This article is in our series about increasing happiness and life satisfaction. Many people with chronic pain can’t decrease their pain. So another way to live a more enjoyable and fulfilling life – perhaps even more important – is to increase the positive. That’s what we’ll look at in this series.
Let’s look at ways to increase our enjoyment of pleasures:
- vary your pleasure
- use surprise
Pleasures are positive, enjoyable experiences. One of my pleasures is chocolate ice cream. However, if I were to eat that every day for every meal, it wouldn’t seem special and I would actually begin to like it less. One way to get the most out of pleasures is to vary them. Here are some ways to vary pleasures:
- different times of day (a great cup of coffee in the morning or a special piece of chocolate for dessert after dinner)
- different types of pleasure (use your senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell)
- different intensity of pleasures (thrill to fun to relaxation)
Another way to increase your pleasure is to plan surprises. You can do this for others (they will get pleasure and you will enjoy surprising someone else) and make a plan with a friend or family member to surprise each other with enjoyable things.
Your assignments:
- Add a different type of pleasure each day.
- Add a surprise pleasure once this week.