the most productive, productive thing that you could do for yourself. Because space is a gift, space in your brain, a little bit of time off from the worry. Just giving yourself that time that recharge, that is the most productive thing that you can do. And you need to remember that in your business that if you don't do those things, you're actually going to put yourself in a really bad place.

Or you have no, no idea how many times that I'll catch myself, like, thinking about something that's irrelevant to the moment. And I'll. I'll stop. I'll say, be where your feet are. Be where your feet are. And I'll literally just say it to myself five times, Be where your feet are. And then all of a sudden, before you know it, I'm finally present again. And all of our worry comes from living in the future. All of our regret comes from living in the past. If you could just be where your feet are and stop making things up to worry about, it would automatically, by default, be more fun.

Yeah. Because those things are not. They're not there with you in that very moment. They're just not. They're not there. They are non existent in that moment. And a lot of things that I'm working on right now is removing the resistance around the work or the thing or whatever it is that I wanna do next. Because all of the pain we experience is because of the resistance and the thoughts that we're putting around it. It's not the actual thing. It's like all of the feelings that we give to ourselves due to the thoughts that we're choosing before we actually end up doing the thing. With the holidays and the new year coming, you probably are looking around your house thinking that you would love to upgrade, upgrade and freshen up your environment. And there is no easier way to do that than with your window treatments. Nobody covers windows better than blinds.com blinds.com brings your space to life in your way. They have free design help. Other retailers may claim to have experts, but blinds.com has spent nearly 30 years building an award winning team of over 100 design consultants that are ready to help you create your dream space. Always convenient, always tailored to you. Three ways to shop 1. Perfect fit Whether you want to DIY have it all done for you or you're somewhere in between, choose what works for you and rest easy knowing the fit is guaranteed. So the holidays come fast you guys, and you can freshen up your window treatments fast as well. And unlike some competitors, the price you see is the price you pay. No hidden fees and there's zero pressure. From blackout and motorized options to classic shutters, blinds.com has window treatments for every room style and budget, even shades for your outdoor space. The Black Friday deals@blinds.com are going strong all month long, so don't miss your chance to save big. And as always, our listeners still get $50 off when you spend $500 or more. Just use code earn at checkout. Limited time offer rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details. 2026 is the year that you launch your business. It's the year that you've become the boss. You become the leader. That idea that you have that has been eating at you forever that just will not alone is going to come to life. Maybe it's something that someone tells you you should always sell or a store you've already designed in your head. And with Shopify, 2026 is when you finally make it happen. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person. Millions of entrepreneurs have already made this leap from household name to first time business owners. Just getting started you guys. I use Shopify for glossy and I remember when they sent Me, my little shopping bag celebrating my 10,000 sales and I literally, because I was so scared to take the leap and I'm so glad that I did and that I use Shopify. It gives you all the tools to easily build your dream store. You can choose from hundreds of beautiful templates that you can customize to match your brand. Setup is fast with Shopify's built in AI tools that write product descriptions and headlines and help you edit photos. So marketing is built in too. You can create email and social campaigns that reach customers wherever they scroll. So as you grow, Shopify grows with you. You can handle more orders, expand to new markets and do it all from the Same dashboard in 2026. Stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com happy go to shopify.com happy that shopify.com happy here your first Cha Ching this new year with Shopify by your side.

So the very next step you can do in order to bring more fun back in your life is if you totally work alone and if you're single, ask yourself this question. I mean really sit down and write out ways you can make it more fun. But most of us, we have co workers or romantic partners or somebody else in our life that's going to have an impact on our day to day fun. So take this question, how can we make it more fun? And go sit down and ask them that question. And no pun intended, but have fun ideating on that question. Go to your partner right now and say, hey, tonight I want to sit down and I want to have some fun. Asking ourselves the question, how can we make it more fun? Our day to day, everything that we do, how can we make it more fun? That's the first thing. The second thing is I would go to 2021Printprint.com 2021Printprint.com we put together a blueprint of how to work smarter, how to work more efficiently, how to map out your income in a fun and more intelligent way, how to build a little more elegant strategy around it. Trust me, it's just everything. It's totally free and it's something that will help you get your arms around being more productive at the same time as doing this in a more fun and elegant way. So go check out that free tool at 2021.

You guys, thanks so much for tuning in. And the thing about this episode that we want to make sure that you do is not just to ask this once, but this should be a daily thing maybe you do this every single morning or maybe an afternoon check in. How can I make it more fun? Right? Like maybe this is the question that you set on your iPhone as a reminder every day at noon or 1 o' clock or 3 o' clock when you know you're hitting that spot where you get really frustrated that it pops up and just said says what would this look like? If it felt fun and easy, what would this look like?

Popped up every two hours. I love that. Am I ready for this? A simple thing that pops up every couple hours. Am I making it fun?

Yep. How could I make this more fun?

Yep.

Totally. All right, you guys. So grateful for you. We always love to see who we're talking to and what your biggest takeaways were. So make sure you tag Chris and I on your Instagram story and share this podcast. And until next time, thank you guys for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

Thank you. It.