80. Pleasure and Gratification
Something I see a lot in the world of coaching is the idea that people need to get better at delaying gratification and that learning how to tolerate and navigate discomfort is key for creating a life and career you love.
And yes, this can be an important skill to cultivate.
If you don’t know how to delay gratification, it can be difficult to do certain tasks and achieve certain goals.
However, some people actually have the opposite problem.
Some people are really good at delaying gratification but don’t know how to pause and enjoy the things they’ve worked so hard to achieve.
They’re chasing accomplishment, but every time they get there, they’re off to the next goal, because they're more experienced at delaying pleasure than experiencing it.
So, as helpful as it is to be able to delay gratification, being able to experience pleasure is equally important.
Tune in this week to learn more about pleasure and how to build a delicious relationship with it that will help you enjoy your life more in the moment to moment while also being able to build even more of what you want over time.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why experiencing pleasure and gratification is a skill that needs practice and effort.
The reasons why, in our professional and personal lives, so many of us don’t allow ourselves to experience pleasure in the moment.
Why waiting for everything to be perfect before you allow yourself to enjoy and celebrate your achievements will leave you waiting forever.
How your brain likes to fixate on what isn’t working, and why practicing pleasure, enjoyment, and satisfaction is the answer.
Where in our lives we either don’t give ourselves time for pleasure, or don’t allow ourselves to enjoy the pleasure in the moment.
How to see where you can start allowing yourself to experience pleasure and gratification every day instead of waiting for the “perfect” moment.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about pleasure and gratification.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, Happy Wednesday. We have a great topic to talk about today. And it’s something that I think sometimes is overlooked, which is interesting since it also sort of runs a lot of our lives. And that something is pleasure and gratification.
So something I see a lot in the coaching industry is teaching people how to delay gratification and teaching people how to tolerate and navigate discomfort in order to make new choices, make changes, and create a life that's different than the one we already have. And that is what a lot of people have as a goal, is to be able to do things they aren't currently able to do, to create results they're not currently creating. And that is great.
But another thing I see, and specifically with my clients, specifically with people who are overachievers, perfectionists, people pleasers is a lot of us are actually incredibly good at delaying gratification. And we just delay it, and delay it, and delay it, and achieve, and achieve, and achieve, and do, and overthink, and all this other stuff.
And so I think it's an important skill to know how to delay gratification. don't get me wrong about that. That is an important skill, but I also think it's important to know how to not delay it. To know how to experience pleasure in the now.
Something I see a lot is that my particular clients want to imagine this future where they've like achieved all the things, and they've done all the changes, and everything's the way they want it to be. And they imagine being so gratified, so pleased then. But they're in such a hurry to get to that future place, that they don't allow themselves to experience any pleasure in the now.
And there's a few reasons that this is a problem, and reason number one is we're never getting to the imaginary place where everything is all figured out. Because once you figure out the things you're working on now, first of all, the brain has hedonistic adaptation, which means it will adapt to whatever beautiful, yummy things we bring into it.
And then the brain also likes to move the goalpost because it'll be like, okay, this is all the normal now and I want this other thing that current you can't even imagine. But future you, once future you has achieved current you’s goals, then it can imagine other things it wants to achieve. So it wants to keep achieving, right? It's like a treadmill.
And then the other thing is when we don't practice a skill we don't tend to be very good at it. And I talk about this all the time, but I'm just going to say it again, a lot of us don't think that experiencing pleasure is a skill. But I think it is a skill. I think experiencing pleasure is a skill. I think experiencing satisfaction is a skill.
Pleasure and satisfaction, I think, have some overlap, but I don't think they're 100% the same. But I think we need to practice both in order to have more of what we want. And I think so often we think what we want is the changes we're trying to make to our lives.
And listen, don't get me wrong, we're going to work on that shit too. Like, yes, I left my corporate job, I started this business, I've turned it into a multiple six figure business. Whatever big changes you're trying to make, don't worry, we're going to get to those. But my point is, once you achieve all that shit, which listen, I know you can if that's what you want to do. But once you achieve all that shit, you're still going to be you.
You're still going to be a human being, you're still going to have a human brain, life is still going to be 50/50. We're still going to live in the world we live in now, hopefully we'll have made some beneficial adjustments to the world, but it's still generally going to be this world.
And so if we're setting ourselves up thinking like, I'll just be happy once it's all perfect, we're really setting ourselves up for misery because it's never going to be perfect. And if we don't practice pleasure, if we don't practice satisfaction, if we don't practice enjoyment, if we don't practice joy and happiness, we're not going to have that skill set later.
Now listen, I know some of y'all probably want to fight me on this because you're like, “No, no, Kori, I changed this other shit and then I was happy.” And to that I'm going to say for how long though? Because I do agree that generally when we achieve something, even if we haven't practiced happiness and satisfaction, for like five minutes we do feel completely fucking elated. We're like ecstatic. We're like, fuck yeah.
But what I've also seen again and again, not just with my clients and my friends, but in my own life, in my own mind, is I'm like fucking ecstatic and elated for five minutes and then my brain is like, “Hi, I found 68 more things for us to worry about. And I know two years ago I told you that we could be happy and satisfied if we did this, but now that we've done it I want to do these other things. You know, like I have a little sniffle in my nose, so I can't actually be happy.”
Or something that's been happening lately with me is my knee has been hurting, and so I'm going to physical therapy and stuff about it. But my brain was like, “Oh yeah, you've built the career of your dreams, and you’ve built the business of your dreams, and you live in this beautiful city where it's sunny almost all the time. But now your knee hurts, so everything is ruined.” And I was just like, “Cool, brain. Thank you for that input”.
So this is what life with a brain is like, is the brain will pretend everything's going to be great later, but then when later comes then later is now and in the now there's always something that we can fixate on that's not working. And again, we have negativity bias, that is usually what our brain will try to fixate on.
So learning how to create enjoyment, and I'm saying create because I do think it's an inside job. The circumstances of your life don't create enjoyment. I know a lot of people think they do, but they don't because your brain can always find something else to be unhappy about and to be disappointed about. So you have to create that enjoyment, right? It’s a DIY, you’ve got to build it yourself.
And I think it's also about learning how to experience pleasure in the now and not just pleasure in imagining a future. And I think this is kind of a subtle idea so I'm going to spend a little more time on it because I think five years ago me would not have understood this at all.
But something I've seen a lot in my own life is that my brain is very good at imagining pleasure. Imagining pleasure at a later time when things are different. You know, for people who are single, it's imagining pleasure when they’re partnered. For people who are in a job they don't like, it's imagining pleasure either in a new job or often it's imagining pleasure in this imaginary life where they're financially independent. I experienced that a lot back in the day and I see a lot of other people experience that too.
Or it's like imagining pleasure when their body is different. Or it's imagining pleasure once they move to a different city. Or imagining pleasure once they complete the degree they're in or the assignment they're on. And, again, we're going to do all that shit, we're going to work on all your actual goals.
But there's a big difference between imagining future pleasure and putting that pleasure off and experiencing current pleasure. And finding ways to take pleasure currently in your life, in what's going on now, versus always deferring that to a time when things will be different.
And so part of this is about actually being able to experience pleasure. Part of this is also about kind of it's like the organizational piece of like are you giving yourself any time for pleasure? So for some of us, we’ll give ourselves time for pleasure, but we won't really like enjoy the pleasure because we know how to fantasize, and we don't know how to actually enjoy the now.
And then for others of us, we don't even give ourselves time for pleasure now because we're so good at delayed gratification that we're just like working. And maybe you're a little bit of both. I'm personally a little bit of both.
Something that I taught myself to do when I was a lot younger, was to prioritize getting work done so that I could enjoy myself later. And that is a life skill that can be useful. If all you're doing is experiencing pleasure and never getting work done, I do think there are often some negative consequences to that.
And eventually, it gets to the point, usually where people, if they're doing only that, they run out of resources. Or like I got myself in a lot of trouble because I would prioritize pleasure instead of sleeping and then in college I got pneumonia because I didn't sleep because I was prioritizing other things.
So being able to delay that gratification is an important skill set. But if that's all you're doing, then I also think that's part of why people get into like fuck it effect or they get into like burnout. They get into what I often refer to as the pit of despair because they're living this life that's no fun, where all they're doing is working all the time.
And often when we're in that space we stop and we're like, what the fuck is the point of any of this if I never get to have fun? And we kind of look at life like it's the problem, like fuck you life, you're not any fun. And listen, there are life circumstances in this world, in this incarnation that do put people in very difficult positions, I agree. And also for a lot of people, they're doing that to themselves maybe in addition to the external circumstances, and maybe not in addition.
And this is also where things like kind of overlap with socialization because as women we're socialized to do everything for everyone, and to do everything for everyone before we do anything for us, right? So women are socialized to feed everyone and not be able to relax that the house isn't cleaned but there's always more shit you could be doing, right?
So if you're waiting to give yourself some pleasure until all your shits done, you're never going to get to have any fucking pleasure because all the shit will never be done. And even if you did manage to get all the shit done, then your brain will just come up with some other shit, right?
I see this all the time in work lives and in personal lives, right? Where people, their brains will just come up with more things to do because we live in a world where there often is more we could do. But just because there's more you could do, doesn't mean there's more you should do. And if all we're ever doing is prioritizing work and deprioritizing pleasure, again, that's not a very fun way to live life.
And I think there is really kind of an existential question in here that I can't answer for you, and only you can answer for yourself, which is like what's the fucking point of life anyways? What's the point of any of this? What's the point of all of this, right? Like, what is the point of your life? And what do you want from your life? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your life to feel like?
And again, some of this is going back to the goals and like, oh, I want to quit this job and get a different job, and I want to make this much money. But some of this is about the emotional experience and the texture of your life and what you think the point of all of it is.
I do not think the point of my life is to do all the things that could be done and to have the cleanest house. Listen, I want my house to be clean, but I think pleasure is a big part of life as well. I think that's part of what makes life meaningful and part of what makes life fun.
I do think for each of us, we have to figure out our own balance of like how much pleasure is satisfying and then how much work is also satisfying. To me all work and no pleasure, not satisfying. All pleasure and no work, interestingly, to me is also not satisfying. It turns out, I like work. I like creating things, I like building stuff to give to y'all to give to the world.
I think a lot of us get confused and think like, oh, I just work because that's how I get money and I have to have money to support myself. And listen, we live in capitalism so there is some truth to that. But I give a lot of thought, like back when I was at Expedia, to like what are the other reasons to work? What are the other things I get out of work? And I think humans like effort.
I think a lot of us resist effort because we think we have to do it. And anytime we tell ourselves we have to, or we should, then we resist it because let's be honest, we don't like being told what to do. It's like we want to be told what to do, but we also don't like being told what to do. Or at least that's how it is for me.
But when I take away all of that, I like work. I like working. I like creating things. But again, to me it's about building balance. It's just like the way I eat, I like to think about a balance of what's going to be nourishing for my body, that's just kind of how I do things. And I like the eat a lot of veggies and fruits because I like, actually not that many fruits, mostly just veggies because I like how my body feels when I do that. And I like what the science says about doing it. And I think what if life is like that too?
I think some of us are like, “Well, I have to work all the time.” It's like the equivalent being like, “Well, I have to eat all this fucking kale.” I don't like kale, so I don't really eat kale so that's why I'm making this example. You don't have to eat all the kale. You don't have to work all the time. You're allowed to make up your own rules and you're allowed to have pleasure.
And I would offer to you that a little bit of pleasure can go a long way if it's true pleasure. I think a lot of us also get confused about what's pleasurable versus what we want to do because we've been told not to do it, right? Again, it's like I actually think humans like to work but we resist working because it's all tied up with our worthiness and with the shoulds.
And I think pleasure kind of has an opposite thing, where a lot of us will put pleasure off because we think it has all these negative connotations like pleasure is bad or sinful. And I think others of us kind of overload ourselves with pleasure because it's like the we're not supposed to so then we crave it out of that rebelliousness.
Anyways, this is like a kind of twisty and complicated podcast, which is I think 100% what all of my podcasts are like. But I think at the most basic, the message here is if you want to experience pleasure in your life, like if we build that into every day instead of trying to wait and have it all later? And then it's like later we can't even have it because we don't know how, and we can't metabolize it.
If you want to experience pleasure, what if we start now? And what if you tinker with it and figure out what is an amount of pleasure to be having frequently, regularly in your daily everyday life that feels good and nourishing to you, that makes your life feel flavorful and interesting, and worthwhile, and yummy, and fun?
So if you're really good at delaying gratification, it might be like how do I incorporate more gratification? How do I incorporate more pleasure? How do I pepper that in? Like what is the right ratio for me that feels really enjoyable and then I still get other stuff done that matters to me?
Or if you're really good at doing a lot of pleasure and less good at delaying gratification, then maybe you're like, ooh, maybe I want to learn this skill of delaying gratification. Not so I can delay all of it, but just so I can delay it sometimes for a little bit to do whatever the other things are that matter to me too.
And I think at the heart of all of this, like I was saying before, is what kind of life do you want to live? What is the purpose of life for you? And this may sound like a really big question, but I think it's really important because I think so many people are living by other people's rules and by other people's ideas of what a good life is, and at the end of their life they're like, What the fuck? Why didn't I blah, blah, blah? Why did I do this other thing?
And I do think having some regrets is normal, and I've talked about regret on the podcast before. But I also think taking the time to do the difficult mental work of figuring out what the fuck you want your life to be for your own self and then making your life that way can also alleviate a lot of that.
So many of us are running our lives based on what we think we should be doing. And that makes sense, we’re social mammals and we all have deep inculturation. But also you don't have to fucking do that. You get to do your life your way. That is your right, you have freewill.
And I know it doesn't always feel that way, but I think it's really powerful to remind yourself that that's there and that you get to decide what a good life is. And what the role of pleasure is in that. And what the role of work is. And what the role of delayed gratification is. It's all up to you.
That doesn't mean you have to do it on your own though. I think that this work can be very brain melting and very paradigm shifting, and deeply uncomfortable sometimes, if I’m being really honest. I think that's why so many people do hire coaches. A coach doesn't know all your own answers, I actually think you know all your own answers. But a coach can help you navigate them and get to them and sift through them and decide what you want to do about it.
And if you are looking for a coach, I would love to talk to you about that. I am currently accepting clients to work with me one on one. And when this podcast airs I think my group coaching program will be sold out. But feel free to check in with me just to follow up if you would rather have that option.
And yeah, like let's coach on it. Let's solve your big questions and figure out your big answers. And then let's make your life something truly amazing to you, full of pleasure, full of the ability to delay gratification if you want it, full of all the things that you want, and with all the skills to handle the things that you don't that are a part of this life.
All right, y'all, that's what I have for you this week. Have a lovely week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, Happy Wednesday. We have a great topic to talk about today. And it’s something that I think sometimes is overlooked, which is interesting since it also sort of runs a lot of our lives. And that something is pleasure and gratification.
So something I see a lot in the coaching industry is teaching people how to delay gratification and teaching people how to tolerate and navigate discomfort in order to make new choices, make changes, and create a life that's different than the one we already have. And that is what a lot of people have as a goal, is to be able to do things they aren't currently able to do, to create results they're not currently creating. And that is great.
But another thing I see, and specifically with my clients, specifically with people who are overachievers, perfectionists, people pleasers is a lot of us are actually incredibly good at delaying gratification. And we just delay it, and delay it, and delay it, and achieve, and achieve, and achieve, and do, and overthink, and all this other stuff.
And so I think it's an important skill to know how to delay gratification. don't get me wrong about that. That is an important skill, but I also think it's important to know how to not delay it. To know how to experience pleasure in the now.
Something I see a lot is that my particular clients want to imagine this future where they've like achieved all the things, and they've done all the changes, and everything's the way they want it to be. And they imagine being so gratified, so pleased then. But they're in such a hurry to get to that future place, that they don't allow themselves to experience any pleasure in the now.
And there's a few reasons that this is a problem, and reason number one is we're never getting to the imaginary place where everything is all figured out. Because once you figure out the things you're working on now, first of all, the brain has hedonistic adaptation, which means it will adapt to whatever beautiful, yummy things we bring into it.
And then the brain also likes to move the goalpost because it'll be like, okay, this is all the normal now and I want this other thing that current you can't even imagine. But future you, once future you has achieved current you’s goals, then it can imagine other things it wants to achieve. So it wants to keep achieving, right? It's like a treadmill.
And then the other thing is when we don't practice a skill we don't tend to be very good at it. And I talk about this all the time, but I'm just going to say it again, a lot of us don't think that experiencing pleasure is a skill. But I think it is a skill. I think experiencing pleasure is a skill. I think experiencing satisfaction is a skill.
Pleasure and satisfaction, I think, have some overlap, but I don't think they're 100% the same. But I think we need to practice both in order to have more of what we want. And I think so often we think what we want is the changes we're trying to make to our lives.
And listen, don't get me wrong, we're going to work on that shit too. Like, yes, I left my corporate job, I started this business, I've turned it into a multiple six figure business. Whatever big changes you're trying to make, don't worry, we're going to get to those. But my point is, once you achieve all that shit, which listen, I know you can if that's what you want to do. But once you achieve all that shit, you're still going to be you.
You're still going to be a human being, you're still going to have a human brain, life is still going to be 50/50. We're still going to live in the world we live in now, hopefully we'll have made some beneficial adjustments to the world, but it's still generally going to be this world.
And so if we're setting ourselves up thinking like, I'll just be happy once it's all perfect, we're really setting ourselves up for misery because it's never going to be perfect. And if we don't practice pleasure, if we don't practice satisfaction, if we don't practice enjoyment, if we don't practice joy and happiness, we're not going to have that skill set later.
Now listen, I know some of y'all probably want to fight me on this because you're like, “No, no, Kori, I changed this other shit and then I was happy.” And to that I'm going to say for how long though? Because I do agree that generally when we achieve something, even if we haven't practiced happiness and satisfaction, for like five minutes we do feel completely fucking elated. We're like ecstatic. We're like, fuck yeah.
But what I've also seen again and again, not just with my clients and my friends, but in my own life, in my own mind, is I'm like fucking ecstatic and elated for five minutes and then my brain is like, “Hi, I found 68 more things for us to worry about. And I know two years ago I told you that we could be happy and satisfied if we did this, but now that we've done it I want to do these other things. You know, like I have a little sniffle in my nose, so I can't actually be happy.”
Or something that's been happening lately with me is my knee has been hurting, and so I'm going to physical therapy and stuff about it. But my brain was like, “Oh yeah, you've built the career of your dreams, and you’ve built the business of your dreams, and you live in this beautiful city where it's sunny almost all the time. But now your knee hurts, so everything is ruined.” And I was just like, “Cool, brain. Thank you for that input”.
So this is what life with a brain is like, is the brain will pretend everything's going to be great later, but then when later comes then later is now and in the now there's always something that we can fixate on that's not working. And again, we have negativity bias, that is usually what our brain will try to fixate on.
So learning how to create enjoyment, and I'm saying create because I do think it's an inside job. The circumstances of your life don't create enjoyment. I know a lot of people think they do, but they don't because your brain can always find something else to be unhappy about and to be disappointed about. So you have to create that enjoyment, right? It’s a DIY, you’ve got to build it yourself.
And I think it's also about learning how to experience pleasure in the now and not just pleasure in imagining a future. And I think this is kind of a subtle idea so I'm going to spend a little more time on it because I think five years ago me would not have understood this at all.
But something I've seen a lot in my own life is that my brain is very good at imagining pleasure. Imagining pleasure at a later time when things are different. You know, for people who are single, it's imagining pleasure when they’re partnered. For people who are in a job they don't like, it's imagining pleasure either in a new job or often it's imagining pleasure in this imaginary life where they're financially independent. I experienced that a lot back in the day and I see a lot of other people experience that too.
Or it's like imagining pleasure when their body is different. Or it's imagining pleasure once they move to a different city. Or imagining pleasure once they complete the degree they're in or the assignment they're on. And, again, we're going to do all that shit, we're going to work on all your actual goals.
But there's a big difference between imagining future pleasure and putting that pleasure off and experiencing current pleasure. And finding ways to take pleasure currently in your life, in what's going on now, versus always deferring that to a time when things will be different.
And so part of this is about actually being able to experience pleasure. Part of this is also about kind of it's like the organizational piece of like are you giving yourself any time for pleasure? So for some of us, we’ll give ourselves time for pleasure, but we won't really like enjoy the pleasure because we know how to fantasize, and we don't know how to actually enjoy the now.
And then for others of us, we don't even give ourselves time for pleasure now because we're so good at delayed gratification that we're just like working. And maybe you're a little bit of both. I'm personally a little bit of both.
Something that I taught myself to do when I was a lot younger, was to prioritize getting work done so that I could enjoy myself later. And that is a life skill that can be useful. If all you're doing is experiencing pleasure and never getting work done, I do think there are often some negative consequences to that.
And eventually, it gets to the point, usually where people, if they're doing only that, they run out of resources. Or like I got myself in a lot of trouble because I would prioritize pleasure instead of sleeping and then in college I got pneumonia because I didn't sleep because I was prioritizing other things.
So being able to delay that gratification is an important skill set. But if that's all you're doing, then I also think that's part of why people get into like fuck it effect or they get into like burnout. They get into what I often refer to as the pit of despair because they're living this life that's no fun, where all they're doing is working all the time.
And often when we're in that space we stop and we're like, what the fuck is the point of any of this if I never get to have fun? And we kind of look at life like it's the problem, like fuck you life, you're not any fun. And listen, there are life circumstances in this world, in this incarnation that do put people in very difficult positions, I agree. And also for a lot of people, they're doing that to themselves maybe in addition to the external circumstances, and maybe not in addition.
And this is also where things like kind of overlap with socialization because as women we're socialized to do everything for everyone, and to do everything for everyone before we do anything for us, right? So women are socialized to feed everyone and not be able to relax that the house isn't cleaned but there's always more shit you could be doing, right?
So if you're waiting to give yourself some pleasure until all your shits done, you're never going to get to have any fucking pleasure because all the shit will never be done. And even if you did manage to get all the shit done, then your brain will just come up with some other shit, right?
I see this all the time in work lives and in personal lives, right? Where people, their brains will just come up with more things to do because we live in a world where there often is more we could do. But just because there's more you could do, doesn't mean there's more you should do. And if all we're ever doing is prioritizing work and deprioritizing pleasure, again, that's not a very fun way to live life.
And I think there is really kind of an existential question in here that I can't answer for you, and only you can answer for yourself, which is like what's the fucking point of life anyways? What's the point of any of this? What's the point of all of this, right? Like, what is the point of your life? And what do you want from your life? What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your life to feel like?
And again, some of this is going back to the goals and like, oh, I want to quit this job and get a different job, and I want to make this much money. But some of this is about the emotional experience and the texture of your life and what you think the point of all of it is.
I do not think the point of my life is to do all the things that could be done and to have the cleanest house. Listen, I want my house to be clean, but I think pleasure is a big part of life as well. I think that's part of what makes life meaningful and part of what makes life fun.
I do think for each of us, we have to figure out our own balance of like how much pleasure is satisfying and then how much work is also satisfying. To me all work and no pleasure, not satisfying. All pleasure and no work, interestingly, to me is also not satisfying. It turns out, I like work. I like creating things, I like building stuff to give to y'all to give to the world.
I think a lot of us get confused and think like, oh, I just work because that's how I get money and I have to have money to support myself. And listen, we live in capitalism so there is some truth to that. But I give a lot of thought, like back when I was at Expedia, to like what are the other reasons to work? What are the other things I get out of work? And I think humans like effort.
I think a lot of us resist effort because we think we have to do it. And anytime we tell ourselves we have to, or we should, then we resist it because let's be honest, we don't like being told what to do. It's like we want to be told what to do, but we also don't like being told what to do. Or at least that's how it is for me.
But when I take away all of that, I like work. I like working. I like creating things. But again, to me it's about building balance. It's just like the way I eat, I like to think about a balance of what's going to be nourishing for my body, that's just kind of how I do things. And I like the eat a lot of veggies and fruits because I like, actually not that many fruits, mostly just veggies because I like how my body feels when I do that. And I like what the science says about doing it. And I think what if life is like that too?
I think some of us are like, “Well, I have to work all the time.” It's like the equivalent being like, “Well, I have to eat all this fucking kale.” I don't like kale, so I don't really eat kale so that's why I'm making this example. You don't have to eat all the kale. You don't have to work all the time. You're allowed to make up your own rules and you're allowed to have pleasure.
And I would offer to you that a little bit of pleasure can go a long way if it's true pleasure. I think a lot of us also get confused about what's pleasurable versus what we want to do because we've been told not to do it, right? Again, it's like I actually think humans like to work but we resist working because it's all tied up with our worthiness and with the shoulds.
And I think pleasure kind of has an opposite thing, where a lot of us will put pleasure off because we think it has all these negative connotations like pleasure is bad or sinful. And I think others of us kind of overload ourselves with pleasure because it's like the we're not supposed to so then we crave it out of that rebelliousness.
Anyways, this is like a kind of twisty and complicated podcast, which is I think 100% what all of my podcasts are like. But I think at the most basic, the message here is if you want to experience pleasure in your life, like if we build that into every day instead of trying to wait and have it all later? And then it's like later we can't even have it because we don't know how, and we can't metabolize it.
If you want to experience pleasure, what if we start now? And what if you tinker with it and figure out what is an amount of pleasure to be having frequently, regularly in your daily everyday life that feels good and nourishing to you, that makes your life feel flavorful and interesting, and worthwhile, and yummy, and fun?
So if you're really good at delaying gratification, it might be like how do I incorporate more gratification? How do I incorporate more pleasure? How do I pepper that in? Like what is the right ratio for me that feels really enjoyable and then I still get other stuff done that matters to me?
Or if you're really good at doing a lot of pleasure and less good at delaying gratification, then maybe you're like, ooh, maybe I want to learn this skill of delaying gratification. Not so I can delay all of it, but just so I can delay it sometimes for a little bit to do whatever the other things are that matter to me too.
And I think at the heart of all of this, like I was saying before, is what kind of life do you want to live? What is the purpose of life for you? And this may sound like a really big question, but I think it's really important because I think so many people are living by other people's rules and by other people's ideas of what a good life is, and at the end of their life they're like, What the fuck? Why didn't I blah, blah, blah? Why did I do this other thing?
And I do think having some regrets is normal, and I've talked about regret on the podcast before. But I also think taking the time to do the difficult mental work of figuring out what the fuck you want your life to be for your own self and then making your life that way can also alleviate a lot of that.
So many of us are running our lives based on what we think we should be doing. And that makes sense, we’re social mammals and we all have deep inculturation. But also you don't have to fucking do that. You get to do your life your way. That is your right, you have freewill.
And I know it doesn't always feel that way, but I think it's really powerful to remind yourself that that's there and that you get to decide what a good life is. And what the role of pleasure is in that. And what the role of work is. And what the role of delayed gratification is. It's all up to you.
That doesn't mean you have to do it on your own though. I think that this work can be very brain melting and very paradigm shifting, and deeply uncomfortable sometimes, if I’m being really honest. I think that's why so many people do hire coaches. A coach doesn't know all your own answers, I actually think you know all your own answers. But a coach can help you navigate them and get to them and sift through them and decide what you want to do about it.
And if you are looking for a coach, I would love to talk to you about that. I am currently accepting clients to work with me one on one. And when this podcast airs I think my group coaching program will be sold out. But feel free to check in with me just to follow up if you would rather have that option.
And yeah, like let's coach on it. Let's solve your big questions and figure out your big answers. And then let's make your life something truly amazing to you, full of pleasure, full of the ability to delay gratification if you want it, full of all the things that you want, and with all the skills to handle the things that you don't that are a part of this life.
All right, y'all, that's what I have for you this week. Have a lovely week. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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