In this enlightened scientific age, we are bombarded with admonishments about the multitude of harmful substances and activities to avoid. Traditional moral imperatives have been encumbered with additional health advisories regarding the many habits and pleasures that are not good for us.
New studies appear regularly, often presenting conflicting data and conclusions. The net overall effect yields confusion and restrictions on what we are advised to eat, what medicines may harm us, and the dire warnings that many of the simple pleasures we have taken for granted will kill us sooner rather than later.
What’s a person to do? Accommodate the latest research and adjust one’s diet and lifestyle? Adopt an attitude of skeptical restraint and wait for further confirming research? Throw caution to the wind and continue one’s habits, either in foolish denial or the hedonistic view that something will eventually kill us, so why not enjoy?
We are wired to enjoy and seek pleasure. From sexual reproduction to the aesthetics surrounding food, cooking, art, style, and entertainment, humans have developed many variations, hobbies, and cultural habits for the evocation of pleasure.
What we call pleasure can include sensual gratification and many forms of satisfaction and “happiness”—although happiness is a much broader and more abstract domain.
We are a population of different personality and character types and diverse attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles. We must wade through an onslaught of contemporary media messages and the copious information available digitally that tries to influence our choices. At every turn, we are encouraged to indulge, spend, and participate. At one end of the continuum are the hedonists—those whose philosophy and lifestyle worship and seek pleasure for its own sake, the more the better. At the other end are those who can’t seem to find pleasure, no matter what they do. These are the folks who suffer from depression, more specifically a type of distress known as anhedonia—the lack of pleasure or ability to experience pleasure. People who identify or have been diagnosed with this condition often desperately want to experience pleasure, joy, and uplift, but simply cannot. Sadly, it’s not for lack of trying: most of these sufferers have sought various interventions, including medical treatment, social activities, therapies, and self-medication.
In our culture of abundance, ennui, and competitive isolation, most of us have difficulty navigating a healthy lifestyle filled with experiencing sufficient and consistent pleasure without succumbing to wanton excess or unsustainable and destructive indulgences.
From the socially sanctioned (but deleterious) habits of overeating, overspending, and consuming entertainment to the hard-core addictions that rule the lives of millions, we are a society desperately seeking pleasure and satiation. At the same time, we are paradoxically sanctioned against satisfying this drive. Encouraged by advertising, social trends, and our own resentful fantasies that others enjoy life more, we want our share of the pie: indeed, we deserve it!
Yet, dampening our fervor, appetites, and needs are the constant cautions about the dangers of indulgence and satisfaction. Ironically, the liberalization of values, widening of social tolerance for diversity, and privatization of pleasure through wealth and technology have done little to alleviate the ambivalent problem of obtaining and managing pleasure.
Compounding the problem of gaining pleasure are the realities of human biological nature: we tend to overdo things. Moreover, the flooding of human brains and bodies with sensory overload has a spiteful and tragic effect on the experience of pleasure: our brain receptors become less sensitive, thereby increasing the need for more—the increasing of tolerance effect. This phenomenon is quite pronounced and easily observed in the debacle of opioid addiction. However, this dynamic is pervasive; it saturates our escalating tolerance for and need of pleasure by senses—food, entertainment, thrill-seeking, new things—that which entices and titillates the receptors, allowing us to experience gratification.
So, on the one hand, we are naturally and neurologically wired to obtain pleasure and gratification. On the other hand, physiological, psychological, and environmental pressures tempt us to overdo pleasure to the decrement of health and functionality.
How can a person navigate the delicate, tempting, and sometimes treacherous pathways to gain pleasure, while edifying the mind, body, and spirit?
We derive pleasure through neurological and sensory stimulation of certain types that excite “pleasure centers” in our brain: neuroreceptors that flood our nerves with neurotransmitters, such as endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. These pleasurable sensations occur in direct response to the intake of substances, the secretions of our internal chemicals, direct sensory stimulation, and even thoughts that link to emotional and physiological responses.
People vary in the frequency and intensity with which they experience “good feelings.” There are differences between individuals and variations across time in each of us that make some periods and experiences intense with pleasure and others much less so. Our attitudes and values about pleasure also influence how much we “let ourselves go” and how acceptable we believe forms of pleasure to be.
As mentioned, the hedonistic philosophy embraces pleasure as inherently good and worth pursuing for its own sake. At the other end of the attitude spectrum is the “no pain, no gain” philosophy, epitomized in the grueling discipline of intense physical training.
Most people espouse a more moderate view of pleasure, enjoying it as they are able, but harboring suspicions that the full embrace and pursuit of pleasure may not be entirely legitimate and may somehow let loose the floodgates of control and morality.
Attitudes and values notwithstanding, so many people simply cannot experience enough pleasure because they are stressed, fatigued, depressed, anxious, traumatized, or in pain. Most medicines prescribed for relief of these conditions may, at best, reduce the sharp edges of anguish, but they do not promote pleasure. Just as health is more than the absence of disease, pleasure is more than the absence of pain.
In pursuit of pleasure—by desperation, rebellion, or the desire to experience intense wonderful sensation—many become habituated or addicted to unhealthy substances or activities. In such common cases, the vicious cycle of indulgence, relief, guilt, and withdrawal perpetuates.
Thus, the dilemma of integrating regular and healthy doses of pleasure while not becoming excessive or deleterious remains one of the continuing individual challenges for self-determination, self-control, and a healthy maintenance of oneself and the care of others.
I have a proposal and broad plan for the dilemma of experiencing pleasure regularly, without sacrificing values or habitually indulging in excess. The key is to train yourself to experience a constant stream of “low-level arousal.” This means that your brain, your senses, and your thought processes become sensitized to small and regular “hits” of “feel good” sensations.
We all know the palpable relief and gratification of putting something in our bodies that answers a needy state: gulps of water to slake thirst, food to satisfy and nourish the bloodstream, the comfort of sitting or lying down on accommodating furniture when muscles and joints cry out, a soothing touch, and even a comment or smile that reassures and makes us feel safe, protected, and valued.
Most people can also get in touch with the experience of simply feeling good, alright and put together on some days—for no particular discernible reason. Sometimes, you just feel right.” Then, there are other days, when you “wake up on the wrong side of the bed.” Nothing seems to go well, and you just feel out of sorts. Often, these differing “states” are hard to trace logistically to things you’ve done, what you’ve eaten, or to specific events. It’s as if the brain and body have lives of their own, apart from circumstances—which is, indeed, the case.
Savvy individuals eventually discover the illogical and enlightening reality that circumstances may influence, but do not cause or determine, our feelings (and, perhaps, our reactions). It’s natural for the mind to attribute to and “blame” circumstances for making us feel or react in “have to” ways. Through maturity, familiarity, training, and practice, we can separate our automatic assumptions and responses to situations, thus achieving more independence and freedom to evaluate options and make informed choices more suited to the outcomes we want. As stated, this takes experience and practice, but can lead to much more flexibility, freedom and satisfying results.
Circumstances, however, while not fundamentally causing our interpretations and responses, can be conscripted in the process of using them to enjoin the flow of low-level arousal internal sensations that contribute to the experiencing and accumulation of pleasure.
Here are some things to consider about how this works:
Painful sensations and experiences, whether sudden and sharp or throbbing and lingering, are hard to ignore or directly counteract through thought processes, such as reframing or re-interpretation. When something hurts, it just plain hurts! In addition, it often occupies center stage in the mind’s annoyance thresholds. So, telling yourself that it’s not so bad or trying to distract yourself is unlikely to make it go away. On the other hand, supplementing your repertoire with recollection and focus on things that make you feel good will build a habit of entertaining those thoughts and feelings that will occur with increasing frequency and spontaneity.
Before you reflexively reach for something to douse your pain or anguish, call to mind a number of body sensations that are okay. For example, if your stomach or head hurts, focus on your feet for a moment. No twisted ankle? Good. Are you bleeding? No—great! Next, think about the machines and devices in your life that are in working condition: car runs, toilet flushes, phone works, microwave works, etc. No distraction or sleight of hand, here; just a calling to mind that your world is mostly in order. Discomforts may be awful and centrally consuming. But almost all of them are transient, like individual clouds moving in the sky.
The preceding is an exercise in the power of your mind to selectively engage with sensations of differing kinds and degrees of arousal. There are many ways you can train yourself to sense and highlight pleasurable thoughts and feelings. These are not merely mind games, but rather are disciplines to teach your mind and body new and persistent ways to host pleasure.
Low-level arousal means that your brain becomes aroused (usually in pleasant ways) by relatively low levels of stimulation. You become more sensitized to pleasure because your brain receptors for pleasure are excited by small doses. It’s the polar opposite of what happens when someone uses powerful drugs. Habituation and addiction occur in those cases when the brain needs more and more intense stimulation to excite the pleasure thresholds. In progressive drug addiction, neuroreceptors become depleted and the brain eventually loses its ability to experience pleasure in the absence of intense overstimulating chemicals (such as cocaine, opioids, and meth).
Alternatively, when your brain becomes habituated to low-level arousal, it doesn’t take much to stimulate the pleasure receptors because the pleasure receptor thresholds are lower. Therefore, it’s easier to gain pleasure from ordinary and safe substances and experiences.
Here are some ways to derive pleasure at low-level arousal:
Form the habit of noticing your own efforts that result in positive outcomes. It’s unnecessary to “slay dragons” or achieve major coups on a regular basis. Simply notice things you did adroitly on a given day. It may be that taking out the garbage, washing dishes, or paying a bill can produce satisfaction that you did something worthwhile and necessary. Maybe you spent a few minutes with a family member or listening to a coworker. Perhaps you planned a meal or set the DVR to record a favorite show you anticipate.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I can’t notice five to ten things that go well. Some are ordinary: my digestion is well, and I enjoy eating; I did my stretching and yoga; I ate healthfully; I walked my dog and did other exercise; I gave myself a needed day off from exercise. Most days are filled with positive experiences interacting with patients and staff, despite the myriad problems that are bound to arise. There are regular occurrences of “bigger” victories: I finish writing something that reads well. Someone gives me a compliment or expresses appreciation. Yes, I work at making good things happen, and I count myself fortunate when they do. I’m not special in this regard; I’ve simply trained myself to notice, appreciate, and self-reinforce my pleasure centers.
You’re probably aware of how much negativity there is. Perhaps you live or work with someone who always looks at the hole instead of the donut. Maybe you are negative and tend to be critical or suspicious. Nonetheless, you can teach yourself to become aware of comments from others taken in a satisfying light. Someone says good afternoon (or quite a few people voice this courtesy). Someone holds a door for you or says “sorry” for bumping you. Little things, certainly, but events to ratify and validate your existence and the deference expressed toward you.
Does anyone express appreciation for your efforts? Small gestures as well as larger sacrifices? Were you thanked for a meal, for giving a ride, for getting some work done? Did anyone comment on your appearance?
Did you get a “wow” recently? Some excellent thing you did that was appreciated? Did anyone try to make you feel encouraged? Did anyone notice your efforts?
Take a look: even in an environment of negativity (or despair), you will notice some uplift from people—-if you seek it.
Eating is one of the great pleasures in life. When you don’t enjoy your food, when you are sick, if you have battles with your body or your relationship with food, your enjoyment of this great pleasure becomes limited or impaired.
At times, all of us have interruptions or disturbances in routine biological functions that we normally take for granted. For some, the processes of digestion, nourishment, or dietary issues are magnified. I’m not suggesting those issues can be ignored.
For most of us, most of the time, food should be a replenishing source of great pleasure. You need not be a gourmet or great cook. Most of us live in an environment of abundance where diverse foods are available (though expensive).
You can increase your pleasure quotient by enhancing your appreciation of food. This might include habits around eating, such as slowing down, savoring the smell and taste, keeping meals as rituals, without intrusions by responsibilities or distractions.
Along with anticipation and gratitude for the foods that make you satisfied, maintaining your digestive system and mind in order as best you can will boost your pleasure. Eat regularly and keep your blood sugar at appropriate levels. Don’t overeat—practice becoming satisfied on less. Eating just enough to satisfy hunger will increase your low-level arousal. Eventually, smaller amounts will make you feel more satisfied.
Don’t deprive yourself. Within the limits of your health situation, budget, and lifestyle, don’t be too Spartan. Discipline is good, but deprivation robs the brain of pleasure. You might try the 90%-10% rule: eat carefully 90% of the time and indulge about 10%. This will program your brain to derive enjoyment from less and to anticipate regular indulgences of extra gratification.
For good reasons, societies and cultures preserve and teach manners and courtesy as governing social rules for human interactions. Observing such rituals greases the wheels for respect and smoother interactions, while also serving as a safety net for saving face and minimizing aggression.
Going through the motions of polite (if shallow) courtesies may, at times, feel phony or alienating. We pretend to be interested, while our mind is really somewhere else. Still, these efforts are far better than gruff bluntness or the blurting out of raw and intense emotion during routine and superficial interactions with people who are not close to us.
Though polite and superficial interactions may be devoid of real emotional connection, they do not preclude exploring more satisfying congenial interactions with a variety of people on a spectrum of closeness and meaningfulness to us. You can initiate and respond to conversations that will make you feel pleasantly stimulated and connected. Developing the skill and habit of offering flattering comments goes a long way to making others feel good, which, in turn, elevates your own esteem and pleasure. You needn’t be sycophantic or over the top. A simple comment that you’re glad to see someone or that what they’re wearing looks good will add a spark and uplift. Remember: most people are obsessing on their own worries. Your cheery comment will temporarily relieve them of brooding worries.
Attentive minds sharpen each other. Your efforts to ask questions and show interest in others will often pay dividends in edification and goodwill, as well as in the low-level stimulation of the pleasure centers in your own brain.
Each of us has a conscience that reminds us of right and wrong. Along with external instruction, our conscience guides us to develop a moral compass to keep us on track with virtue and integrity. Though a conscience is inherent to our being, it can be blunted over time through repeated ignoring or repression. It’s possible to diminish one’s conscience through repeated desensitization or deliberate suppression. We can become less sensitive to pain, including the pain of others. On the opposite (and more normal and “human”) end of this spectrum, we can nurture and reinforce the sense of satisfaction from practicing virtue and doing the “right thing.”
Sometimes it’s costly to do what’s right—it may impact our pride, our energy, or finances. Though doing what’s right may involve sacrifices, much of the time it’s a product of remaining cognizant of duty and the consonance of our actions with a moral compass and compassion for others.
Doing the right thing brings an internal reward that can heighten our pleasure. The flip side of dreary and dutiful obligation is an enhanced sense of value and self-esteem built through the exercising of appropriate and helpful behavior. Whether popular or not, whether received well or met with adverse repercussions, the regular dispatch of right actions can bring you a self-satisfaction based upon reality and your own adherence to principles—something that no one can take away.
The attitude and execution of pleasing and helping others intersects with “right” behaviors. Whereas doing the right thing may be elicited through choices in given circumstances, you can look for opportunities to be pleasing and helpful. Nurturing the acts of giving and deference through willingness involves awareness and initiative, though it often overlaps with righteous behavior.
As you seek and take satisfaction in the happiness and fulfillment of others, your neurons will open their receptors to wider and more frequent availability to pleasure through this low-level arousal.
A job well done is a blessing for the mind, as well as a boon to others. We needn’t be perfect, and too much fussing can obstruct or detract from recognition and satisfaction. However, knowing that you’ve done a job to the best of your ability and that you have performed adequately to achieve a good result can give you a reason to take pride and satisfaction in your efforts. Whether performing competently is typical for you or you have extended yourself in an area where you are not especially skilled or confident, noticing your own good performance allows you to commend yourself. This is an internal process known as self-reinforcement: the provision of consequences that tends to make future similar behaviors more probable.
If you can realistically assess your own performance and conclude that you did well, then celebrating internally will condition your pleasure centers to open up to this welcome stimulation.
There are many sensory pleasures to be enjoyed. The normally functioning brain seeks, acknowledges, and savors pleasure through multiple avenues of sensory input and stimulation: food and drink, body sensations, relief of drives and desires, physical exercise and movement, the carrying out of routine activities, and so forth.
Whereas the hedonist puts special emphasis on sensory pleasures (sometimes to excess) and the depressed or anhedonic person has great difficulty experiencing pleasurable sensations, most people sustain or thrive on intermittent “hits” of sensory excitation.
Familiar routines may satisfy some, while variety may be the spice of life for others. You can amplify your enjoyment of sensory pleasures by focusing on what truly stimulates or excites you and trying to arrange more of that in your life (within limits, of course).
Moderate indulgence in a variety of sensory pleasures should be allowable and encouraged. There’s no virtue in deprivation for its own sake. Exceptions would be if you are trying to break an addiction or bad habit, or if you are sacrificing temporarily for a higher purpose (such as a fast or temporary restriction on indulgences).
Though self-discipline is a problem for many, a greater underlying problem is the sense that one doesn’t “deserve” good things. It’s not always rational or conscious, but many people suffer at the effects of trauma or self-inventions about the reason why they can’t enjoy.
If you can see, hear, smell, feel, or even if those senses may be diminished, pay attention to engaging more fully with the world of vitality around you. Savor momentary experiences and let your brain take in the varied and interesting sensations that abound. It’s okay to enjoy, even for a fleeting moment. They accumulate and contribute to joy.
Except for the physical narcissist, most people are too disparaging of their own bodies. We tend to be critical, envious, and hypersensitive—most often directed at ourselves.
You may be in pain or chronically dissatisfied with yourself. That’s unfortunate—but it doesn’t have to stop you from augmenting pleasure through enjoying your body’s physical characteristics and sensations. You probably have routines that you do out of habit. Though these may be a necessary part of hygiene and health, they can also be sources of pleasure. Going to the bathroom, washing, brushing teeth, touching a family member or pet, getting a massage, stretching, walking, and other exercises provide healthy and pleasurable stimulation to your nervous system. They build and maintain the low-level arousal you need to provide recurring sources of pleasant arousal.
Look in the mirror: transcend the dissatisfaction, obsessiveness, and self-criticism. Force yourself to dwell on some physical characteristic(s) that you “kinda” like or that you’ve come to appreciate that work in your favor. You did not win the “ugliest dog” contest. There are lovely things about you physically. Notice them, say them out loud, and let the pleasure centers of your brain light up.
In the realm of training low-level arousal and sensitizing your pleasure centers, there is little to compare with the effectiveness and safety of training your brain through EEG neurofeedback. This process of training your brain eliminates or reduces many symptoms, as it trains the self-regulatory mechanisms of your brain. As a consequence, and side benefit, those whose brains are hypersensitive or overstimulated become much calmer and those whose brains are underaroused become more alive, alert, and sensitized. Training the EEG properly has a normalizing and enduring effect.
I cannot overemphasize the pronounced “happy” effects of EEG neurofeedback training. It builds the brain’s appropriate sensitivity and augments low-level arousal effects so that ordinary and natural life experiences, activities, and sensations become fulfilling and sustaining.
I recommend that you turn away from substances and dangerous thrills to produce intense (but fleeting) pleasures and seek instead the low-level arousal that will allow and sustain your brain in experiencing the ordinary and abundant pleasure that nature itself provides.
We are designed to seek and experience pleasure on a regular basis: sensory, biologically driven, spiritual, and abstract pleasures are a necessary and natural part of life. You need and deserve them. Life has enough hardship and deprivation; so, we need not magnify and dwell on the negative such that joy gets crowded out.
In Jewish literature, there is a well-known story by Isaac Leib Peretz entitled Bontsha the Silent. In this tale, Peretz recounts the tragic life of Bontsha’s traits and the troubled life he led. Bontsha, this insignificant man on earth, who “lived unknown, in silence, and in silence he died,” is born to a poor Jewish family. He silently accepts pain from the outset when, at the age of eight days, his circumcision causes him undue bleeding and pain. Bontsha also remains silent when, as a grown-up, he uncomplainingly suffers the miseries, pain, and poverty his fate bestows on him in a world too preoccupied with itself to notice the existence of those in need—in life, illness, and death. All traces of Bontsha’s shadowy existence are soon lost; the ephemeral quality of his earthly life is confirmed when the wooden marker falls off his grave, to be picked up and burned. Surprisingly, however, Bontsha’s death is known by everyone in Heaven, where his arrival is excitedly anticipated. Although not noted for his holiness, fame, or righteousness, the silent Bontsha is accorded the highest honors (to the consternation of some saintly residents).
Bontsha remains, in death as in life, silent. Baffled and incredulous at the honors extended to him, he is certain that this is but a dream, soon to vanish as he again awakens to his hellish existence. Perhaps, he thinks, mistaken identity is the cause of this warm outpouring, soon to be reversed as in past experiences, when the error resulted in his becoming the brunt of embarrassed anger. Bontsha’s fear becomes magnified when, finding himself standing in the magnificently bejeweled court in Paradise, he is certain that he has been mistaken for someone else who would merit standing in so rich a palace.
After lavishly praising Bontsha, the heavenly angels offer him anything he wants: he has only to ask. Barely believing, but summoning the courage to speak, Bontsha stammers, “Well, if this is really true, would it be too much to ask for a warm cup of tea and a buttered roll in the morning?”
During the summer of 1970, I drove a truck for Willie’s Auto Radiator Service. My boss, Willie, was a Jamaican immigrant who owned a shop in the Bronx that repaired radiators for cars and trucks. My job was to drive around the Bronx and Harlem, picking up and delivering radiators. It was hot, dirty, disgusting work. In my youthful naiveté and hubris, I was both thankful that I only had to do this job briefly and amazed that someone could spend decades grinding out this thankless and lowly way of earning a living.
One day, I asked Willie how he could stand it, how he could work with grimy radiators week after week, year after year. Willie said, “Yes, mon, it’s hard work. But after life and poverty in Jamaica, I am thankful that every morning in America, I can have two eggs for breakfast.”
To the extent that his response could penetrate my entitlement and youthful arrogance, Willie’s heartfelt words humbled me.
I would like to thank Willie, Isaac, and Bontsha for teaching me something about humility and gratitude; for reminding me that life is good; and, if the eggs and buttered bread are properly cooked, I am also grateful for the pleasure they bring.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
