Learning to enjoy life

Just focus on enjoying life. This is what my Dr said when I asked her for advice on ways to stay mentally fit for the rest of my life.

After that discussion, I am trying to make enjoyment a priority in my life.

Once I seriously started thinking about ways to implement it in my life, I realized – it is easier said than done. What does it mean to enjoy life? How do you enjoy life? What shape does it take when we go through our life?

After researching and seriously thinking – I came up with a few ideas and practices.

What it is not

One thing became clear to me as I started contemplating it, it is not doing what we like to do. It does not cater to the mind’s wish to engage with what feels exciting. It is not about having fun all the time.

Service

The more I think about it and the more I try to practice it in my daily life, I feel service is the easiest and very effective way to enjoy life. I am doing my best to consider my activities as a service to my family, friends, and colleagues. Keeping this perspective – any activity becomes enjoyable.

Goal

 Having a goal helps prevent the mind from being scattered and wasted. There is a great Ted talk – https://youtu.be/Qy5A8dVYU3k which shows that we feel unhappy when mind-wondering happens. A goal helps us to focus. Once we focus the mind gets engaged. I am still trying to make it part of my daily practice.

Learning

For me, learning is not about learning a specific subject or musical instruments, or painting. I have a very broad range of interests. Reading articles, listening to podcasts, or watching videos or other materials are all avenues for learning for me. These keep my horizon wide and also are great sources of my pleasure.

Peace – being at peace with whatever this moment holds.

I think this is the foundation of living an enjoyable life. One of my observations of my own life is that I tend to stop and slow down when I feel bad or anxious. I can feel that my mind wants to be free of the discomfort. Yet feeling sad or anxious are just part of life. I cannot run away from having these feelings.

Any time I learn something, I find ten more interesting things to learn about. This has the result that I have a very long list of things I want to learn about or read about. Sometimes when I think of the list, I get stressed. I decided that it is ok – I will feel the stress. This is the consequence of my choice. I am trying to be at peace with this.

I do not want to run away from boredom, anxiety, or frustration. I feel them, I experience them and not trying to run away from them.

I am trying to be at peace with every moment. I want to continue to practice accepting myself and others and everything.

In the past, I would always try to tweak my behavior to feel good.  I am trying to break away from this pattern.  I  feel I have listened to my mind’s demands too much. The time has come for me to take control of my mind and let the mind be in its place to do things I want it to do.

Contentment

I take time out daily to practice contentment. I stand apart and look at my own life, my achievement, and my accomplishments. I remind myself to keep in my lane and have my unique journey. This helps me to have the strength to not fall prey to comparison or jealousy.

Engaging with life

This is not easy. Yet I feel this is one of the key requirements to be able to enjoy life. There is one video https://youtu.be/PC1hoYet8fw which I particularly like. The speaker argues that activities are not inherently boring or exciting.  I try to make thing fun by researching a topic in or around my life. Sometimes when I am cooking and using certain spices – I like to do some research on the origin or history of spices. I spent some time trying to understand the history of my town and how its name came into being. The things we use in our daily life provide us the opportunity to get insight into the way society evolved.

Conclusion

Enjoyment is about deliberately engaging in certain activities as a way of life. It is about doing certain things which are hard and difficult to do in certain situations and times. It is about eating well, working out regularly, and accepting the pain and suffering as part of life. Enjoying life is a way of life that encompasses – acceptance, contentment, service, and engaging in activities that one finds enjoyable. Enjoying life leads to a deeply satisfying life with peace and tranquility.