My husband and I love to watch a good documentary at night and recently we have been watching Pole to Pole with Will Smith (National Geographic.) It is absolutely an amazing tour of the extremes of our world from the South Pole to the North Pole! In the 4th episode, called The Secret of Happiness, Will visits the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas, a country that has a national focus on happiness that is measured by something called GNH – Gross National Happiness. In this episode he is guided by a happiness expert to see what makes this country happy and what that might mean to the rest of us, and it really got me thinking! People are getting richer and living longer but our sense of well-being is going down. So how do we get that happiness back into our lives?
The first thing that is explored by Will is Pleasure. Truly please of the body, but not in the way that you might be thinking. Will does an extreme sport (bungee jumping) and finds out that the dopamine that is released by his body is short lived, but it does have a strong effect on the body. What this tells us is that pleasure is fleeting but is very important to have in our lives. And that this short-lived pleasure is not what we are after but instead we want the long-term effects of true happiness.
Pleasure plays an important role in our well-being and overall life experience. Sometimes it is momentary in our life but can provide moments of joy and can be a motivator to stress and hardship that we might be experiencing.
By embracing the pleasure in our lives, we can savor the experiences we are having and really be present where we are at any given moment (appreciating the present). And also, by understanding the brief nature of pleasure, we can look forward to a deeper and more lasting form of fulfillment, such as personal growth and meaningful relationships.
What does pleasure mean to you? Does having more money or more power really make you happy? Do you ever explore what really would make you happy? What do you seek to bring you pleasure? And more importantly how do you incorporate this thinking into your life?
