In this article you will learn:
The ability to have fun is a skill, not a gift;
Bodily enjoyment practices;
Daily habits that improve the quality of life.
In the pursuit of success and achievements, it is very easy to stop feeling the taste of life. When the motto of every day becomes “faster, higher, stronger!”, There is simply no time left to savor the energy and time. The ability to have fun is a skill that needs to be constantly trained. Of course, if you really want to enjoy life.
Setting priorities
Let us be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that the enjoyment is the main motivation for all our actions. We want to achieve career success in order to enjoy self-realization and recognition. We strive for financial prosperity in order to fulfill all our desires and live in comfort. We create a family to love and be loved. And all these paths to enjoyment are correct and beautiful. But they are not the only ones.
The path to a big goal can be long, and life passes here and now. If the skill of obtaining pleasure is poorly developed, doping in the form of achievements, admiration, “medals” will be needed constantly. The euphoria from each new conquered peak will be weaker, and the accumulated stress will make itself felt apathy and a sudden loss of interest in everything. And where, one wonders, had to run and hurry like this? ..
It’s easy to train the skill of having fun — just do the practice regularly from this article. Let it not bother you or relax that they are very easy to perform. No magic is needed here!
Establish contact with the body
The senses are the main channels of pleasure. Thanks to the body, we feel the joy of hugs and kisses, enjoy delicious food, beautiful music and nature, express feelings and emotions. Everyday vanity forces us to live “in the head” - in thoughts, worries, plans, anxieties. The techniques below will help you “descend to earth” and experience the joy of the moment from contact with yourself.
Waking up in the morning, do not immediately pick up the phone and do not rush to check the mail. Stay in the moment - yawn, stretch, blink ... Let the body wake up, be gentle to yourself. Then scan the body and describe how you feel in each part of it. Start with the toes and move up to the crown of the head. Mark where there is tension, relaxation, cold, warmth, tingling, heaviness, comfort, itching. Feel skin contact with clothing or bedding. It is advisable to comment on your feelings out loud in order to formulate them more clearly and not get confused in a ball of thoughts.
Consciously move each part of your body - this will help to establish contact with those muscles and areas that you hardly feel or engage in everyday life. Gently pull up to feel your back. Swing your legs to activate the muscles of your hips and buttocks. Allow yourself to breathe deeply and freely, completely relaxing your chest and stomach. Take your time, be slow and smooth, fix your attention on sensations. This practice is based on the statement of the body-oriented therapist Alexander Lowen:
"Awareness of a part of one’s body is described as" contacting "with it. Contact with an imperceptible part of the body can be established by increasing the mobility of this part. [...] all feelings, all perceptions depend on movement."
For the same reason, it is useful to engage in conscious exercise or stretching for at least 5-10 minutes a day.
Light pats all over the body (naked) help relieve tension and clear the head. Let your movements be comfortable and careful, do everything with love and self-care. Focus on the skin - feel your own touch.
Establishing contact with the body will not only help you get more pleasure from tactile sensations (touches, pleasant tissue, etc.), but also show you how often you ignore your own comfort. How to torture yourself with uncomfortable clothes or shoes, neglect interruptions during work, suppress hunger and thirst. This is very good because, admitting to yourself the discomfort, you can take concrete steps to overcome it and thereby instantly improve the quality of life.
Change daily habits
The world is fussy and active, but this does not mean that we should be the same 24 hours a day. It is enough to change simple daily habits in order to feel better now and get more pleasure from life.
Remove the phone from the dining table (or turn off the TV). If this recommendation seemed silly and pointless to you, then you should listen to it today. Just enter the daily rule: do nothing but eat while eating. If you are bored or think that you are wasting your time (and you could simultaneously reply to a message on work, read news, watch an interesting video on Youtube ...), turn on the stopwatch. You will be surprised how fast we actually eat, just because of the habit of rushing and taking on a bunch of tasks, we don’t notice this. Believe me, the world will not collapse if you don’t read, write and watch for 10, 15, even 30 minutes. But the benefits of this habit are the sea! Firstly, you will stop loading the brain. He plows all day and night, and this rule will give him the opportunity to relax, doing one thing. Secondly, you will improve contact with the body, because you learn to feel full (by the way, you can lose weight). Thirdly, this practice trains the skill of enjoying food. You will no longer want to thoughtlessly throw food at yourself, just to satisfy your hunger. And you will stop deceiving yourself, as you will see that not all of your favorite dishes are truly delicious.
Make a list of your favorite things right now. Put this article aside and write on a piece of paper what you like to do. “Then” you won’t do it, it’s verified by experience (even if you add the article to your bookmarks). Let there be at least ten points on your list. Classes can be any: reading books and magazines, taking a walk alone with you in the park, listening to music, dancing, caring for flowers. Review and supplement this list regularly. And most importantly - every day make at least one of it.
As you can see, all these practices are very simple. It’s a paradox, but it is precisely in this that their complexity lies, because there is a temptation to postpone them or not to do it. But if you will not be lazy, make a decision to enjoy life here and now, you will regularly perform these practices, you will feel the positive changes quite quickly!