Yan Maschke, September 8, 2017
Photo by Nikos Angelis. Sunset on Patmos beach in Samos, Greece. August 30, 2017
My cultural upbringing conditioned me with a propensity for hardship endurance and pleasure postponement. Even the use of the word "pleasure" towards myself triggers just a subconscious sense of guilt.
During dinner with our friend Nikos while visiting him in Samos Greece, he shared that according to the famous Samos-born Greek philosopher Epicurus in the 3rd century BC, life is about pleasure.
Thinking to myself, "Well, isn't that kind of shallow?"
Holding in that thought, I said, "I am not sure about that. I think life is about a lot more... maybe it's about achieving something, or making some kind of difference..."
Nikos then went on to explain that Epicurus was often misunderstood to advocate rampant pursuit of pleasure - commonly viewed as "sins". But it was not what he meant. People need to see from Epicurus' perspective.
Later I learned, for Epicurus, pleasure and pain define good and bad. Life is about minimizing harm and maximizing happiness of oneself and others - free from fear and pain.
I paused. Putting this in the context of leadership and coaching, I am thinking of Epicurus' "pleasure" as in doing things we enjoy (while good for others), and doing them using our natural strengths so that life is pleasurable.
In my coaching work, I help draw out the best in business leaders as they take on big challenges and opportunities. They are most effective when aligning work with passions, visions, values, and their most powerful strengths. With that, they can drive change and make an impact in a sustainable way. From that space of congruence and flow, work becomes a pleasure!
Well, Now that I am thinking in that context, I can totally get Epicurus - pleasure is a good thing!
If you are with this logic so far, and if you would like to add a bit more pleasure in your life, I wonder if you would be interested in joining me for a quick exercise?
- Take Quick Inventory: Take a quick inventory of what % of work you do is pleasure and what % is non-pleasure. Follow your intuition and don't over-think this. Just a quick estimate. Please feel free to expand this from work to things you do in life in general.
- Pick One Thing of Pleasure: Among the things in the "pleasure" bucket, what is the one small thing you would like to do more of and it's realistic to do so in the next 2 weeks.
- Do More of the One Thing: Make a commitment to yourself to do more of that thing in the next 2 weeks.
Once you are done with the first item, you can pick another one to play with. What's most important here is not about what you pick. The key here is picking something and doing something about it. Keep it small, keep it "baby steps".
Then you can choose to reflect. How much did you like the exercise, what you liked or disliked about it, what you learned from it, whether you'd like to do more of it, how you might want to modify it...
Be curious. Be playful. Have fun!
