What Gets in the Way of Your Pleasure?
You may have a desire to do more in your life that feeds you, yet you never get started. Why? This is the question we’re reflecting on this month. You may be able to answer this instantly. You may not know why. By bringing awareness to how we limit our pleasure, we increase our power to change.
I invite you to take a piece of paper and a pen, find some quiet time for yourself and ask the question “how do I limit pleasure in my life?”. Allow yourself some time to write down everything that comes into your thoughts. Do not filter or censor. Write down everything.
The limits are endless from how you feel about yourself, your beliefs, physical, sexual, environmental, past experiences through to the influence of family, friends, society, culture and religion. Review your list and highlight the three that have the most impact on you. How can you change these? There may be limits that you have little influence over such as having children or caring for elderly parents. Yet do consider the possibilities for change. Are there partners or siblings that can share more of the responsibility so you can create a little more time for you? Notice the limits that you create. It may be that you put everyone else first and don’t prioritise your pleasure or feel guilty when you do. Or you believe that pleasure is something you experience once everything else is “sorted”. There are millions more.
For your top three limits, decide how you can change these, from thinking differently (I deserve pleasure in my life) to creating more time for pleasure. Committing to this will give you a focus moving forward. You may not always be able to honour this and that’s ok. Yet do keep noticing how you limit pleasure in your life and the changes you can make to create more pleasure.
Finally, this list of limits will have highlighted some of your values and beliefs about pleasure. It is great to reflect on how these impact you and I invite you to create a new definition of pleasure in your life which includes why you want to commit to pleasure and the benefits of having more pleasure. We will each have our own unique reasons and it is powerful to identify them as this statement becomes your north star – your guiding light to pleasure. Pin it up somewhere you can see it as a daily reminder to your commitment to pleasure. And most of all enjoy!
Please do share your reflections and thoughts after reading this – I’d love to hear them.
Till next month,
Sarah Rose Bright
