How To Find More Enjoyment in Your Everyday Life
Most of us go about our lives with an almost robotic, monotonous routine, not really thinking too much about what we’re doing, and expending as little energy as we can to get things done. When there is so much we need to do, this is an understandable way to cope. The downside is that while we’re in this ‘autopilot’ mode, we are never really fully aware of what we’re experiencing, and for the most part we’re not enjoying what we’re doing either.
As such, we spend the vast majority of our time doing things that do not bring us any enjoyment. Surprisingly, research has shown that the amount of enjoyment and fulfillment we experience from something has far more to do with our own consciousness than what it is we’re actually doing.
With the wrong mindset, it is possible to have a dull and boring holiday; and with the right mindset, it is possible to find immense enjoyment from our work. This points to an important but poorly-understood fact about our minds, that the enjoyment we derive from activities is not contingent on the activity itself, but rather the way we perceive the things we’re doing.
Our relationship with work
It is broadly accepted that with only a few exceptions, all of us need to work. However, our personal relationships with our jobs can be very different. While some of us see our jobs as a necessary burden, other people find great meaning in their work. The first attitude is far more typical and tends to include administrative roles, especially at more junior levels. The second attitude is more common within fields such as medicine, science, and academia. In these fields, people are often so enamoured with their jobs that they accept lower material rewards in return for the daily challenges and positive experiences that they find within their work.
My own experience has been somewhat towards the latter — I have been fortunate enough to enjoy what I do for most of my career. The few roles I did not enjoy were still valuable since they helped me to figure out what contributes to (and against) enjoyable work. These roles also taught me another valuable and universal lesson. Chasing a job for its’ benefits, at the expense of personal fit is always a mistake.
When there are two options on the table, you naturally start to make comparisons to help you decide. The mistake I made (more than once I confess), was to assign far too much weight to salary and benefits. In at least one case I had a gut feeling that the job probably wouldn’t suit my personality, and perhaps wouldn’t support the level of flexibility and autonomy that I enjoy. And yet I still jumped in, seeing those material benefits as somehow outweighing my own enjoyment, my values, even my personal time.
The dedicated pursuit of wealth, power, and possessions will always involve some level of compromise to a person’s inner values, not to mention the impact on their home life and family. I spent a great deal of my own time and effort chasing these things. I would work long hours, and ensure my work was conspicuous, and therefore visible to the management team. After a while, the accolades came, and that felt good. Following that the financial rewards came too — that also felt good.
You may want to stop me at this point and say “well I’m not seeing the problem here — you worked hard, got some rewards, and you felt good; where is the downside?”
It’s a fair question. And also one with a very simple answer. Let’s isolate just one part of that story, arguably the most important part — the rewards. What were my rewards for all that hard work? 1) recognition, 2) money. And herein lies the problem — in both cases, the positive effects of those rewards were fleeting. It feels great to be recognised for your hard work, and it also feels great to be financially rewarded. However, once a little time has passed, these feelings diminish.
In my personal situation I would start to think “why haven’t they recognised my hard work since last month?”, or ”I haven’t received a pay rise or bonus now for over a year..” These thoughts are the result of my brain craving those good feelings that come from being rewarded. However, it is unrealistic to expect your manager to continually praise you for your work (they have other employees too!), and even more unrealistic for them to continually raise your salary without good reason.
Furthermore, we see the effect of normalisation and the hedonic treadmill come into play. If you did some great work, then your manager starts to see this level of work as the ‘new normal’; you now need to do even more to catch their attention. The extra salary or bonus you received also becomes the ‘new normal’ for you; as such you look for even more to keep you satisfied.
So ultimately the things I was striving for did not increase my overall happiness and wellbeing and did not increase the quality of my life. To add insult to injury, the roles were also making me miserable in other ways, since the actions of the companies conflicted with my own values and ethics. In a subtle but significant way, I was working toward goals that society had conditioned me to want, not for the things that would improve my own quality of life.
If we only consider work as a means to an end — effort in, money out — then we are missing out on the potential to find enjoyment in one of our most common daily experiences.
Our relationship with leisure
Even if we believe that work is a drag, at least we have our leisure time, right? I mean, we all enjoy some relaxation and reward after working hard all week. Certainly, relaxation and recuperation are important, but after a while, this will get a bit boring, and we start to look for more active, enjoyable, or rewarding things to do.
When was the last time you experienced an activity in which you felt truly immersed? Where the time simply flew by, hours felt like minutes, and for a period of time, you were ‘in the zone’? When did you last feel truly exhilarated? This feeling is often referred to as ‘flow’, but I prefer to simply use ‘enjoyment’ or ‘fun’ since flow can sometimes be conflated to mean a deep and meaningful involvement in a piece of work or a project — this in itself is an admirable state to be in, but a more realistic goal for most of us is to simply add a little more fun into our days.
There are many activities that can offer these feelings. A lot of people find great enjoyment in playing a sport, or in other physical activities such as running, cycling, or hiking. Others find this feeling through mental exertion; for example, the understanding and solving of complex problems.
Maybe you can’t remember the last time you were immersed in something to this extent. This is not a judgment on you, and this is by no means meant to be prescriptive. We all find enjoyment in different ways. We all have life commitments, and not everyone has the luxury of choosing what to do with their leisure time. There is enough to be gained by simply adding a little extra enjoyment into the routines of our lives.
A great many of us like to spend time immersed in other people’s fiction — whether watching TV shows, movies, or reading. This passive entertainment provides an opportunity to escape from the trivialities of normal life; despite a bad reputation, this is not an inherently bad thing. Passive entertainment can be a great way to relax, unwind, and provide some welcome distraction for a while.
However, I do think we could all benefit from a balance between passive and active pursuits. Escaping from life can be fun, as long as we are not completely avoiding reality due to our ability to find enjoyment there.
The most long-lasting, sustainable, and rewarding experiences (in my humble opinion) come from activities that provide us with challenges. This is why we enjoy playing sports, completing puzzles, playing board games, or competing in online video games. There is a certain satisfaction that comes from overcoming (even trying to overcome) challenges, and if the challenges can be scaled up over time, then we will gain new skills and find personal growth, which itself provides reward.
Removing barriers to enjoyment
So, the question remains, how can we increase the level of enjoyment in our lives, even when we have busy lives involving work, family, a volatile economy, and other stresses?
Well, first we need to remove any impediments that may be draining both our focus and our energy. I’m sure many would attest to the fact that you can feel exhausted at the end of a stressful day, no matter how much you may have achieved. Your mind has a limited amount of energy, and if it is being allocated to stress and worry, there will be very little leftover (and very little desire) for personal enjoyment.
I have focused here on the two barriers that have affected me the most personally — the first was not dealing well with stress, and the second was overthinking.
1. Coping with stress and pressure
The first thing to accept is that you won’t be able to avoid stress, or at least you won’t be able to avoid stressors. The only thing you can control is how you react to the stressor. I know this sounds simple — after all, we cannot ignore our life pressures, or we will suffer the consequences. I struggled with this concept for the longest time myself. That was until I realised that is isn’t about avoiding anything, it is about learning to allow the problems to exist, without letting it overcome you. You have to recognise and accept that there are problems that you haven’t yet solved; even problems you don’t know how to solve. I will admit, this is one of the most difficult things to do.
We are all hardwired to feel stress and to continue feeling stress until we have somehow solved the underlying problem. This makes sense, of course, since if we didn’t feel stress or worry, we would probably avoid doing a lot of really important things, like paying bills, looking after our health, or meeting our deadlines at work. There are however two very different categories of stressors.
The ones I just mentioned are what I would call simple or task-based problems. You have both the power and knowledge to solve these problems. You have two options — either solve it now or schedule a time to solve it. Either one will work and should enable you to get on with your day-to-day activities without a continuous cloud of worry. If you decide to schedule another time, I recommend using a reminders app, so you can set a reasonable deadline; knowing you will be reminded allows you an extra level of freedom to completely push it out of your mind.
The other, more insidious type of stress comes from the problems you cannot solve. Either they are too big or too complex, or they might be what-if scenarios that would cause you some damage (if they occurred). These stressors include things like societal or economical issues. These can cause you immense worry, and taken to the extreme can cause a type of paralysis, where your everyday motivation is affected by the potential consequences of these worries. The current COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example. We have no power as individuals to solve this problem or even the knock-on effects on the economy and the people around us. So how on earth can we possibly let go of, or ignore such real, tangible, and pressing concerns? For this category, you will need to learn some new mental exercises, and it will take practice and repetition.
I used my own personal mantras, and repeated them to myself whenever I started to notice stress, worry, or panic:
- realise that you cannot predict the future
- accept that you cannot prevent bad things from happening
- the things you are worried about might never happen, so why waste time thinking about them
“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”– Leo F. Buscaglia
Before ending this section, I need to add another vital tool that I used in times of real crisis — distraction. Even the strongest and most practiced minds will have a limit to how much they can cope with. The mantras above (or your own mantras) can work well for the normal life stresses, but they won’t always be effective in critical times. When times are tough it is often an effective strategy to throw yourself into something as a distraction, whatever it might be (my distraction was to buy myself some new books and read them almost compulsively). Some people will use their work, while others will use entertainment or friends. Just remember to check in with the real world now and then — check in with family, friends, and colleagues. The crises will eventually pass, and things will get back to normal.
In order to live a healthy and enjoyable life, you need to learn how to accept the problems you can solve, and let go of the problems you cannot solve.
2. Stop adding your own narrative
This is one of the most damaging and energy-draining habits a person can have, and every single one of us is guilty of it. In my own experience, this one mental habit has been the greatest cause of worry and rumination in my life. Let me explain what I mean with a simple example.
It’s a Friday afternoon at work, and your manager walks over to your desk and says, “Hey, I really need to talk to you, can we make an appointment Monday morning?” You agree a time and go your separate ways. You go home for the weekend thinking nothing of it. You’re lying awake Friday night (maybe you have one too many coffees), and your mind starts to wander… “I wonder why my boss wants to talk to me?”; “Why did he ask me on a Friday?”; “I think I heard something from Rob in accounts that the results are bad this quarter”; “that report I submitted last week was a few days late, and probably wasn’t my best work”…. These thoughts then feed themselves until you’re almost sure that you’re going to lose your job. You spend your whole weekend in a state of stress and worry. You drink to dull the stress, but it just comes back again the next day. You avoid any weekend plans and don’t allow yourself any enjoyment. You get into work Monday morning, and your boss spends 30 minutes praising you for the report you worked on. He then asks you to handle the analysis work for an important upcoming project.”
What went wrong here?
Let’s look at the facts — you left work on Friday, knowing nothing more than you have a meeting on Monday morning. How did this end up ruining your whole weekend?! The problems started when you added your own narrative. You started making assumptions without any real evidence to support them. If you had left the facts alone, you would have been free to enjoy your weekend. Even if the Monday meeting had ended up being negative, there was no reason for you not to have enjoyed your weekend.
This habit raised its head most often within my professional life. I tend to think that the nature of our work-life lends itself to this kind of thinking. We have a lot of small interactions with our colleagues every day, and we don’t usually have much time to discuss these interactions in any depth. In a personal conversation, we can probe further for clarification if we’re confused or unsure of what the other person meant. In the office, there simply isn’t time to explore conversations this deeply, so we have to take things at face value.
So, the simple lesson is this — don’t make assumptions, and don’t add your own narratives. If something happens that seems ambiguous, either ask for clarification or put it aside and wait until the outcome. There is no reason to add anything; all you’re doing is needlessly causing yourself suffering.
Find enjoyment in every day
I feel that now I must point out that ‘Finding enjoyment’ does not mean making dramatic changes to your life or routine. Your mind may start to conjure images of 21-year-olds skydiving or driving across the continent in a camper van, partying every night. Unless you are, in fact, a 21-year-old adrenaline-junkie, then this is probably both unrealistic and unsuitable for your current situation.
What I would like to propose is something quite different, and on the face of it, much simpler. I am proposing that whatever you do every day, however trivial it may seem, can be made more enjoyable simply by engaging your mind and focusing your consciousness. This process is much less about ‘adding’ anything to your life, and actually more about ‘removing’. Removing barriers, as stated above, and also removing layers of monotony and inertia that have crept into your mind over the years.
Of course, adding some extra activities may also add a new layer of richness to your life, but they have to be things you enjoy or that challenge you — the two can actually be mutually exclusive.
You may decide to run a marathon, a lofty goal by anyone’s measure. Now, to achieve this goal you are going to have to do a lot of hard work. You will not enjoy every moment of this, and certainly not in the beginning stages. As you can see, a challenge can lead to enjoyment, but you may not enjoy every part of the challenge at the time.
You may also choose something that offers enjoyment with less challenge (we’re not all built to run marathons!). To pick a similar example, you might take a walk every morning at 6 am, before the world has really woken up, while it’s still peaceful. This is every bit as valid as running a marathon, and if you keep it up you will eventually cover the same distance (you may even want to track this for fun).
1. Start living your own life
In order to live our own lives and find enjoyment, we need to first stop living other people’s lives. This means we need to stop valuing things simply because society values them — a lifetime of living within an individualist, capitalist society has a profound effect on the way we judge our lives, and the lives of other people.
If we want to be able to find enjoyment in our lives, we need to find those things we enjoy that are not contingent on the approval of others or the accumulation of material or wealth.
Let’s take a simple example; one that we can all readily observe, and one that many of us take part in too. A family decides to go on a trip to a national park, “we’ll get out into nature, that’ll cheer us all up and help us unwind and de-stress”. They arrive and head over to the picnic grounds and unpack their lunch “we’ll have lunch first, then decide which of these hikes we shall follow”. During lunch, the parents are checking their work emails — since it’s the weekend and they can’t affect anything, they become stressed. The children are on their phones, watching other people’s life updates, wishing they were somewhere else, wherever their friends or favourite celebrity are — completely missing the beauty of their own present location. The children are bored, and the parents stressed, and so all of them complain and decide to go back home, leaving the beautiful hiking trails unexplored.
But wait — here comes the outrageous irony — despite the fact that everyone is unhappy and dissatisfied, they couldn’t possibly admit this, especially to their social networks! So everyone gathers for a ‘happy family photo’, perhaps a few selfies are taken by the children “out in nature — so relaxing!” — then within a few seconds, the false smiles disappear, and the dissatisfaction resumes. During a quiet and lonely car ride home, everyone sits waiting for responses to their fabricated photos and updates — trying to glean at least a little hint of pleasure from an overall disappointing day. At the same time missing out on the pleasure of each other’s company.
Sound familiar? If not, you are fortunate, because this is observable all around us — whether it’s a beauty spot, in a city next to a famous landmark, or at a tropical holiday resort that promised idyllic experience, but didn’t quite deliver.
We are bombarded with images of what should make us happy, or what should constitute an enjoyable experience. Add to that the power of social media, and you end up with a hive mind of people, all reaffirming these beliefs — “oh wow, you’re so lucky, I wish I was on that beach” — in truth the girl on the beach is bored out of her mind and wishes she was back at home playing soccer, which she really enjoys, but that doesn’t fit into her expected social stereotype.
We judge each other’s lives based on staged snapshots, each of which tries to conform to an accepted set of ideals, and while doing so we miss out on our own experience.
Let’s contrast the hiking example with another, much simpler one: a young couple drives to the same national park, selects a difficult hiking trail, and sets off. They reach the peak of the mountain and check the time on their watches — they beat their previous time by 5 minutes! Overjoyed, they sit at the peak of the mountain and enjoy the stillness and peace. They have a quick drink, then set off back down the mountain, feeling a great sense of achievement. They felt no need to take photos, or post to social media, and yet they felt a deep sense of happiness and contentment.
Once you stop chasing other people’s goals and chase your own, you no longer have anything to prove to anyone else. You can be content within yourself, and enjoy your experiences, whether or not they are the same things your peer group may enjoy (or pretend to enjoy!).
2. Bring your focus to what you are doing
Whatever you decide to do, I implore you to commit to it fully. That is, while you are taking part in this activity, bring your mind only to what you are doing.
If you are running, then put on your running clothes and shoes very deliberately, taking time to make sure everything is comfortable. Note the colours and textures of your clothes as you put them on. Set yourself a goal — let’s say “I will run for 15 minutes while keeping my heart rate below 120”. If you are using a smartwatch or phone, then turn off notifications — you will certainly want to concentrate on your running stats, but all other apps are off-limits.
Once you have finished your activity, try to set aside some wind-down time where you do nothing, think nothing, and let yourself slowly acclimate back into your normal routine. Taking a shower after exercise can help with this transition.
If you can bring focus, goals, and an element of challenge to what you are doing, you can find enjoyment in almost any activity.
Although the examples above all give typical exercise-based activities, physical exertion is not required to find enjoyment in activity. Even very trivial tasks such as gardening or mending a fence can become enjoyable if you can follow some simple principles :
Let go of expectations or social norms. You are not living your life to please anyone else. Whatever you’re doing right now, whether it’s a tedious task for work, or washing the dishes, or playing with your children, try to detach yourself from the rest of the world. Accept that what you are doing now is simply what is, and instead of trying to change it, or resenting it, just accept it.
Find the challenge in what you are doing. This one is easy for sport and exercise, but not always easy for the more ‘trivial’ tasks — let’s pick gardening. Why not set yourself a timer, say 30 minutes, and see how much of the lawn you can mow within that time. Once the timer expires you can simply stop what you’re doing and come back to it another day. Or maybe you’re picking up fallen leaves — how about trying to make the tallest pile of leaves possible before it all collapses. It might seem silly, but it adds some structure to the task, and also allows you to see improvement (a half-mowed lawn might seem a bit silly, but hopefully you see the underlying point).
Commit to the present, and sustain your focus for as long as you can. Probably the most important thing of all is to bring all of your focus to the task at hand. Even if you can do this and none of the other items, you will notice a shift in your mindset.
Try to be conscious of every step you take as you’re walking around the house (perhaps count your steps up and down the stairs) — be conscious of what you are doing right now, and what you are doing next, what is around you, what can you see and hear. If you are outside, take some time to sit down and just appreciate everything around you. Lie on the grass and give yourself permission to just do nothing, and think nothing, even for a short time.
Remember, whatever it is you are doing, once you’re done, transition back into ‘normal life’ gradually — when you come back from a walk or a run, don’t immediately pick up your phone. Take some time to be willfully ignorant, take a few deep breaths, then once you feel ready you can grab your phone and start clearing those 101 notifications! Habits like this can reduce the immediacy of our busy lives. Even waiting a few seconds or minutes can prove that it’s ok not to be online all the time — its ok to wait a few minutes before checking back in with your digital life. These moments of silence are powerful reminders that we exist as individuals, outside of the complex rules of the outside world.
Hopefully, you will also feel a welcome side effect of focusing and committing your attention, which is the temporary quieting of your mind. Clearing your mind of noise even for a short time can help you to deal more effectively with your work, your leisure time, even with your chores.
