As I shared you all last week, I am in the middle of my manuscript for my new book, Happy Women Live Better: 13 Ways to Trigger Your Happiness Every Day (coming October 1st!). I’m sharing little pieces from the book with you for the next few weeks. I want your feedback and comments! Don’t forget, every week, I’ll give away $50 in gift cards to one reader who posts on the blog – $25 for you, and $25 for someone you want to bless! Congratulations to last week’s winner Ambi Jeffries!
The second happiness trigger I’ll share this week is, “Play”. Check it out!
I play tennis. I’m awful at it, but I love it. In my life, I’ve had only three tennis partners – all equally as bad as I am. That way, we can have fun and nobody gets frustrated. My first partner, Mike, was a fellow cadet during my first year of college when I was at the US Air Force Academy. I was thrust onto the tennis team after a brief (three weeks) stint playing hooker (I know, not the best title, but it’s the position of “forward”) on the women’s rugby team. It was probably a good thing I left the team because they won the NCAA Championship that year, and somehow, I don’t think they would have done it with the 5,1”, 110-pound, never-played-a-sport-involving-a-ball Cadet Burton on the team. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and didn’t enjoy getting tackled, but the camaraderie was great. Anyway, I moved on. At the Academy, you had to play a sport and Mike and I were assigned to the intramural tennis team. Neither of us had ever taken a lesson – and it was obvious. We had fun, though. And we frustrated the dickens out of the other doubles players who wanted a good match. Unfortunately, they were not going to get it with us.
Fast forward seven years. I took lessons and met a new friend in my tennis class named Margaret. We played each other and only each other – too merciful to subject any of our tennis-playing friends to our novice skills. She was in public relations, like me at the time. And we had good conversations in between serves – and we had a good excuse to wear really cute tennis outfits. I think it is perfectly OK to choose your sport based on the outfits. Fun outfits empower you to have more fun. No research on that theory, just personal speculation.
Years later, I picked up tennis again and played with my friend and neighbor Cheryl. We liked to play on the court down the street, walking distance from home. I started to get a little better, but honestly, I never wanted to play tennis because I wanted to win a tennis match. I don’t even expect to “win” and I don’t care. I don’t practice, I just play. I genuinely enjoy running around the court trying to hit the ball. I give myself permission to never be all that good at it. And that’s just fine with me. I have plenty of things that I find important to be good at it, but it’s nice to have something in which there is no pressure – no pressure to perform, to win, to look graceful. The sole goal is to enjoy myself. How about you? What would you play if you didn’t have to be “good” at it? Leave your comments below…I’d love to hear from you!
