Amplifying Pleasure

Some say that the pursuit of happiness through pleasure is futile, that pleasures are too fleeting.  But, although pleasure alone is not enough to be happy, filling life with pleasure is an important part of increasing happiness, according to the happiness research described in Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment

In the chapter on pleasures, the author, Martin Seligman, describes a variety of ways to amplify your pleasures.  Now, first, let's get something over with:  this website is rated PG or, at worst, PG-13, but, reader, I know where your mind is going.  Yes, the author's recommendations apply to sex.  But he points out that they apply to enhancing any pleasure from high intensity sexual ecstasy to low intensity comfort of a warm blanket and a puppy in your lap.

Seligman's first suggestion is to avoid habituation.  Habituation occurs when you get too much of a good thing:  indulge in a pleasure, but allow some time to pass before indulging again so that it still feel fresh.  So sip that wine.  Pause.  Then sip again.

Second, learn to savor your pleasures.  Seligman quotes researchers Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff of Loyola University who define savoring as "the awareness of pleasure and of the deliberate conscious attention to the experience of pleasure."  These researchers talk about four types of savoring:  basking (in praise or pride), thanksgiving, marveling, and luxuriating.  They suggest 5 techniques to enhance savoring:

1. Share with others
2. Build memories (photos, souvenirs, or just mental images you can go back to)
3. Self-congratulation if your pleasure involves an accomplishment
4. Sharpen your perception of the pleasure; slow down to fully experience the sensations
5. Absorption--focus totally on the experience, avoiding thoughts on anything else

Finally, Seligman talks about cultivating mindfulness.  Mindfulness involves being able to focus on the present moment.  This constant awareness sharpens the senses so that, when indulging in any pleasure, the pleasure will be that much deeper.  Cultivating mindfulness is especially key to me because it is one of the main goals of Buddhism.  When Buddhists sit down to meditate, it is largely so that they are more awake when they stand back up.

Vacation Every Sunday

We've started a new family tradition:  vacation every Sunday.  We tend to be workaholic parents:  running errands, doing chores around the house, volunteer work, pushing the kids on their schoolwork.  Too often, we've looked back on a weekend and asked ourselves, "What did we do as a family besides work?"

For the last few weekends, we've had a rule:  short of an unexpected emergency, there won't be any chores after 3pm Sunday.  Hopefully, on any given weekend this won't be the ONLY time the whole family takes it easy.  But we want it to be a relaxing time that everyone can count on and look forward to every weekend.

We're not making this complicated and rigid.  We might go out and have fun, but we might stay home and do nothing.  We might do things as a family or we might each do our own thing.  The only rule is that we're all doing things we enjoy or things that nurture our souls instead of doing chores.  We want the kids to remember Sunday evenings as a time every week when their workaholic parents went cold turkey.

Breathing the sky

Tonight was finally warm enough to meditate outside so I lay in a "zero gravity" lounge chair on the deck, let my body sink into the chair, let my breathing slow down and even stall between breaths, and watched the bare branches of several trees sway in the breeze.  It was twilight.  The branches were darkly silhouetted against the dim, mauve sky and clouds.  Branches from multiple trees overlapped so that you could hardly tell where one tree ended and another started.  As the wind blew hard, watching the moving black shapes was like watching a giant, pulsating spider web.  I was reminded of the patterns of movement and energy I saw in the ocean during a recent trip to California.

At this time, it was easy to imagine that as I was breathing in and out, I was breathing with the entire sky.  I was not bounded by my body.  I was bounded by the sky.

Jazz is personal

I was listening to Miles Davis this morning.  I think I realized an important way that appreciating jazz differs from appreciating other forms of music.

Straight jazz--the kind that is filled with long improvisations that stray wildly away from the original melody--is personal.  More than most forms of music, the soloists express themselves as individuals.  Other great forms of music, such as classical music, require that the musicians conform more to the overall melody, harmony, and rhythm.  These other forms are great--in part--because the individuals focus on the needs of the group.  How best should they fit in so that the orchestra performs best as a whole?

Jazz takes a different approach.  Each soloist is encouraged to express his or her unique emotions and style even if he strays far away from the style, melody, and rhythm that the other soloists use when it is THEIR turn.  At it's best, in straight jazz, each soloist expresses their personal feelings and energy in a way that can never be repeated by any other musician.

The challenge for the listener, I found this morning when listening to Miles Davis, is to empathize with each soloist when it is their turn.  This morning, I had to sense the passion in the trumpet, the playfulness in the piano, and the swing in the sax.  Then I heard a tenor sax that could only have been played by John Coltrane.  It was uncomfortable to listen to.  Coltrane's sax was SO fast, SO intense, it felt like it would be painful to be in his mind.  I was struck by how different Coltrane's solo was than the other sax player's relaxed, swinging melody.  But that's the point.  Each musician doesn't CARE that the other soloist has a completely different style.  The point is for each soloist to be who they are.  And, as listeners, the only way to appreciate jazz is to imagine what the soloist feels when they are "into it".   Otherwise, it just sounds like a bunch of notes that are barely connected to the main melody.

I think people often enjoy live jazz more easily than they do recorded jazz because they can see the player's emotions.  They see the body language.  It becomes easier to empathize, to also get "into it" when each player plays.  The trick, when listening to recorded jazz, is to picture each musician's passion as though watching it live.

Sometimes the little things matter

In my last blog post, I wrote about figuring out the 2-3 things that I intend to get done on my list, no matter what happens.  But there can be countless little things that can't be ignored.  Sometimes I need to deal with those first.  I can no more ignore them that Gulliver could ignore the "Lilliputians".

At work, I've often heard people talk about focusing on the "critical few" and ignoring the "trivial many".  But I think that, when I've got too many little, "trivial" things in front of me, I can't see clearly, can't gain perspective, and can't decide what critical few things really matter.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity talks about being getting through the little things so that focus and perspective are possible.  The author, David Allen's, counsel is that if it takes less than 2 minutes, just do it.  The key is swing back and forth between times when you knock off dozens of small items as fast as you can and times when you work on something that challenges your concentration, intellect and creativity and gives you a huge sense of achievement.

My Daily Prediction

I've started making a prediction every morning:  what am I going to get done today?

Seems pretty basic.  But I haven't always done this.  Sometimes I just plunge ahead, attacking items on the To-Do List without forecasting what I REALLY expect to finish. Then, at the end of the day, I might feel disappointed.  In hindsight, I didn't get enough done, I'm in trouble with some deadlines, and I feel more overwhelmed than when I started.

Lately, I've been looking at the list in the morning and predicting the 2-4 things that I can picture myself finishing before the end of the day.  I try to be honest with myself, "Can I really get these things done given all my appointments and other distractions?"  I pick the items carefully.  "Which tasks are going to give me the biggest feelings of accomplishment and relief if I get them done?" I'm finding that my judgment is pretty good.  I can almost always get the tasks done.  And it makes me feel competent and in control.

Meditation IS pleasure

I've been meditating for decades, but I have recently come to view it differently.  I now view meditation as an indulgence for the senses, a source of pleasure,  like laying on the beach, watching a campfire, or sipping hot cocoa.

I used to think of meditation as more of a task, something I did because it was good for me.  It is good for me.  There's plenty of evidence of the benefits of meditation for health, emotions, and mindfulness.  But I never thought of it as indulging myself.  The "this is good for me" thought was often so strong that it brought along with it such thoughts as, "Am I doing it right?"

Among other things, the book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment urges readers to fill their lives with pleasures.  The author defines pleasures as activities that bring joy through the senses.  Joy through the senses.  Meditation mostly involves getting pleasure through the senses, whether one is concentrating on one's breath, a candle, music, or nature.  So meditation must also be pleasure.

As proof that even Buddha saw meditation this way, consider excerpts from the best known "sutra" (teaching) of Buddha regarding meditation on one's breath.  The following excerpts are from a translation of this sutra in the book Breathe, You Are Alive: The Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing

"Breathing in, I calm my body.  Breathing out, I calm my body. . . . Breathing in, I feel joyful . . . Breathing in, I feel happy . . . Breathing in, I liberate my mind . . ."

It's true there are other Buddhist teachings that describe meditating on one's emotions,even if the feelings are painful, even if one is grieving.  Also, other teachings suggest that, if you see a dead animal, you should seize the opportunity to meditate on your own mortality.  These meditations are helpful.  They help you work through grief and help you cherish every moment of life.  But these meditations are not pleasurable.

Most meditations, though, are pleasant.  Most of the time, you aren't grieving.  Instead, you are tuning into something gorgeous, something that--if you really manage to tune in--feels as good as any guilty pleasure.