Savor The Moment

In June, ReallyBeU is working on helping clients better understand the power of joy and pleasure in building resiliency as individuals, families and organizations. Joy and pleasure often feel challenging to experience and create when we are in survival mode, grinding daily.  “Survival Mode” is the experience that many of us and our clients are describing as the current environment.

June’s other blog is a more micro look at how to develop joy and pleasure internally, individually, and with our own unique and personal strengths and attributes. This blog post approaches joy and pleasure through a big picture, shared experience of the commonalities of all humans.  As humans we all share similarities which bring us joy and pleasure, specifically, connection, community, relationships, affiliation, helping others, and shared values or beliefs. 

To build more joy and pleasure into our fast paced lives, there are times when we need to slow down and connect to those shared experiences of humanity, to tap into the gifts of love, belonging, dedication, mission, and helping others. These deeper experiences of finding and rekindling the meaning in living life, is impactful to our nervous system as we are all connection driven.  

Sometimes when we are in survival mode, it is expected of us to put our heads down and grind forward trying to knock down the next task and target. Although normative, this way of coping does not allow for us to fill our cup during the process and shifts our perspective to focus on achievement and production rather than enjoyment in the process. The hardship with this mindset is that, especially now, the achievement never arrives because the “work” is never done.  

To best tap into our underlying need for connection, belonging, affiliation, and helping others, we need to slow down and take time to share, laugh, be vulnerable, lean on, and support those that we trust and love in our life. This experience is soothing for our brains and bodies and helps us enjoy even the hardest life stressors and adversity.

1. Understand that time spent on the deeper meaning behind life and our shared humanity is time well spent.  It is not a waste.  It will fill up your cup and make you more productive and effective when you return to your tasks.
2. Our hearts and minds need love and belonging more than anything else.  Without inserting these similarly needed aspects and elements of life, as humans we start to experience less and less joy and pleasure and more mental health symptoms.
3. Grounding and centering can be accomplished around other people, not just individually in isolation.
4. Aligning with a meaning can soothe our survival response and ignite motivation and engagement when we feel fatigued and disengaged.
5. We need to choose the people, mission, community, and connection carefully.  There needs to be trust, love, understanding and shared values to insert relief into our tired souls.