False Pleasure vs Well Being

Today we'll look at false pleasure, well being, artificial pleasure, and natural pleasure and why you want to increase your natural pleasures and live in the well being cycle.

Take Aways

•  Artificial pleasures are things that are temporary. They provide a temporary fix or a temporary benefit, and they come with negative consequences.
• Natural pleasures of life are less intense but come without consequence. 
• Examples of natural pleasures: slow walks in beautiful settings, great reads, a clean closet, great podcasts, scented candles (or diffuser with essential oils), wonderful music, sleeping in, soft clothing, great movies, soft blankets, spa services, sunshine, clean sheets, singing, playing a musical instrument, cooking, crafting, and more.
• False pleasure living: immediate gratification, consistent negative consequence, increased desire, unconscious neural pathways strengthening, narrowed focus on pleasure, downregulated dopamine.
• With false pleasure... external dependance on drugs, alcohol, sugar, flour, pornography, internet use, video games, social media, scrolling, tv/netflix, people-pleasing, approval-getting, shopping.
• Well being living: delayed gratification, prefrontal cortex planning, awareness, compassion, patience, ability to stay in the present moment, ability to feel emotion.
• Example: throw away Halloween candy when you're trying to eat healthy. 
• There's a cycle of over desiring and overeating and being unhealthy that leads to low confidence and low self-esteem. 
•  False pleasure living perpetuates unconsciousness and lack of control, and well being living perpetuates consciousness and self-management.
•  It's not simply about being healthy. It's not simply about honoring your commitment to yourself. It's about developing the skill sets that will continue your growth throughout your life.

False Pleasure Cycle 

1. Think about getting pleasure.
2. Feel unwanted intense desire.
3. Consume intense false pleasure.
4. Receive dopamine reward.
5. Negative consequence lead to more unwanted desire.

The Well Being Cycle

1. Plan long term well being.
2. Manage and feel all temporary urges for false pleasure.
3. Calculate and limit exposure to all intense false pleasure.
4. Manage and honor true desires.
5. Develop per

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Transcript

Episode 79: False Pleasure vs Well Being

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

Hello. Happy November. Hope you all had wonderful Halloween and we're getting into the colder months. I know for us it has just turned cold. This morning was the first time that I remembered in time to go start the van so that it would be warmer by the time I loaded up the kids for school.

I am proud of myself for that, and hopefully I can remember more so that they don't have to be shivering on the way to school even when they're in their [00:01:00] jackets. Like, well, just not used to that. Um, yeah.

Anyway, , two of my kids are in a musical here, the local, the children's theater, and. , I did so much more with it volunteer wise than I expected to, and that I've done than I've done in the past., One of the nights last week, I think it was Friday, or no, it was Saturday.

So they'd already done opening night, which our family attended. Saturday night I planned to just drop off the kids, get 'em kind of situated. They go and they do hair and makeup and get their costumes on. Well, they were trying to make this pillar of fire, and I had been a little bit in the know with what was going on, because I had cut out these pieces of flame [00:02:00] from cloth and some yellow and some orange. But holy cow, they were going all out. And so even though it was Saturday and they'd already done one show they were sewing this, um, pillar of fire. So the musical is Prince of Egypt, and it's based on the Dreamworks.

Uh, movie, obviously the biblical story as well . So you remember that there's a pillar of fire and I, it was crazy. I ended up staying the whole time sewing, hand sewing these flames onto, um, cloth Anyway, but I hear that it looks even more awesome now 'cause that wasn't there the first night we went.

And next Friday I'll get to see it with, um, my husband and his parents are coming into town for the show. So yeah, it'll be fun.

, Today I want to talk about false pleasure [00:03:00] versus wellbeing. And we're gonna touch on some natural pleasures and some false pleasures.

Well, artificial pleasures I guess as well. That's where I wanna start.

As humans, we are motivated by a few things. And in the psychology world, which I have not studied psychology, I only know what I know from Googling and from some research and from my life coach certification. There's a thing called the motivational triad. It's the three primary motivations that we have naturally, and one of them is to seek pleasure. And along with that seeking comfort is kind of along the same lines, but so the motivational triad, if you are curious is, seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserve energy. And people word it differently.

But those are essentially the [00:04:00] three basic motivations as as humans. The problem that arises is sometimes we do this, we seek these things and we try to avoid pain, or we try to make things easier by going to artificial sources like drinking alcohol to dull or numb pain or numb, negative feelings. It can add other problems into our life if we use artificial things to get pleasure.

Artificial pleasures are things that are temporary. They provide a temporary fix or a temporary benefit, and they come with negative consequences. Think alcohol, drugs, overeating, shopping, if it's to an extreme right over scrolling, watching too much TV [00:05:00] or any of those streaming things, and just in general kind of over consumption.

So that's what, if you're trying to think of, well, what are some artificial pleasures? Those are some of them, and then some natural pleasures and natural comforts. Um, well, I'll give you kind of a list of those, but the interesting thing is when we set out to change something about ourself that we don't like, or we just want to improve our ourself in some way, it could be health wise, it could be financially, it could be in our relationships, but in any way we usually stumble upon some artificial pleasures that we have been indulging in that are leading to negative consequences in whatever area we wanna make ourself better in. And one of the [00:06:00] really cool, side benefits, or may, maybe we can just say benefits of learning how to comfort ourselves without relying on external sources is that we can feel and experience natural pleasure even more. When we are relying on artificial pleasures it's affecting our emotional wellbeing and our ability to feel and experience things.

When we, um, set those aside or when we overcome them, at least to a degree, it opens up this ability for us to feel and experience natural pleasures even more. So that is a huge benefit to learning how to comfort ourselves emotionally, without, relying on external sources or on artificial pleasures [00:07:00] that are temporary. It's huge, huge benefit.

I wanna give you some examples. Slow walks. These are examples of natural pleasures. Slow walks, especially in beautiful settings and with animals. Great reads, A clean closet, great podcasts, scented candles, or a diffuser with, essential oils, wonderful music,

sleeping in, soft clothing, great movies, soft blankets, spa services like Massage, sunshine, clean sheets, singing or playing a musical instrument,

cooking, crafting.

Just to add here, if [00:08:00] you're doing those things because you have to, then you probably won't receive the natural pleasure from it. Say you're practicing the piano because you are playing on Sunday, the natural pleasure won't be as much for you. Possibly anyway. Just keep it in mind.

If you are like I do that and I don't feel like I get any emotional benefit, then maybe that's why it could be tied to your work or it could be tied to, um, an obligation that you need to f fulfill.

I really encourage you to lower the amount of ar your artificial pleasure so that you can really feel and enjoy natural pleasures.

All right, let's shift to false pleasure versus wellbeing. Know that it's okay that you seek pleasure, [00:09:00] like it's part of living, so you don't need to beat yourself up about it. It's fine. It's part of life and it helps us find fun. So it's not all bad. It's just good to be aware of what's affecting your life in a way that you don't like, and then moving on from there.

False pleasure living. It looks like this. Immediate gratification, consistent negative consequences, tolerance, increased desire for the false pleasure, unconscious neural pathways get strengthened, intense pleasure expectation, inordinate emphasis on the false pleasure, narrowed focus on pleasure, and a downregulated dopamine, because the more you get it, the less dopamine effect it has on you.[00:10:00] 

So that's false pleasure living. And if that sounds like you, well, maybe you wanna change something. I'm, I think you do. ,

Anyway, wellbeing, living, delayed gratification, prefrontal cortex planning. That's like making lists, having schedules, deciding ahead of time that you're gonna do something, and then following through.

Awareness, compassion, patience, ability to stay in the present moment, ability to feel emotions, ability to manage thinking, development of skills to reach higher potential emotional maturity. Independence, accomplishment, goal setting, deep intimate connections, truth, internal pleasure and evolution in terms of [00:11:00] evolving to be a better version of yourself.

Doesn't that just sound amazing? Like wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just snap our fingers and we lived that way we could delay that gratification. We could think through our decisions and not make as many bad ones. Um, have patience. It is possible. It takes some effort, but it really is possible.

Some other things about false pleasure living. There's usually an external dependence on at least one of these things. Often multiple of these things, especially if you're facing an addiction. External dependence on drugs, on alcohol, on sugar, on flour, on pornography, on internet use, on video games, shopping, TV or Netflix.

People pleasing and approval getting. [00:12:00] So you feel good when you are pleasing other people. When they're saying, um, or when they are expressing appreciation. But you can't feel good about yourself when you're not receiving that. Um. I would also add here, an external dependence on cell phone use or on social media, on feedback from that, whether it's in the form of likes or people commenting . Be aware of that. If that is where you get your self worth, then you're probably in false pleasure living at least somewhat. And there's room for change.

The false pleasure cycle is, there's kind of five pieces of it and I'm just gonna read 'em one, think about getting the pleasure. Two, feel an unwanted, intense [00:13:00] desire.

Next, you consume the intense false pleasure, then you receive a dopamine reward and last the negative consequence leads to more unwanted desire.

The wellbeing cycle also has five parts, and it is one, plan long-term wellbeing. Two, manage and feel all temporary urges for false pleasure. Three. Calculate and limit exposure to all intense False pleasure. Four, manage and honor true desires. Five, develop perpetual ongoing positive results. I was talking about this with a client last week and I [00:14:00] wanna give you an example of her using this cycle.

She has a plan to be a certain weight. So that's number one. She's planned for her long-term wellbeing and along with her plan, overall health is the goal. She is learning and doing a great job managing and feeling temporary urges for food, for sugar. Um, and those are like if it's overeating right past what your body needs, that's a false pleasure.

She's doing that. And that's step two. Third, calculate and limit exposure to all intents false pleasure. We had Halloween just a few days ago, right? And when we got on the call, this was after Halloween, a few days after Halloween, and she said I [00:15:00] threw away the rest of the stuff, the rest of the candy.

She said, it took me a few days, but yesterday I just did it. And that is her limiting her exposure to all intense false pleasure because every time she sees that, it's gonna increase her desire for it or it's going to be a reminder of, Hey, if you eat me, you can get a dopamine reward. You can feel better right now.

I was so proud of her for that and I told her that. This is an area of her life where she is exercising the wellbeing cycle and she's feeling positive results from it.

I wanted to give you that example 'cause it's just right there. Very easy and relatable. 

There's a cycle of over desiring and overeating and being unhealthy that leads to low confidence and low self-esteem. [00:16:00] The low self-esteem perpetuates the need for comforting pleasure, and the cycle repeats with over desiring as an escape from uncomfortable emotions when we learn how to feel instead of engage in that false pleasure, whether it's overeating or something else, when we learn to feel and delay gratification. Take full responsibility for our emotions and make and plan for those emotions that are gonna come up. The cycle is very different. We feel in control. We can manage our desires, and it gives us tremendous confidence and self-esteem to then apply those skills to other areas of our life, I would say to all areas of our life, but we don't have to do it all at the same time.

Focus on one area and then, um, another at a different time. The false pleasure and [00:17:00] wellbeing scenarios continue to expand the more they are practiced just as we get better at creating or negating self-esteem. It's a mistake to think that these things stay static. One perpetuates unconsciousness and lack of control, and the other perpetuates consciousness and self-management.

It's not simply about being healthy or about being able to wear the clothes you want. It's not simply about being able to manage. Yourself every moment of every day. It's not simply about honoring your commitment to yourself. It's about developing the skill sets that will continue your growth throughout your life.

I wanna add here that it is possible and you are worth it, your body. Is worth it. Your relationships are worth it. Your money health is worth it to take time to notice your [00:18:00] habits and notice the ones that are artificial pleasures and that are bringing some stress and strain into your life, and make a plan for how you can lessen that stress.

Okay, we'll talk to you next time.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.