The Art of Being Joyful Without Seeking Pleasure
If you allow yourself to close your eyes and think back on your life — all the way back. Your mind will be flooded with flashes of memory.
For me, I see a young girl with chocolatey brown hair running through green grass summers and sparkling white winters easily appeased by dancing leaves and wind swept clouds. I am grateful to have lived a life that didn’t worship technology in quite the same way that it does today. I am not sure if it is simply a part of my nature or more a result of my nurturing, but I never needed to be constantly distracted in order to feel entertained. I enjoyed things easily without seeking pleasure. Boredom was a word I learned in my vocabulary lessons but something it took me until adulthood to understand.
This, I believe, is one of my greatest blessings.
Enjoyment Over Pleasure
Without trying to overcomplicate things, I have learned that one incredibly important part of being happy in life is that we need to know how to feel joy without seeking out pleasure. We must be capable of easily enjoying ourselves simply by being content in the present moment.
It may sound hard, and it can be if we overthink it — or overthink at all.
Enjoyment is defined as the feeling you get when you are benefiting from something, the condition of experiencing happiness. While Pleasure is defined as a desire being fulfilled or being in a state of gratification.
To make it more plain, I think of it this way: We must let ourselves feel enjoyment, feel pleasure without actively seeking all the things that might make us feel it.
So how do we feel satisfaction without seeking out pleasure? How do we remain in a state of enjoyment without actively looking for things to help us feel better?
We need to stop trying so hard to be happy.
When I was a young girl playing in our garden or climbing up a tree, I wasn’t trying to be happy. I just was. I didn’t need a new tv show or movie to entertain me; I didn’t need a night out or chocolates or wine to make me feel good. I wasn’t seeking pleasure. I just woke up and went about my day and felt the influx and flow of all the different emotions that came in a normal day.
Happiness, like any other emotion, is temporary. It shouldn’t be a goal.
We get angry and then it passes. We experience sadness until that too dissipates. Happiness, too, will ebb and flow and because most of us have happiness as one of our main goals, we are constantly seeking out the pleasures that might create it. We want homes, clothes, experiences, foods, drinks, people, jobs, friendships, etc — most that are very well marketed to us.
The pursuit of them oftentimes does the complete opposite of what we hope for. We end up more anxious and emotionally unstable due to the focus on comparison and the feeling of lack. With social media and tv, we see what everyone else has and build up jealousy and hunger for more than we have.
Envy is a killer of happiness. So, right away, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to stop comparing and stop letting ourselves focus in on what we don’t have.
Gratitude is one of my most powerful tools and emotions we can have.
Your’e Not Going To Feel Good All The Time — & It’s Okay!
Negative emotions are okay. Actually, they’re necessary for being able to enjoy the good. Mistakes happen, people let us down, bad and sad, and ugly things happen and pretending like they don’t won’t help you.
The trick is knowing how to handle them in a way that doesn’t make everything worse and even more importantly — in a way that doesn’t go against our values and make us feel as if we betrayed ourselves and others because of them.
Lately, I have come across so many different teachings about how we need to always remain positive and optimistic, however, denying ourselves the feelings that come with more negative emotions will only make us feel worse due to our inability to maintain it.
You need to ask yourself why you feel what you do. It’s a reaction to something, just make sure that the reaction comes from something true and not a false limiting belief. Make sure that love is at the root always.
Here’s what I can advise:
Connect with your truth, learn what you love, feel a sense of purpose and then pursue it.
Nothing will bring you more happiness and fulfillment in life than having goals, making plans and working towards something that is purpose-driven and gives your life meaning.
Ask yourself, “Who do I want to be? Where do I really want to go in my life? What do I want to accomplish?” Give yourself ideals, and big goals to strive for. Nothing has ever made me feel quite as good as feeling accomplished.
Sticking it out with persistent effort and working towards our specific ideals while holding close to our values brings more happiness than any superficial or materialistic pleasure ever could. What really makes us feel happy is working towards something and achieving it as the person you really want to be.
Embracing & Honoring Your Truth
I have spent a significant amount of time in my life feeling unsure of my next move. I didn’t really know how to be me. You could easily label me as “A Jack of All Trades and Master of None” due to how incredibly multi-faceted I am. Because of that, it took me and incredibly long time to embrace and honor my truth.
But then — somehow — I did, and here’s how:
Meditating, I went back into my life and let myself open up to every good memory I could find. I remembered my time as a very young child and my extreme love for nature and being outdoors. I remembered teaching my brother to ride his bike and tie his shoes. Some of my favorite memories all involved helping others, my brother, my parents, my friends. I was big in Tae Kwon Do and instructed the younger classes. I volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club and taught Creative Writing. All of my friends came to me regularly for advice and comfort, and I loved giving it. It was fulfilling and it made me feel good about myself.
Next, I was flooded with memories of travel, nature, and hiking. Exploring hills, valleys, caves, beaches, and forests. Day and night and throughout every season, I have always preferred being outside. Simple joy and easily at peace, one of my greatest desires has always been to scour the natural world and explore it’s beauty.
And then writing, painting, crafting, and creating. I have gotten lost for long hours into the night scribbling or typing at a new story or series of poems. I feel pure, raw and authentic joy bent over a project, letting my creativity flow freely.
By doing this, I was able to look past the most blatant skills I have learned that were telling me what I should be doing. Some of my jobs have included construction, landscaping, food and beverage, customer service, logistics and traffic management, motherhood and childcare, warehouse management, and more. Because of all of those practical and useful skills, I had been telling myself that I needed to lean into them, into what I had been taught — even if they weren’t things that I liked doing.
In order to truly pursue my ideal self, and make goals that aligned with my deepest values, I needed to become more aware of who I was and what I really wanted vs who the world said I was and what I should be doing.
Here I am now, doing what blends together all the most fulfilling parts of myself as a writer and creator with stories to help guide others, with stories that will teach and inspire and I am blending it all into nature guided workshops and hiking retreats to elevate the healing and growing experience.
Life is what you make it. Happiness comes when our lives feel valuable and meaningful. Dive in, remember what lights you up and then allow yourself to make goals to get you where you really want to go in life. It’s all in the journey. Put your truth into your actions and you will find that happiness comes quite easily.
