If Thoreau’s passage rings true, then I understand. It’s so simple, so accessible, and all that obvious that it is easy to polish it off completely. Did we really need an entire arena of positive psychology research to tell us that enjoying the good things makes us happy?
It turns out: yes, we did. Because contrary to popular belief, Enjoying the good things is a special skill. A skill that many of us are surprisingly bad at.
As Thoreau suggests, we miss the good in our lives if we don’t notice it. In a developed world full of anxiety, depression and loneliness, none of that is tragic. So if we really want to be happy, doesn’t it make sense to invest ourselves in the skill of enjoyment?
Happy, Enjoyment is a trainable skill. By the end of this article, you will understand how enjoyment works and how to do it, and I hope you will be inspired to sincerely adopt this practice for yourself.
Enjoyment reshapes your body and mind so you can enjoy it
Enjoyment is the practice of paying attention to, acknowledging, and purposefully enhancing the positive experiences in one’s life. Think of it as training your pleasure muscle.
Training does not mean exertion, but rather exertion deliberate, focused attention and repetition. It’s the effort it takes to get on the mat and practice. And just like our yoga practice, we not only reap the benefits in the moment, but over time it reshapes our entire mind and body. Enjoyment can arise, just like yoga something we do Unpleasant who we are.
Every time you enjoy it, it’s a stands that takes seconds to minutes. Through neuroplasticity, this strengthens the brain’s pleasure and gratitude circuits, allowing you to experience more of it in the future.
Furthermore, every time you experience gratitude and pleasure, these are physiologically displayed in your body as emotions. An emotion is a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that circulate through your body and influence every cell down to the genetic level. Altered DNA expression will code for different proteins to be produced. Proteins are the building blocks for your body. Now, instead of building a body based on stress (which is what most of us live in most of the time), you are literally rebuilding yourself from gratitude.
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