Fun! How to find the kind that appeals to you

Older adults need fun as much or more than young people and the good news is that you can not only have fun, you can create the kind of fun you like.

Different kinds of people actually have different ways of having fun, according to Dr. Stuart Brown, author of the book Play.

Different paths to fun

Here are the different fun personalities:

* Joker types have fun watching comedies or telling jokes to others.

* Kinesthetes have fun doing activities like walking.

* Explorers like to discover strange facts and odd stories.

* Competitors like games or sports.

* Directors like to organize events.

* Collectors like to collect and show off their collections.

* Creatives like to play an instrument, paint, build, sing or knit.

* Storytellers love to write stories, read, or even be part of stories in the theater.

It’s helpful to know where you might fall in these categories. A person who likes physical activities might not like doing a scrapbook. But the categories may well overlap, too.

Follow local sports, theater

Kinesthetes, storytellers, and explorers might love to get season tickets to the local high school basketball games. It’s exciting (good for kinesthetes). There’s the thrill of victory (or the agony of defeat) for the storytellers, and the explorers get to discover the secrets of the local sports conference.

Or they all might join the local theater troupe.

Creative types can be born that way or evolve — it is just a matter of trying out some activities.

Winston Churchill said, “The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is a policy of first importance. To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies.”