Laws And Rules Of Enjoyment

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

The standard of living of people is growing today, despite constant crises, we can afford much more pleasures and their diversity compared to life in the USSR. So why has the growth of depressed patients increased, why more and more successful, young, beautiful and healthy people come to the psychologist complaining that nothing is pleasing, that successes, achievements and opening opportunities have ceased to bring pleasure. And more and more often the thought comes to give up everything and leave, somewhere far away, where you can start everything from scratch. Or completely turn your life around.

Do you know how to get pleasure and pleasure?

When we talk about pleasure, in most cases people have associations with alcohol, drugs, sex. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the pleasure and enjoyment of life, in all its manifestations, in any situation - scarcity, satiety or crisis. Learning to enjoy life in practice is not as easy as it might seem in theory.

“Pay attention to the good, find positive sides in everything, enjoy the taste, smell, tactile sensations!”. But, in our post-Soviet mentality, with an ignorant, primitive Christian perception, there are dogmas that we received from our parents and passed on to our children that pleasure is selfishness. Probably, for a Soviet citizen, there was no worse curse than: "What an egoist you are!" A person who deserves respect and honor in society is more of an ascetic who lives for the sake of others. Life must be difficult and miserable.

In fact, it is already difficult, but why exclude from it joys, which are also not few?

A moral life filled with pleasure

It is not so easy to convince adherents of such morality, and why? A person can acquire a useful skill that will make his life more colorful and richer. Whether to use it or not is his individual responsibility and personal decision.

The very concepts of pleasure, asceticism have very long roots, from the time of the philosophers Protagoras, Socrates, Epicurus.

The famous aphorism of Protagoras says - "Man is the measure of all things …".

At first glance, this aphorism of the philosopher can be interpreted as the fact that man is the greatest value in the world. But, in fact, the meaning of this belief is that a person's world is limited by his sensory perception, which is based on his beliefs, motives, attitudes, ideas. Perception is very subjective: as the saying goes, "there is no dispute about tastes." Someone loves salty, someone sweet, someone rain, and someone the sun. And everyone will find their own arguments to defend their position. And everyone will be right.

The average modern person rushes between the desire for pleasure inherent in nature and the fear of punishment for it. Distorted Christian morality has taught people that the right is the opposite of the pleasant.

A healthy lifestyle is associated with something boring, hungry, life in constant constraints.

If we think about the prohibition of pleasure, then we come to the understanding that excessive, excessive pleasure - will lead to illness. However, as well as excessive excessive asceticism. For example, anorexia.

As Socrates said: “Ignorance is the main enemy of happiness. So, in order to live pleasantly, you need to know what is good and what is evil, to be able to compare momentary pleasure with its consequences, to choose the best."

The image of Socrates was described by his contemporaries as the ancient ideal of a free man. But, the life of Socrates, filled with pleasure, had nothing to do with the way of life of a depraved blasphemer who was mired in immoral acts and became a slave to carnal pleasures. In his opinion, pleasure in itself is not evil, but some pleasure can lead to suffering in the future. Achieving others requires so much of your own strength that it becomes the opposite of joy. There are some that should be discarded altogether.

Types of pleasures

Pleasure can be divided into two types. Physical and mental.

Corporal we get pleasure from delicious food, alcohol, sex, luxury goods. A person experiences joy, but he quickly becomes satiated with the pleasures of the body and there is a need to increase the amount of pleasures, which eventually leads to dependence on them. A person begins to experience anxiety and anxiety in fear of losing them and seeks to receive pleasure even for a short moment. These kinds of pleasures include shopping, computer games, and things that make life comfortable. Such a life, in pursuit of bodily pleasures, leads to suffering.

Therefore, Epicurus divides bodily pleasures into:

- « natural and necessary … These are the ones that relieve suffering (necessary food, clothing from the cold, a roof over your head);

- « natural, but not necessary … These are elegant clothes, gourmet food, travel, fitness, etc. These are joys that diversify life. They do not need to be taken too seriously and made a goal in life, otherwise, over time, they will turn into suffering. One must be able to be happy with and without them;

- « not natural and not necessary, but generated by idle opinions. These kinds of pleasures represent an eternal race for ephemeral values imposed by modern advertising, they cannot be enjoyed, because it is impossible to be satisfied. They are limitless and endless. Their basis is the lust for power, the satisfaction of vanity, the desire to always be the winner.

How to enjoy life

In order not to be satiated with pleasure, a person is forced to change the objects of pleasure. To do this, he needs to be able to receive joy from various incentives and individual components of the qualities of things.

For example: individual scents combined in one perfume bottle; a combination of different tastes in a dish; pleasure in a distinct taste and aftertaste; pleasure from the status that an expensive fur coat gives and, separately, from touching the fur of this fur coat, etc.

This complex of abilities is the goal of the so-called euthymic therapy … The very ability to enjoy consists of many everyday pleasures.

Try it now: listen to your body, where is the most pleasant sensation? Maybe it's a touch of a warm blanket, maybe it's a nice smooth key on your computer? Or maybe these are cozy slippers on your feet? Smell the air - are there any perceptible pleasant smells for you?

An eutime approach in therapy, in life, suggests focusing attention not on an unpleasant symptom of a problem, illness, situation, but on the pleasant objects around. This approach has been successfully used in the treatment of depression, a number of psychiatric diseases, and phobias.

What hinders enjoyment?

Someone may say that he is prevented from enjoying life by the absence of some desired object (the amount of money, a car, his own apartment, a fur coat, "exactly those" boots, the opinion that all people around are evil, etc. before infinity)).

Someone who has it all, and even in the range, may be in exactly the same depressed state, and he cannot explain the reason.

Stop reading and look around you. Is there something you like? The shape, color, aesthetic appearance of the objects that surround you at the moment? And if you did not find anything, then answer yourself the question: what are all these things doing around you?

Obviously, the whole point is in our habits of looking at the world, in our usual attitude to the world.

Pay money and be happy?

Marketing, advertising is structured in such a way that it imposes the idea that pleasure is associated with consumption. And consumption with the acquisition of money. Spend money and you will get something that will give you joy and pleasure!

Is there joy that is not attached to possession?

Of course, it cannot be denied that those who have more money to live more comfortably have more chances to build relationships, have a family, they can travel more and they have more opportunities to surround themselves with beautiful, elegant things. Thus, using his material capabilities, the level of pleasure from life will be high, provided that a person is able to receive pleasure, he knows how to enjoy his capabilities. It is also important to understand your own needs in order to buy exactly what he needs, and not what is being sold dearly. In fact, we are talking about a person with a good level of personality organization, which implies both the listed abilities and understanding oneself, managing one's emotions, and having good communication skills.

Who takes away your ability to enjoy life?

Perfectionism

This quality does not allow you to feel joy, because all the time there will be someone who will be more beautiful, younger, more successful. Or someone will appear who will have something more expensive, more status, more prestigious. Sooner or later, a person will be mired in envy, jealousy, feeling like a failure.

Consumer life position

The link between possession and pleasure, artificially imposed by advertising, leads to the habit of buying more and more. The habit of buying interferes with pleasure rather than increases it.

The dangers of knowing how to enjoy

Having learned to have pleasure, a person can step over his personal threshold of opportunities at the moment and cross the border that is acceptable for him. This can lead to the fact that, for example, he, having learned to enjoy the finished work, picks up these things, in anticipation of joy, so much that he will need to spend all his time on these things. From which there will be other problems.

Another danger - to enjoy what you have, can lead to stagnation, stuck. A person can ignore the hints of life that it is time to change something, move on and miss opportunities, not reach their potential, just begin to gradually degrade. Then you need to compensate for this ability with another: to enjoy the risks, new achievements, solving complex problems.

Also, we must not forget about the possibility of dependencies. Learning to maintain a balance between asceticism and hedonism is an opportunity to protect yourself from the formation of addiction. The ability to enjoy will be your acquisition, necessary for a harmonious life, your resource that will always be with you. You can apply it in any area that you choose yourself, at one time or another in your life. You control her, and do not become her slave.

The bigger, the better?

In the process of pleasure, in addition to biochemical processes, cognitive functions are also involved - memory, thinking, perception, imagination.

The ability or inability to enjoy is the result of the learning process. The inability to enjoy life is the result of not being taught this.

The inability to enjoy is characteristic of people whose attention is directed to finding lack, scarcity everywhere: there will always be little in any quantity.

Similarly, such people can be aimed at seeking out suffering in any life process. Anywhere and every minute of the time. This comes at the expense of joy and pleasure. Experiencing negative feelings at the expense of positive ones.

Suffering skills can be replaced by enjoyment skills using the same mechanisms that created them.

It is quite problematic to reduce suffering, but it is quite possible to supplement your life with pleasure, the level of which you can increase through the ability to enjoy what you already have and what you can achieve.

To do this, you need to learn to follow the rules:

Focus on the positive

That is, by controlling our attention, we find something pleasant for ourselves in every minute. We fix attention on the positive aspects of life, as well as the moment.

Learn to enjoy individual sensations

From taste, smell, color, contact.

Learning to enjoy individual modalities, we form the “sensual fabric” of pleasure. New neural connections. Thus, one can learn to enjoy the little joys of every minute of which the whole life is woven. This will significantly affect your emotional background, which will change, over time, the perception of life, which will feel more complete, colorful, tasty. The next step will be to get pleasure from the combination of different modalities, and this can be a combination of real and imaginary objects. As stated above: disassemble the taste of one dish into different ingredients and feel what tastes each one has and what tastes appear from the combinations. Admire the purchased beautiful thing separately; feel how it envelops your body and what sensations it gives; observe how the color of the fabric is combined with the accessories, etc.

Enjoyment of communication

It is also important to learn to notice positive moments both in yourself and in others, and to express them aloud and "inwardly." The ability to make and receive compliments, the ability to be in the center of positive attention and enjoy it. Leaving a pleasant impression about yourself in any society will always be an exceptionally plus.

Taking care of yourself

It assumes that a person will learn to treat himself as if it were done in relation to him by another person who wants only good for him. He is always on his side and is always ready to protect, take care of him. He wants to keep you out of trouble and give you more joy. In this concern there will be a combination of seemingly incongruous concepts - hedonism and asceticism.

Teaching pleasure behaviors

As stated above, quite a few people are not taught to please themselves. This applies not only to depressed patients, but also outwardly quite happy people.

Setting and achieving goals for enjoyment

This requires developing the skills of focusing attention on positive goals.

The ability to receive pleasure can be blocked by rigid internal prohibitions that were unconsciously accepted in childhood. When there is an internal prohibition on pleasures and pleasures, which in the internal value system is considered punishable and immoral, then the process of achieving will be sabotaged by the person himself. This is also called sabotage of success. It is caused by a number of unconsciously formed psychological problems (neurotic feelings of guilt, shame, fear, etc.). Here it is important to get rid of redundant, sometimes simply absurd, prohibitions on joy. Learn to enjoy things that do not harm others and be able to involve your close environment in a pleasant pastime together.

The rule of asceticism

Do not exclude completely real-life difficulties and limitations from your life, and in difficult periods, be able to rejoice in little.

So, to summarize, you can learn to enjoy life. This skill will not remove the difficulties from your life, which are a necessary component of it, but will expand your picture of the world, make you a more open, pleasant person in communication, your mood will improve, you will be able to solve more complex life tasks, which will invariably improve the quality of your life. Life tastes different: both salty and sweet, and bitter and sour, but in any of its incarnations you have to take a hit, and for this you need to learn to distinguish between these tastes and enjoy each of its components.

psychologist Natalya Vladimirovna Shcherbakova

tel./viber 066-777-07-28

psychotherapeutic course "Effective stress management"