Do you sabotage your own happiness?

We're sitting on our back lawn, smoking, and my sister, da'Renegade Mama (dRM), heaves a sigh.

"I don't know why I do this!  I'm at the 11th hour again with my homework, and now I'm dreading doing it because I'll have to pull an all-nighter to get it done.  It doesn't make any sense because I LOVE what I'm studying!  Everything I read for school, every paper I write, every assignment is highly fulfilling and interesting ... and yet I put it off and put it off and treat it like a duty until I resent it and have to grind my way through the task!"

She goes on..

"And if anyone asked me what my number one favorite thing is in the world, I'd answer that it's playing with my kids.  Playing with them - wrestling and dancing and jumping on the trampoline and throwing frisbees.  And how often do you see me do that?'

I shrug my shoulders.  "Like two or three times a week," I reply.

"Right!  But if it's my favorite thing, why don't I do it every day?!?"

We sit in silence for a few moments.

I add, "I love running.  Like, love LOVE it.  And I can't remember the last time I went running."

"So why do we sabotage all of our happiness by avoiding the very things that make us happy," dRM wonders aloud.

That's a good question!

I hear this question quite a bit actually.  At the coffee/metaphysical shop I work at, I chat with customers a lot.  We get into what's going on in their lives and I invariably hear, "I should read more - learning more about this new age stuff is so fulfilling to me!" or "I should meditate more.  When I do, I feel so much better, but I just don't, even when I have the time and will to."  On and on.  Just yesterday, one of my housemates, Papasan, mused that he put off his homework all weekend, and spent the whole weekend drenched in guilt, and when he finally did the homework - which only took him about an hour - he felt light, happy and free as a bird!

Can you think, right now, of things that you absolutely love that you never do, even when you have the time and resources to do them?

What is it in our culture/belief systems, our biology, or psychology makes this sabotage so commonplace?

I have a few thoughts, but I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

First, I think culturally, we give a lot of power to guilt and "hard work" and are veritably terrified of hedonism.  By hard work, I'm referring to forcing oneself to put their nose to the grindstone, use discipline, and dig their way through something.  My dad used to always say when we were little "Great people do hard things".  If something makes us happy and we enjoy doing it it feels wrong to us, or at the very least suspicious.  I can't just enjoy myself day-in-and-day-out reading books and going running - that would make me a hedonist!  Our culture teaches us that too much enjoyment and pleasure is small-minded, wicked, or wasteful.  So we limit our enjoyment, even if limiting it gets in the way of our personal development.

Maybe that sounds far-fetched to you.  But let me ask you this - how often do you choose to do the hard things before the easy things just to "get them over with"?  I do it all the time when I eat.  I always eat my least-favorite part of a meal first, and save the best for last.  Guess what happens?  I feel full halfway through the meal and still haven't even tasted my favorite part of it.  So now I'm in a conundrum - do I stop eating and miss out on what I was most looking forward to, or gorge myself?  Do you do the same thing?  Do you stay up until bedtime doing your least favorite things, and then you have to choose between getting the sleep your body craves or reading that book you've been dying to get to?

I think we are afraid of too much happiness because we are taught to be afraid of hedonism.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

This brings us to my second thought on the topic, which is that we have unrealistic expectations for the things we love.  Because absence makes the heart grow fonder, we begin to believe that the things we love are 100% easy and delightful from start to finish.  That's simply not true!  Let's go back to me and my love of running.  What I love about running is feeling powerful and strong, feeling the blood coursing through my body and my muscles feeling fatigued and still taking me miles and miles further.  I love the power that comes from setting my mind to the task and the physical reward of having a strong mind.  But right now, I'm out of shape, so running doesn't do that for me.  Right now, running makes me feel weak, slow and fat.  So when I go running, it does the exact opposite of what my expectations for it are.  Because my expectations are unrealistic.  Running is challenging and takes a lot of focus and dedication.  And only after consistently applying focus and dedication to the challenge do the rewards present themselves.

Now, returning to dRM's lamentations.  Playing with her kids is FUN ... for about 1/3 of the experience.  But it also includes being out in super-hot or super-cold weather, changing flat tires on bikes, packing around snacks and taking incessant potty breaks, and the kicker, managing 4 beautiful grommets fighting over each other for mom's attention.  And, of course, with kids, if you play with them once, then for the next week, every five minutes they're wondering why you aren't ready to swing from the chandeliers with them again - it sets a precedent that is challenging to live up to.

So yes, the things that make us happy truly do bring a lot to our lives, but they also often require dedication and challenge.  That taints them for us.  Why not just settle for the happy memories instead of dredging through the effort for the payout?

Finally, we tend in our culture to have an all-or-nothing attitude about pretty much everything.  I can't have fun until I'm in perfect physical shape and have the perfect wardrobe, home and appliances to match the level of happiness I aspire to; I can't convince people (or myself) that I'm happy if I'm fat, single or poor!  I have to have it all in order to experience any happiness whatsoever!  And even if I do things I love, because I'm fat/single/poor/etc. I couldn't even enjoy them because I'd know I'm falling short of the dream!

I can't just go running when I feel like it, I must go every day and be continually improving my pace and distance.  We can't just do the same thing over and over with the kids - we have to innovate more fun activities!  And I can't enjoy this book until my house is perfectly clean and my inbox is cleared out and I've prepared a 100% raw, organic, vegan dinner.  Then, and ONLY THEN can I actually enjoy it!

Not true.

We are so overloaded with guilt for what we don't do, that we don't allow ourselves to enjoy the things we want to do.  Is it impossible to "have it all?"  Probably not.  But it's unreasonable to hold happiness at bay until we have it all.  Wouldn't you rather have "some of it all" and every day experience those things that make you most happy - and become a truly happy person - than finally achieve it all and have lived years or decades in stress and guilt?

I say, cook your kids ramen for dinner once a week so that you have time to play with them, if playing with them makes you truly happy.  Eat the dessert you love and gain a little weight if eating dessert rocks your world.  Choose happiness over other things regularly, even if it means cutting corners, and then from a happy place find ways to improve areas of your life that you feel merit improvement.

Does this mean I condone a full-fledged hedonistic lifestyle?  No.  It isn't black or white like that.  Be a hedonist two or three hours a day, and with the time that's left, go back to chipping away at the grindstone.  There's a time and a place for seeking pleasure, and I think that time comes around at least once a day.  Be balanced with where you get your pleasure from - sometimes a fabulous TV show, sometimes skipping through the park, sometimes chatting with a friend for three hours - but not always all of it.  Just dedicate two or three hours to doing whatever it is you love, every day, no matter what.  Inject happiness in your life, then build from that base.

And finally, for those really grueling tasks there are psychological happiness games you can play to make them more fun.  Only do them to music you love.  Do them in your favorite pair of underwear that you reserve for special occasions.  Allow yourself to eat one bite of your favorite food for every math problem you finish.

In our home, with four small children, dRM and Risseroo made one small change of verbiage that changed the kids' entire paradigm about their chores.  "Do your chores," we'd say, "you can't play on the Kindle until your chores are done."  Then we experienced about an hour of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  So one day, dRM and Riss decided to call chores "life skills."  They told the kids that they needed to practice their life skills every day in order to be ready for adulthood.  The change was astonishing.  The kids started arriving home from school with, "When do we get to do our life skills?"  After dinner, we'd say, "Ok, you can come watch us play Donkey Kong" (because Riss and I play so amazingly that the kids are overcome with joy at simply watching us play ... he he he) and the older girls made faces at us and said, "Nuh-uh!  We haven't done our life skills yet!"  Um, the 7 and 5 year-olds reminded us that they hadn't done their chores yet.

So when it's time to clean your house, are you cleaning, or loving on your home?  How different would it be to say, "I'm gonna show some love to my toilet that I'm so grateful takes our waste far, far away," instead of, "Gotta clean the toilets ... *sigh* ... again ..."  Or, "I get my blood pumping every morning and clear my pores for perfect skin," instead of "I'm gonna go sweat like a pig at the gym."  Try it.  It works.  What chores in your life can become your life skills?

One last thing that I have recently rediscovered.  Do it now.  When something pops into your mind and makes sense, just take action right away.  Don't give yourself time to think through whether or not you want to do it and when you should start.  If it pops in your mind that you haven't played with your kids for a while and you kind of miss it ... stand right up and find your offspring and initiate play.  Even if only for 2 minutes.  If you suddenly get the urge to crack into your work or homework, before thinking about it, stand right up and do it.  I had this happen to me last week.  Risseroo goes to the gym every morning at 7.  One afternoon, I was reading a book, and paused with the thought, "I could totally go to the gym with her and it would be fun.  My biggest holdup with working out is that I don't follow through unless I have someone to go with that I'm just a little bit accountable to, and here's someone right in my house that I adore who goes every morning at a reasonable hour, and I'm not going.  Why?"  Then I decided I'd think about it for another day or two to decide if I really wanted to do it or not.  A few hours later, Riss and I were out back smoking, and the thought popped into my mind again, and I realized that I had no reason to not start immediately, except for pure procrastination.  So I said, "I think I want to start going to the gym with you."  Riss said, "Yay!  Awesome!"  And then I said, "Wake me up tomorrow.  I want to start tomorrow."

And I've gone to the gym with her every day since.

If I had paused to think about it for a few days, I would have not even started by now, or probably ever.  And today I ran 3 miles on the treadmill and we did 45 minutes of lifting weights.  Did you hear that?  I went RUNNING today.  And I clocked a reasonable distance for starting up, so I didn't feel fat or slow, but I felt strong!  Going to the gym with Riss is one of the highlights of my day - even though I wake up a full 5 hours earlier than normal for me (yes, I usually wake up around noon).

So whatever this post is making you think of, do it now.  One small step in that direction you're thinking of - you don't have to take on the whole enchilada, but set it in motion now.  No more planning or contemplating, just step towards happiness.  And make sure five or six times a day you consciously take more small steps towards your happiness.

Because wouldn't you rather be happy than anything else?