I have been guilty of being a task-oriented person and just deriving satisfaction from completing a task instead of allowing myself to just have a great experience. Now I say that carefully with the intention that someone not use what I say about myself against me. When someone called me a control freak the other day, I thought, "Whoa Nellie, only I can call myself that." Trust me, I want to believe I am exaggerating and not as bad as I say I am.
Anyway, I loved that a friend said that she suffers from gratification denial. In the past that has been me. I use to embrace the old Puritanism philosophy that kind of has an antipleasure bias and believed that it's morally superior to deny myself and suffer. I absolutely couldn't do anything fun until all my work was done.
I read how a little boy compared life to making a peanut butter sandwich and how work was the peanut butter and fun was the jam. He said that just like it is best to put the peanut butter on the bread first, it is also best to work first and then add the jam or fun on top after. Well I took that to heart but I spent so much time putting the peanut butter on perfectly and then thinking it was a little indulgent to even add the jam.
Fast forward. Now I have done a little pendulum swing and I have gotten a little too indulgent and it's becoming maybe a little too much jam. Now I will work at stabilizing in the middle or better yet having a higher motivation in either work or play. More about this tomorrow.
2 comments:
i'm so glad you gave yourself a lot of jam today. thanks so much for the great talk and breakfast. lucky me to have a friend like you.
ok, that last comment was not from mary but me. apparently she signed in last week on my computer and i haven't changed it. but i'm sure she feels lucky she knows you too.
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