Play With Your Food? A Unique Trick to Make Ordinary Experiences More Fun

Life can become boring and tedious if we find ourselves doing the same things over and over again. We all crave new experiences and novelty to some degree to keep life fresh and exciting.

Even common activities that we normally find fun and enjoyable can become lackluster if we do them too frequently and never try to add a twist to them.

A new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin may have cracked the code when it comes to how we can make ordinary experiences more fun and enjoyable.

In 3 different studies, researchers demonstrated that doing an old activity in a new way may be the key to spicing up your life more and making any activity more engaging and entertaining.

• In one study, they found that people enjoyed popcorn more (rating it as more tasty, flavorful, and fun to eat) when they used chopsticks rather than their hands.
• In a second study, drinking water was rated as more enjoyable when people drank it in unconventional ways, like out of a martini glass or lapping at the water like a dog or cat.
• In a third study, people watched a video of a motorcycle ride from the driver’s perspective. Those who watched the video with hand goggles on rated the video as more exciting and enjoyable.

In each study, researchers discovered that those who did the activity in a unique and unconventional way reported the experience as more fun and enjoyable compared to people that did the activity normally.

The main lesson we can learn from this research is to be more creative and unconventional with our daily activities (and try doing them in brand new ways). By putting a unique twist on a common activity, we can make even simple and mundane tasks more enjoyable and engaging.

We can apply this to almost every domain in life: enjoying food more, keeping our relationships exciting, making work more fun, or just squeezing more happiness out of everyday life in general.

Of course, being able to follow this advice requires a level of creativity. But when you develop a creative mindset you can transform almost any boring activity into something new and engaging. This includes being able to:

• Discover new uses for ordinary objects (using chopsticks to eat popcorn).
• Combine activities that normally don’t go together (dancing to your favorite music while folding laundry).
• Turn activities into a game or competition (“Who can complete their homework the fastest?”)
• Wearing a costume (dressing up while watching your favorite movie or reading your favorite book).
• Roleplaying a different character (pretending to be a super hero in the bedroom).
• Improvise and be spontaneous (learn how to think on the fly in any situation by practicing improvisation exercises).
  

• Be open to new experiences (have an open-minded attitude wherever you go and be willing to look at situations from multiple perspectives).

All of these skills will help you to build a more “creative mindset,” and each one can be applied to any given moment to make it into a completely new experience.

Ultimately the more creative you are, the easier it will be to take any ordinary experience and transform it into something brand new and stimulating. It gives you more power over your experiences.

That is a very under-appreciated ability. With practice, even tough times can become more manageable and less painful. We must be willing to see the potential for “fun,” “joy,” or “humor” in everything, but that often requires us to think outside-the-box.

In general, we must be careful not to fall into the curse of familiarity, where we end up doing the same things over and over again, not because we enjoy them but because they are a habit.

Not only does familiarity make our lives more stale and boring, it also stops us from growing and seeking out new experiences. It keeps our minds only thinking a certain way, and not considering all of the other possibilities we have.

This is why I recommend finding small ways to break your current pattern, even if it’s something super simple like “brushing your teeth with your other hand.”

When we try new things, small or large, it keeps life fresh and interesting. But more importantly, it reminds us that we have a choice in everything we do. And just because we’ve been doing something the same way for years doesn’t mean we can’t switch things up and try something different.

Sometimes it’s nice to do something different simply because you can. It proves to yourself that you have power and choice over your experiences.

If you’re looking to spice up your life a bit more, consider a common activity that you do and the ways you can put a unique twist on it to make it more enjoyable and engaging.

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