How To Learn To Enjoy Life (every Day)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The world around us is too diverse, it has a lot of things that can upset us, and just as many things that we might like. Take a look around you. Can you find something around you that you like, that you enjoy? If there are no such things, then it is strange that all this surrounds you and you endure it. It is unlikely that the external object world is responsible for our poor health and inability to find objects of pleasure in it. The point is in ourselves, in our habits and attitude towards this world.

The world around us is too diverse, in it at any given time there are a lot of things that can upset us, and no less a lot of things that we may like if we pay attention to them. Take a second and look around you. Can you find something around you that you like, that you enjoy? If there are no such things, then it is very strange that all this surrounds you and you endure it.

Maybe all these unpleasant things are worth enduring in order to get more pleasure in the future? Maybe you are right. But is it worth it? It is unlikely that the external object world is responsible for our poor health and inability to find objects of pleasure in it. The point is probably in ourselves, in our habits and attitude to this world.

Some misconceptions about enjoyment

With regard to pleasure in society, there are many exaggerated and strange beliefs, some of which can easily be attributed to irrational beliefs in the sense of rational-emotional behavioral therapy (A. Ellis) or dysfunctional cognitions (A. Beck).

The peculiarity of these delusions is that they often form pairs that are opposite in meaning and refer, as it were, to different extreme poles of the same scale. Let's try to consider the most common polar misconceptions.

1. Enjoyment costs a lot of money. The fact that pleasure completely depends on the amount of money is the same delusion as the statement that only those who do not care about their material well-being are happy are happy. Advertising in the media persists in the idea that pleasure is closely related to consumption, and consumption requires material costs. In other words, pay money and you will be happy, and the more you pay, the more pleasure you will get - this is the main idea that should make people part with their money.

Isn't that so? - you ask.

So. But only on condition that, firstly, a person buys exactly what gives him pleasure, and, secondly, if a person knows how to get pleasure, knows the laws and rules of pleasure and follows them. The illusion of a close connection between consumption and pleasure often finds expression in the following misconception, equally elaborately developed by the advertising industry.

2. The more the better. You can't get enough of a little one. The illusion that, having obtained the desired object of pleasure, you can enjoy it endlessly, does not stand up to criticism. Even trivial observation shows that pleasure diminishes as the object is consumed. Despite this, many people persistently try to make up for the disadvantages of enjoyment by accumulating objects of pleasure (money, apartments, people, cars or people dependent on them), thereby destroying their own ability to enjoy.

Sometimes the desire to replace the enjoyment of its objects leads to the so-called abuse of the substance. A childless family builds a house for themselves, in which there are four floors, twenty-three rooms and three baths. As a result, the care needed to keep the house in order overrides the potential pleasure of living in one's own "nest".

If in consciousness there is a substitution of pleasure with possession, that is, a person gets pleasure from just possessing an object of pleasure, then an unpleasant collision arises, which in everyday consciousness is designated as stinginess and stinginess.

3. Abuse of the substance. Often, the desire to accumulate a certain number of objects of pleasure leads to the fact that whole years are spent, for example, on moving from a communal apartment to a four-room apartment with an improved layout. And already in this four-room apartment, the family with nostalgia recalls the happy life in a communal apartment.

Striving for the number of objects of pleasure often reduces the quality of pleasure. Big money means big worries, which do not always give you the opportunity to enjoy this money.

The joy of possession has the disadvantage that pleasure is completely dependent on the state of the object of pleasure (substance). A person dreams of a car of the latest model and gets short-term pleasure in the first minutes of owning it (and sometimes this is not). But at the moment of sale, the price of the car immediately drops by a third (it cannot be sold even for the money that was paid for it), and at the same moment the car (and with it the pleasure) begins to deteriorate.

The owner of the car notices invisible scratches, dirt on the hood, interruptions in the operation of the engine, and the car from an object of pleasure turns into an object of worries and suffering. Advertising skillfully throws a person suffering from substance abuse a new, even more coveted and desired dream, which becomes a new goal, but inevitably loses this meaning at the moment of achievement.

The simple idea that pleasure is within us and depends only on the meaning that we ourselves ascribe to certain objects does not even occur to such people. Constantly comparing themselves to more "happy" owners and consumers makes them constantly suffer from envy.

4. Not everyone can be happy. The habit of associating pleasure with the peculiarities of physiology, appearance, health must also be attributed to great delusions. Quite often people who are completely healthy, beautiful and absolutely healthy in physiological terms describe in detail their unhappy life to psychologists. A person who is used to seeing only the negative in himself and those around him will always find something to suffer from. Only sometimes pleasure is associated with lack of care. Peace of mind and well-being can quickly become boring, health and physical well-being are very closely related to our attitude towards it.

By focusing on their shortcomings, even a very healthy person will find a reason for suffering.

5. It's good where we are not. It used to be better. Lack of pleasure skills often leads to the fact that a person begins to attribute the blame for his suffering to the characteristics of his physical environment. He believes, for example, that he was born and lives at the wrong time and in the wrong country where pleasure is possible for him.

The experience of psychologists working with immigrants who have achieved their goal and have moved to another country often indicates that these people brought all their problems with them. Perhaps this will push them to learn how to enjoy their own life. If this does not happen, then the idea that "it is good where we are not" will force them to move on, changing cities and countries.

As for time travel, here, in addition to psychological ones, there are also quite objective difficulties.

6. Perfectionism and consumerism. The desire to always be the first, to succeed in everything and to be ahead of everyone can ruin the life of anyone. We will not dwell here in detail on the mechanisms that inevitably lead perfectionists to psychological collapse, we will only note that for all the value of lofty aspirations, sometimes they produce such not very pleasant feelings as envy, jealousy, feelings of a failure. More precisely, sooner or later, perfectionism will inevitably lead to these feelings.

Finally, the obsessively cultivated passion for purchasing and consuming by the consumer society can also be attributed to hindrances to pleasure. The rigid linking of pleasure with possession, which is undoubtedly beneficial to the producers of goods, only at first glance seems to be an indisputable truth. Are there people whose joy is not tied to possession (apartments, cars, beauties / handsome men, clothes)? Of course there is. They have learned to enjoy life.

To be absolutely honest, here we need to refer to the data of numerous studies, from which it follows: the more income, the less worries arise directly related to the maintenance of life, with a comfortable existence. High-income people tend to be happier with their lives and their prospects. A person who has a lot of money has more available. People with money are less likely to be alone, they usually have more friends.

But big money in our country means both big worries and big danger at the same time. Often, with an increase in income, former friendship collapses, love goes somewhere. There is no direct connection between money and happiness. And hardly anyone will seriously argue that money buys warm human relations and that he knows a store where happiness is sold.

We ourselves tend to think that the habit of buying hinders rather than helps to enjoy.

Enjoyment rules

If you enjoy not according to the rules, you can make a lot of mistakes. People who know a lot about pleasure have long discovered simple principles, following which one can achieve much more progress in pleasure than acting at random. Psychologist Rainer Lutz summarized these principles and developed "rules of pleasure." These nine rules of enjoyment, of course, are not absolute truths. We ourselves have slightly corrected Lutz's list and changed the sequence of these rules. You yourself can make any changes and additions.

1. Enjoyment takes time. Any emotional state and especially positive feelings take some time to grow and develop. No matter how trivial it may sound, in order to experience pleasure, you need to spend some time. Modern life is very demanding on time, many complain about its complete absence, but that is why people who want to enjoy life as it is, need to free up time for enjoyment. Of course, in our life we also have special reasons to devote time to pleasure - holidays, weekends, birthdays and vacations. But even on these relatively worry-free days, enjoyment takes time. Anyone who wants to experience pleasure should put aside other types of activity and fully concentrate on this pleasant activity.

2. Everyday life serves enjoyment. Every second of our daily life provides a lot of reasons to enjoy. Due to the peculiarities of our perception, we notice only a small fraction of the events taking place around us, and even less we tend to pay attention to the events taking place in ourselves. For a variety of reasons, attention is easier to focus on negative events and feelings, but this does not mean at all that there are no reasons for everyday and every minute pleasure. Pleasure is not at all connected with any extraordinary situations, there are plenty of reasons for pleasure in our everyday life. Everyone can look at their own life from a slightly different angle and find pleasant moments that they can enjoy in their surroundings.

3. To each - his own. No two people are alike and no two enjoyments are alike. Everyone likes his own, but cannot like what he does not know. We need to know well what gives us pleasure, but to know it, we have to try a lot. Enjoyment training gives us a great opportunity to find out what others like, try it, and decide if it is our pleasure. An unpleasant consequence of this rule is that activities that delight one person (sawing caskets with a jigsaw in the middle of the night) can be very annoying for another.

4. Pleasure does not come by itself. You can just wait for pleasure itself to come to you. There is some sense in this, but enjoyment can be achieved reliably and quickly only if we pay some attention to it and put some effort into it. In addition, of course, there are well-defined behaviors that lead to enjoyment. If we decide to enjoy life, then we probably need to start doing it.

5. Allow yourself to enjoy. A consequence of social rationing and a highly norm-oriented parenting system is that many people find it shameful and unworthy to enjoy a job. We doubt, however, that man is born to suffer. Getting pleasure can hardly be considered an unworthy occupation. On the contrary, the restriction of people in pleasure seems to us to be a blameworthy occupation. It is all the more unreasonable to forbid the enjoyment of life for oneself. Allow yourself a little joy and pleasure. Give yourself permission to enjoy life.

6. Less is more. Very often you can meet people who are convinced that only those who have a lot (money, apartments, outfits, cars, etc.) are happy. This is an extremely common misconception. Many examples show that with an increase in the amount of money, things or products, happiness does not increase. There is a very close connection between pleasure and self-restraint, which we have already written about above. The first cake is enjoyable, the fifteenth is disgusting. The unlimited accumulation of objects of pleasure kills pleasure, since it is impossible to achieve the goal (to possess everything) in this way.

7. Experience precedes enjoyment. The subtleties of pleasure come with experience. You can only enjoy subtle nuances of taste, smell or sound if you pay attention to them at least once. To find out what is good for you, you need to try, preferably under the guidance of an experienced person who is already trained in fine differentiation.

8. Pleasure within us … A common misconception is that pleasure is closely related to the objects of pleasure. Of course, this is true, but not the whole truth. Pleasure is a complex of positive experiences that belongs to us and only to us. Our feelings, our thoughts and our actions, not the objects of the outside world, provide us with pleasure.

The substitution of pleasure for the joy of owning and using is extremely beneficial for manufacturers of goods and therefore is actively cultivated by advertising and the media. We are nevertheless inclined to argue that pleasure is possible both in the presence and in the absence of objects to which the consumption-oriented society ascribes special value, since pleasure is ours and it is inside us.

9. Shared pleasure is a double pleasure. Another difference between pleasure and consumption is that the pleasure shared with a loved one increases, and does not decrease, as would be the case with the division of objects of pleasure. Children and adults who have retained a happy childhood spontaneity and spontaneity can often see a burning desire to share joy and pleasure with someone.

You may also notice that the pleasure in this case only grows. The ability to share pleasure seems to us to be a very important skill that deserves to be learned.

The most complex pleasure consists of elementary and simple pleasures that are delivered to us by the senses. Like other things, pleasure can and should be learned by expanding the spheres of pleasure, looking for personal niches of pleasure, forming automatic habits of seeing the good in the world and enjoying this good. From a psychological point of view, the task is to focus individual senses on pleasant sensations and to draw attention to simple positive sensations.

If you learn to perceive the world without unjustified expectations, enjoy the good without shame and rejection, then life acquires a very rich taste. Experts say that "the incredible is happening: everything around is organized in such a magical way, as if humanity conspired to make you a happy person."

This is worth learning, isn't it?