How to Feel Deeply Satisfied: 7 Fun Things to Do When Alone At Home
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Finally, you are all alone at home and have the freedom to do whatever fun things you have been thinking about.
Your spouse goes on a business trip for 2 weeks. You leave your kids with their grandparents and they enjoy each other’s company. Your helper seizes the opportunity to take some time off.
You can easily do what you have always done when coming home from work. Surf the internet on your smartphone, watch some TV and go to bed. However, just continuing with these activities out of habit will likely leave you feeling empty.
On the other hand, have you ever been involved in an activity which required your full attention that made you lose track of time? When you started on the activity it was 2pm in the afternoon and you only realized how much time had past when your surroundings got dark. You totally immersed in the activity and lost sense of your surroundings.
The Fun and Satisfying Experience of “Flow”
I used to experience this very often back in my school days while practicing for Mathematics. The questions were challenging, but not to the extent that I would give up. I had the answers to the questions so I was able to know whether I got the right answers immediately.
It was instant gratification when you found that you have answered a difficult question correctly.
Hours and hours would pass without my knowledge and I always emerged from these almost trance-liked states feeling deeply satisfied. It was deeply addictive.
Little did I knew that I was experiencing what was termed as Flow.
I came across this term of “Flow” or “Flow Experience” or being “in the zone” only recently.
It turns out that it was coined way back in 1975 by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his book titled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
To have fun alone when at home, we should find activities that can allow us to experience Flow as much as possible.
Here is a list of Fun Activities that you can try when alone at home to experience Flow.
1. Review Your Goals
There is no better time for reviewing your goals in life than when you are alone. Free from distractions, you can better take stock of your life.
Who do you have to Be, to Do what you got to do, to Have what you want to have?
Concentrate and take an honest look at your current life.Devise a detail plan to improve it. Knowing the direction to take and having focus every second of your life can be a deeply satisfying state to be in.
2. Calculate Your Net Worth
I calculate my net worth on a monthly basis. It is a fun thing to do and should be carried out alone. Firstly, it allows you to be honest with yourself when there is no one watching over your shoulders. Secondly, if you have secret investments that you do not want your spouse to know about it is better to review this alone.
To calculate your net worth, all you have to do is to sum up all your assets and minus off all your liabilities. To know how well you are doing in terms of net worth, you can apply the simple formula stated in the book The Millionaire Next Door.
The now famous formula in the book states the following
Net Worth = (Age x Annual Pre-Tax Income) / 10
If your current net worth is less than the calculated value from the formula, you are an UAW ( Under Accumulator of Wealth).
To be a PAW (Prodigious Accumulator of Wealth), you would need to achieve twice of the value from the formula.
So, which one are you? Regardless of whether you are a UAW or PAW, knowing where you are right now is important to knowing where to go next.
Planning out concrete steps to improve your net worth can be a deeply satisfying and fun thing to do. It gives you hope for the future. Apart from that, your self-confidence is enhanced as you move step by step towards your goals
3. Watch a Movie – With Full Concentration
It is easy to turn on the TV or computer to watch movies to kill time. You play the movie in the background and surf the internet at the same time on your phone ( that’s you, right?).
As our attention span gets shorter with technology, it is becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on one task at a time, especially in the comfort of your home
The next time you watch a movie at home alone, remove all distractions. Turn off your hand phone, keep the work laptop tucked away, close the windows to cut off outside noise.
Fully immerse yourself in the movie and capture every line of dialogue. Observe the actors do what they do best. Listen to the background music and how it goes with the scene. By doing this consciously, you will realize how much more fun it is than to skim through a movie on auto-pilot. You get to appreciate the movie fully.
However, not all movies can achieve this effect. You probably won’t experience flow from horror movies (or can you?)
Having said all these, here is a list movies that you will Have Fun Watching Alone At Home.
4. Listen to Les Miserables and Appreciate the Lyrics
One of my favorite musicals is Les Miserables and the best performance of it must be from the Les Misérables 10th Anniversary Concert. It is a gathering of all the best singers for each character. For the above reason, this concert is called the “Dream Cast”.
It is extremely fun and satisfying to watch this virtuoso performance alone with no distractions from your kids and spouse.
Colm Wilkinson and Philip Quast are the best Jean Valjean and Javert respectively. I absolutely love “Stars” by Philip Quast. His potrayal of Javert was spot on. Mean, cold and never deviating from the law. I like the touch of contempt in his voice that he displays to those he sees as crooks.
Concentrate and appreciate the deep meaning behind the lyrics. There is so much depth in them.
Watch Philip Quast giving a lecture on Les Miserables and you will be blown away by how much thought had gone into delivering a single line
5. Play Video Games as a Reward
Setting up a gaming room at home was the best decision I made when moving into my new apartment back in 2017. It has given me hours of fun at home when I am alone. Now, I no longer have to go to arcades near me. I have an arcade right in one of my rooms.
I do not encourage spending the whole day just mindlessly playing video games. Too much of anything is never a good thing.
Instead, I use games as a form of daily reward for myself after I have completed important tasks such as reaching a milestone in my projects or finishing some chores that I have been putting off.
When I was preparing for my final exams back in my college days, I was hooked on this Playstation One game called Castlevania:Symphony of the Night. It was really tough resisting the temptation to play the game as I had to study for my exams.
I kept my playing to only 2 hours per day and only at the end of the day when I was satisfied with my progress in studies. The very act of rationing the time I had to play made me treasure what little time I had to play it.
As a result, I was always 100% focused during my 2 hour break to play this game as I knew I wanted to make as much progress as possible in this time. Time really flies and putting down the controller when time was up actually felt good. It made me look forward to studying harder in order to feel like I deserved to play the game for my next reward.
The game which was already fun to begin with was made so much more enjoyable. I did well for my exams.
Castlevania:Symphony of the Night also has an amazing soundtrack that fans of the game should consider getting. The tracks are fun and catchy and depicts the mood in various parts of the castle really well.
6. Art and Craft
I recently bought a Bunny Flower Pot from Rolife that required some assembly. What I did not expect when I opened up the box was that glue was required.
While I like to do some simple assembly, having to glue parts together was too troublesome for me. But I still went ahead with it since I have already bought the flower pot.
It turned out that the additional challenge of having to focus on gluing allowed me to experience Flow.
3 hours past without me realizing and it was a really fun thing to do at home alone.
Up until this part, no gluing was required. I simply snapped the pieces together at the joints.
Here comes the part where glue is required. The mechanical ears of the Bunny. It was not as difficult as I thought but I still handled the project with much care. I did not want to make a permanent mistake by gluing on to the wrong spot.
An important mile stone was reached! It is extremely satisfying to see the Bunny slowly taking shape.
Giving the Bunny its eyes, nose and glasses. It is beginning to look good now.
Next to be check point reached. The body of the Flower Pot Bunny. The gears that form its tail can be rotated.
These wooden pegs from his legs and are inserted through the body.
All the pieces are falling in place. The head, body and legs.
Ta-dah! The Bunny Flower Pot is complete. I had fun throughout the project. Now it has gotten me a little addicted to these small handicrafts. I had not felt so focused on a task at hand for a very long time
There are lots of interesting model kits from Rolife that can be fun to work on when you are alone. Do check it out Here.
7. Have Fun Building a Lego Set
Building Lego is one of the fun things you can do alone that can let you experience flow. When I was 12, I received my first lego set as a reward for being the top scorer in my cohort.
It was a Sunday afternoon when I started playing with my Lego set. I had no sense of the passage of time. It was only when the room got dark that I realized 6 hours had passed in a flash.
This re-issue of the Lego Pirate Ship looks greatly enhanced. The canons fire, the planks extend outwards and you get a shark accessory for eating up people who walk the plank. Best of all, you get 7 mini figures with both Pirates and Soldiers so that you can do battle. The strings on the older version of the anchor and the treasure chest are now replaced with chains which is a good improvement.
Just looking at the box art on sets my imagination running. I could think of all the fun scenarios.
- Blue soldiers sneaking up on Pirates at night but the light on the boat gave them away.
- Captured Soldiers made to walk the plank.
- Shark waiting in the sea to gobble up whoever drops in.
- Cannons fired from Pirate ship, sinking soldiers; boat. Shark wins.
- Pirate steals treasure chest and defects to the soldiers side.
The Lego Pirate Brick Bounty really brings back my childhood memories. It is also fun to play with even if you did not own the first version
Conclusion
In order to truly have fun and experience “Flow”, we need activities that are enjoyable in themselves. They also need to be challenging to engage our attention. The environment must be free of distractions so being alone helps a lot. Do try out the above activities if you want to have fun while being alone at home.
More Ideas On Fun Things to Do at Home
If you have any ideas, feel free to comment in the comments section for discussion.
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