Step 5: Enjoy Being Silly
Sometimes you may feel that your life is so boring that you want to mew to a cat who's having his spring fun outside. But you never do because you are a grown-up serious person occupying a highly mature position at a highly professional company. You transfer your great desire to act silly into say working overtime or working at home or working in your sleep etc. You're being a serious, mature, hardworking, successful creature... who seems to have forgotten how to have fun already!
For your record, ability to have great fun goes hand in hand with ability to have (to develop) great sense of humour. If your last party was heck-knows-when, then your last joke had probably been even earlier. And the necessary condition of enjoying all the entertaining activities you may be involved in is not being afraid of acting silly in public. Looks like you've forgotten how to do it now that you're all mature. How to find the way out of this tricky situation, - you may ask. Oh well, it's all trivial, the situation isn't tricky, there are myriads of ways out of it believe us. They will not do any harm to your reputation of a professional, on the contrary, they will help you get rid of your 'professional' stress and i.e. will release the tension of your family who are afraid to speak to you when you come back home after work all worn out and constantly dissatisfied.
Your diagnosis is simple – non-malignant growth of excessive seriousness progressing inside your whole body. The cure is obvious even for a non-experienced doctor – try to have as much fun as possible. It doesn't mean that you should party every day after your way too serious work, no. Neither it implies the fact that you should act like a child every single moment of your life, that simply is way too crazy and will hardly contribute to your having great sense of humour.
All you need to do to feel a little bit relaxed when you start realizing that your serious brain kettle is about to start boiling is just act silly. It's not necessary say to hit your boss with a pen, or dance on your table, or sing out loud at a serious meeting, the main thing is sensing measure here. Actually, you'll feel when you desperately want to act silly, so don't try to follow this advise just because you need to. And when you do feel you're ready to show your silly self – don't resist this innocent temptation of yours, just do not overreact, - you should feel the situation i.e. when you can do it and when you better simply shut up and listen or just up and work.
When a person isn't afraid to show his inner child once in a while the attitude to him becomes less serious as well. It doesn't mean that people will stop seeing a highly professional specialist in you if you suddenly speak 'Chinese' with your secretary in front of your few fellow-professionals. They will just treat you as a professional who hasn't yet forgotten he is a human being with his natural desires and emotions which sometimes ache to be expressed.
Needless to say acting silly is great when you're out with your good friends enjoying your life and having fun at somebody's birthday party or a nightclub. There you don't have to follow very strict limits, you can even cross a few of them. Show yourself and others that you can be a wild dancing tiger in this crazy zoo of party animals!