Create a Pleasant Reality | Wellness Wellness Primer

Create a Pleasant Reality | Wellness

Some people go to seven-star hotels, book zip-lining adventures in exotic places, and invite TV chefs to cook for them on their birthdays. But you can only vacation and go zip-lining so many days a year. What you can do, every single day, is to have a consistent, warm sense of joy through creating islands – moments of pleasantness within your routine. Sure, ‘pleasant’ doesn’t sound like a ‘wow’ emotion, but having reliable, repeated pleasant experiences, can go a long way toward happier living.

As Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, “Joy comes to us in moments – ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary” (p. 125).

No, we can't always control our circumstances or change our objective reality. If you can't afford a family vacation, you simply won't go anywhere; a deceased relative won't come back to life through positive thinking; and if your bad job pays the bills, you might choose to stay, even if it's a drag, and even if no zip-lining is ever involved.

Yet, zip-lining or not, we can choose to create a pleasant atmosphere within and around us by practicing real-life skills that can potentially sweeten everyday moments and enrich our existence. You’re going through your day anyway, so you might as well make the most of it!

This is not sugar-coating reality – it’s taking a perspective that amplifies and celebrates the positive places that already exist in our lives. We can all add joy to our daily moments and routines in small ways, even if it may not be obvious at first. Let’s take charge of how we feel every day and search out the pleasant to enjoy and celebrate. Because living a pleasant reality, is its own kind of ‘wow’.