12. Pleasure Intolerance

We unpack pleasure intolerance. You could be having wayyyyy more.

Numbness that comes from overstimulation and share how small, sensory rituals restore  your magnetism. 

Practical tools help you receive instead of deflect, rebuild self-trust, and feel your success as it happens.

• defining pleasure intolerance and its causes
• difference between gratification and pleasure
• contrast as a lever to heighten delight
• receiving vs deflecting and resentment loops
• pleasure as resistance to hustle culture
• rest practices to calm an antsy body
• how pleasure reshapes self-concept and magnetism

If you've enjoyed today's episode, hit the plus sign at the top of this podcast to follow the show and share an episode with a friend
For a daily touch point, follow me on Instagram at coach.with.holly or TikTok at coachwithholly
For more resources and offers, visit coachwithholly.com
And if you want to get coached by me, book a consult so we could talk about working together
Use a link in my podcast description below

Hit the plus sign at the top of this podcast to follow the show and share an episode with a friend.For a daily touch point, follow me on Instagram @coach.with.holly or TikTok @coachwithholly
For more resources and offers, visit coachwithholly.com
If you want to get coached by me, >> BOOK A CONSULT << so we can talk about working together.

Transcript

Welcome And Core Premise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the magnetic mindset podcast, where spirituality, style, and strategy meet to help you be your most magnetic self. If you feel like you have achieved success on paper, but are craving a deeper meaning and a life that feels alive, keep listening. The show is hosted by me, your coach, Holly Pendergast. Let's get into it. Pleasure and tolerance is a concept that I heard loud and clear in my Legree class this morning. If you've been around, you know that after I work out, after I do yoga, I'm getting clear ass messages from my channel, my source, my muse. And I heard this so loudly, I was like, oh, shh, that yes, that is the next episode podcast that needs to happen. And I knew exactly, I downloaded all the information on it as soon as I heard the title. But I want to talk to you about it today because it could be the reason why you are feeling blah, like your success isn't as feeling, as exciting, or you just don't know how to celebrate, or you avoid celebrating, or you tell yourself it's not that important, it's not that great, like you do you eat this for lunch. Okay. So what is pleasure intolerance? Now, pleasure is something in our world that has become somewhat overaccessible to us. So when I talk about pleasure, I'm talking about actually feeling it all over in your body and being so radically present that you can't help but feel it in your soul, in your bones, in your body, in your energy. And it's not something that lasts hours and hours. It is merely a moment that is so good it makes everything else worth it. But in our modern day, pleasure is everywhere. Pleasure is overly available, it is over-stimulating, it is overly instant that we become intolerant to it. So we become desensitized to the pleasure. For example, um, artificial sugar, right? It creates this big rush of dopamine, this big rush of excitement and pleasurable experience, right? Or when we have our phones and we are getting likes or whatever. Those are our dopamine receptors that are being fried, fried, fried, fried. So although it can feel pleasurable, it is actually the thing that numbs us. Because when we are overly stimulated in this way, we become intolerant to it. So what becomes lost is the real deal pleasure experience. And we've become so out of touch with this that I'll see somebody like at an airport, okay? And I'm seeing or I'm seeing something go down, and I'm like, wow, they really can't take a moment to look out and see how beautiful the view is. Or like, I'll be at like a resort, all-inclusive, gorgeous ocean resort. And I'm like, and they can't stop being on their phone. And like maybe they're dealing with something, but mostly it's this energy of distraction, this energy of I'm busy, this energy of I need to fix this thing. And they're missing the entire point of why they invested in the experience. And I gotta say, this is something that I see 99% of people that I'm around in Los Angeles experience. And I don't think a ton of people are alive and awake to this, and it's a massive tragedy because you're missing out on so much joy and real satiating, fulfilling pleasure that is going to make you feel alive and not just going through the motions and checking the boxes of having the pleasure in your life. Pleasure is a radical resistance. In a world where it is designed to have us distracted and uh productive and busy, what we really miss out on is real pleasure. And pleasure is the thing that has us stop, drop, and feel our human experience. It's the moments that are going to flash before our eyes as we die. You know, I'm always gonna make it a little bit morbid. Right before you die, so many people have spoken about having all of these memories come and to experience these beautiful moments of pleasure and delight and synchronicities and love and all those amazing experiences that make life worth living. Now, if we are not conscious of them, we're just gonna have a lot fewer of them. And we're gonna have, yes, some beautiful memories, but I want you to consciously activate the power that is enjoying pleasure. And it's nothing you have to like effort to do, but it is something that is a habit. Okay. And this is luckily not something that is very big, and it's something you can activate all the time every day. When you are sent flowers, do you just say, Oh, cool, thank you, put them over there? Or do you take a moment to really stare at them, observe them, receive them, say thank you to Mother Earth for creating them, for the person that sent you them or picked them or whatever? Do you just leave them and you don't have capacity to enjoy them because you are onto the next thing and you are a boss and you're managing and blah blah blah? Can you stop, drop, and feel and enjoy that pleasure when you're eating? It's all these sensory things. When you're eating, do you take the first bite of pasta and like have a moment of silence? I've actually had to tell people a moment of silence and taste something and really let it take over my taste buds and really feel it. Even a sip of wine, a whatever drink you fancy, your first sip of coffee. Are you just that was good? Okay, move on. Or can you take an extra moment to be like, damn, that is why I live, is to experience those moments that remind me how precious life is. The preciousness and the pleasure are recognized simultaneously. The intolerance is I can't appreciate this. I have to move on, I have to do the next thing. So if you are doing this, I want you to actively practice it for the sake of giving yourself the gift of celebrating being alive. I have worked with so many clients who have pretty much everything on paper. They have the house, they have the dream, they have the goal, they have the business or they have the family, they have whatever. And it's like such a beautiful thing to see on the outside. And their internal experience is poor. Their internal experience is decaying. There's so much pressure to be the one who it always lands on, to be the boss, to be the manager, to be the accountant, to be the future-focused person who is making sure everything gets done, to doing the mental and emotional labor of making sure everybody is taken care of in advance and often not taking care of yourself, right? So these pleasures are something that you can't outsource. You can't tell yourself, oh, I'll do it later. You can't tell yourself, oh, I'll hire somebody to feel the pleasure for me. You can't, oh, I'm gonna give this pleasure to my kids. They're gonna love it more. No, it is you because I hear this all the time, too. Oh, my daughter would love these. I'm gonna give them to her. And then the pleasure gets immediately redirected to somebody else. And even though, yes, it's your daughter, yes, she's gonna love it, yes, it feels good to give. You skipped out on you. You like skip a turn on the ride of pleasure. Like you're on a ride at Disneyland, you're in line, and you decided not to go on the ride so that your daughter can go, but that always happens, and you never end up getting on the ride, you never actually experience the pleasure because you're so busy giving it away. And then what builds is resentment. This thing that kills our pleasure, kills our joy, kills our connection. So when you think about pleasure, what comes up for you? Do you immediately think, ew? Do you immediately think, oh, nobody's had time for that? Do you immediately think, yeah, that's for somebody else, or I have enough pleasure, I already have beautiful things. And I want you to second guess yourself here. I want you to ask yourself why? Why not me have pleasure? Some of you might have religious trauma like me, where enjoying yourself or pleasure is painted or was for me, because I'm no longer a participant, something that is meant to wait for later, for heaven, for a delayed gratification, right? And delayed kind of gratification can be an amazing thing. It can help you build self-discipline and routine, and it can help you focus, right? And sometimes delayed gratification is even more satisfying than instant gratification, okay? But what we're talking about here is not gratification, it's pleasure. Pleasure is different. Gratification is sort of a satisfaction, and what I'm talking about here in pleasure is taking delight. So delight is that moment where you feel it in the now. Gratification admires the past work, sacrifice, and focus and can have the long-term healthy satisfaction of celebrating all the hard work you've done. Yes, that is good. Yes, keep doing that. And again, pleasure is sight, taste, smell, sensory, feeling, sensation, and sound even. Can you take extra delight and pleasure in your favorite song played at the right time? Can you take extra time to feel the pleasurable experience of a warm shower? Maybe you do it multiple times a day. Can you feel more pleasure from that snack, from that chocolate you're having by slowing it down, by not eating it hurrying up? Oh, that was cool. Move on. Can you invite more touch if that feels good for you? For your body, for it in sexual pleasure or in cuddles. Can you invite more pleasure in? Pleasure is something that you receive. And that is why a lot of us aren't comfortable with it. When we receive pleasure, we are the taker-inner of the pleasure. When we give or reject, we are deflecting, and it's going away from us and out to somebody else. That is the martyr mentality, but sometimes it can feel really good. And we call it generosity, and we call it being a good person, and we call it being a good mom, sister, wife, whatever. And what you're actually doing is telling yourself no. So, what does that do to the relationship with yourself? What is telling yourself no, no, no, no, no? Somebody, it's for somebody else, somebody else, somebody else, what does that do to you? How are you able to receive the blessings in your life, the experience that it is to be human, if you are rejecting it, reflecting it, and giving it away? How does that affect your life? Really? I know from experience, I've been in big pushes with work or something, and I'm really overdoing it. I'm burning the candle at both ends, or whatever the phrase is, and I am just exhausted. And I can see pictures when I look back, and I'm like in this beautiful place. I'm like in the Honeyton Garden library that is like close to where I live. And I'm like, I was miserable. Look at my face, look at my eyes. There's no light in my eyes. And I remember walking around those beautiful gardens, being so exhausted, seeing plants, seeing roses, and not really receiving them, not really being there, not really enjoying the success that I created that allowed me to go there and experience the gardens on a Wednesday or whatever. I wasn't able to even receive it. So if you're working so hard and you can't even receive your own pleasure, what is the actual fucking point? That is the question. Are you a cog and a wheel? Are you just performing productivity because it feels good because the system tells you to be productive and a useful member of society? The thing is, pleasure is not monetary. You cannot monetize pleasure other than to sell it in the form of candy or sex stuff or over pleasure that creates intolerance. Okay. So when we overdo the false pleasure, which is man-made, manufactured, and too much pleasure, we become numb to it, right? And this is why it actually is sort of boring to revert back to not instantaneous pleasure and gratification, but coming back to that feels good, to stretching in your body can be really pleasurable to slowing down, to letting rain fall on your skin. It's those moments that allow you to appreciate and live your life. Pleasure can also take the form of feeling so good in your body and in your style. Putting together an outfit and being like, yes, I did that, can be a pleasurable experience that you wear all day long. And even moving from outdoor clothes, day clothes to your pajamas, super pleasurable experience, right? And if you only wear clothes that don't feel like you got dressed or just something you put on your body and you're ultra uber comfortable all the time, sweats or yoga pants, that sounds pleasurable, right? But when you only have that uniform, you don't have the contrast that gives you pleasure. You don't have the, okay, I went from jeans to sweats, and that's so pleasurable. You only have sweats, sweats, sweats, which creates pleasure intolerance because now you're numb and you can't even feel how comfortable the sweats are because you can't appreciate it, right? And so these moments of pleasure really come back to stopping, dropping, and letting the pleasure take over, receiving it, looking at it. This can be looking at art on the wall or a sculpture or watching a performance is just really taking it in and allowing yourself to fully receive it without telling yourself that you're wrong, without telling yourself you should move on, without telling yourself hurry up. Okay. This is for everything sensation. This could be the art, it could be the bedroom, it could be anything, it could be food. And I want you to kind of like give yourself a moment to categorize where you reject pleasure the most. Okay, and give yourself a little assignment and choose to activate the pleasure in your body to enjoy it. Pleasure intolerance will keep you from feeling fully alive. And when you're not feeling fully alive, that's not the goal. I don't want you to put that on your list of things to do, right? I want you to feel pleasure because it is your human right to feel it, to feel alive and not follow what society tells you, which is to go, go, go, hurry up, be productive all the time constantly. Pleasure is just as much of a resistance as rest. Rest can be very pleasurable. And what do us very successful women do? We resist rest a lot of time because we're too antsy, we're too anxious, we're too excited, we're having FOMO about the next event. And I want to invite you to sit in the rest as you detox, and detoxing is uncomfortable, right? Because you have to surrender. And surrendering when you are an antsy body is gonna be a little uncomfortable. So when you are resting, how can you make it more pleasurable? Are you gonna add softer, fuzzier socks? Are you gonna add a cat to sit on your leg? Are you gonna do an electric blanket? Like, how much pleasure can you receive until you start rejecting it? Do you make time for it? Probably not. Most people that I know are not like, hmm, I have an hour of pleasure on my calendar on Tuesday from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., right? And you don't have to necessarily do that if you want to. Amazing, you can do a spa day, which is a great example, but it should not be a chore. It should not be something that you have to do because now this is another thing that makes me feel alive. It needs to be pleasure for the sake of respecting and loving yourself so much that you give yourself that experience. Pleasure can be heightened after you do something really hard. Okay. So if you are somebody who works out really hard and you know at the end of the workout, you're gonna do a child's pose, you're gonna lay down. That's gonna be a way more pleasurable experience because of the contrast of doing something really rigorous with your body and burning out a muscle group and feeling so strong and then laying down, it's gonna feel so pleasurable. A yin yoga class, where you are holding a pose from three to five minutes and you are having a lot of restorative poses where there are props and blocks to hold your body so that it can get into the deeper fascia. That is where deep rest and restoration happen. Pleasure can happen there. Pleasure restores you, it is a gift to your body, it is a gift to your soul, it makes you a happier person, it gives you more energy, it is something that you can use as a well of energy to give back into the world, but also give to yourself. Pleasure is important. Don't let your brain or society trick you into believing that it's not. You are not a robot, you are flesh, you are human. AI can do all the hard, complicated, hard, annoying things that it's doing for us in the world. And as we progress in these crazy times, what will be left is our humanity, our human sensation. And I really do believe that even. Even in virtual realities, where we are having the goggles on or whatever, we are looking and imagining things that might give us pleasure. But when you are feeling it and having it in real life, there's a different kind of satisfaction that happens in the body that can't be fabricated. And if you are consuming the artificial pleasures, for example, you will get numb to it and you will need more of it. That's why addiction forms, right? Is too much false pleasure dopamine creates resistance and intolerance, and you're going to need more and more and more. So this way of experiencing pleasure is actually going to be the thing that makes you feel it more intensely. The old school pleasure, the primal pleasure is what I'm talking about. It's not something you can buy. It's something you have to choose to experience and consent to in your body. You have to consent to even the belief that I deserve pleasure. It's okay and it's safe for me to enjoy pleasure. And I will not let my own brain or other people make me feel guilty for it, even though that could easily turn into a shame spiral if you have that sort of upbringing around restriction. When you have a good relationship with not really constriction, not strict boundaries, but more so a collaboration and a combination and having both sides, having the contrast of hard work, which you probably are already doing, especially if you're listening to this podcast, and the pleasure. The pleasure is the thing that you need to bring more into your life. So bring it in. Give yourself that permission slip. Only you can do it. Let your brain have its own fit with this is too much, this is taking too long, and allow yourself to feel it. The more you do that, the easier it will become to gift yourself pleasure, to gift yourself that experience. And not only will it make you a generally happier, joyful person to be around, but you, when you do this, signal to your brain that you are worth being even more highly respected, even treated better by yourself. You are reflecting back to you, your own worthiness. Your self-concept changes as you give yourself more pleasure. And how you treat yourself is how you treat others to teach you too. So when people see you and you're all pleasured up and you're all happy and delighted, guess what other people want to do? They want to delight you more and give you free things and treat you nicer because you are a contagious magnetic energy that everybody wants to enjoy. So you get all pleasured up, you become more magnetic, you spread positivity in a world that is suffering from positivity, and you spread that, it comes back to you and it becomes an incredible cycle. Watch out for pleasure and tolerance. Come back to the real thing. If you want the false thing, that's okay too. Just know that you can take it in small increments and be aware of how much false pleasure you are consuming and come back to the primal pleasure. Come back to pleasure that is going to actually feed and nourish your body and soul. This is going to make you extra magnetic in these times. Being magnetic isn't actually for other people. It's not to get anything or make anything come to you. It's simply for you. It's simply your natural state of being when you are in your happiest state, not excited, overly thrilled state, but in a place where you feel good about who you are in the world, how you treat yourself, and how you move about your world. That is for you. The magnetism happens as another delightful point of attraction, of opportunities, of people that want to come into your life that are great fit for the alignment of that by vibration that you're at in your frequency. But being magnetic is for you. It is the gift you give yourself to come back into your natural state. I really do see when we are, and I've experienced this too, when you are overworked, burned out, stressed out. It's a massive sign of misalignment, of betraying yourself. And it makes us a dull. And we might get some results, but they're gonna come with a lot of action, a lot of grit, a lot of elbow grease when really you could take that out, or you can treat yourself nicely, still work, of course, and still do all those things that are healthy for your business, for yourself. You're still gonna be doing adulting, but you're still gonna be, you're still gonna have that advantage of feeling good in your body. People come up to me all the time and they're like, you're just like glowing. Or they tell me, Oh my God, you look 10 years younger than your age. And I'm like, thank you. And I know it's not because of my face. It's not because my, it's not because of what I really look like. It's the energy that I emit, where people tell me, Oh, you you feel so young. Like you are kind of almost naive to this point. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's not that I'm naive, it's that I've actively decided how I want to show up in the world. And yes, it is probably some of my spirit that was designed to come across this way. But this is not actually my constant state. I have done the healing for me to stay soft in the world when it would be easy for me to be hard. It would be easy for me to be bitchy and ruthless and blunt, but I have done the work to have self-compassion, of course, something that I'm always working on, and therefore compassion outwardly towards other people that has me come across as super young, unaware, naive, pure. Okay. This is the energy that I vibrate at naturally because that at the core of who I am, that is the vibration that I admit that I give out because that is my signature frequency. And I know when I'm not in this state, when I'm super grumpy or I'm angry at the world, I know, okay, this isn't me. This is something that I am grumpy about. This is something that I am in the mindset of something gross and I need to explore a little bit or maybe be here and flounder in it. And then when I'm ready, I know how to let it go and come back into what is actually me, what is actually the vibration that feels right, that is my most magnetic self. That is your lesson of the day. Go enjoy some pleasure. Simple pleasure is gonna do it all the time. Okay, don't make it complicated. You don't need to buy shit. This is a bodily experience. And embodying your pleasure is the thing that makes you magnetic and gets you back into your magnetic frequency. Thanks for listening. And if you've enjoyed today's episode, hit the plus sign at the top of this podcast to follow the show and share an episode with a friend. For a daily touch point, follow me on Instagram at coach.with.holly or TikTok at coachwithholly. For more resources and offers, visit coachwithholly.com. And if you want to get coached by me, book a consult so we could talk about working together. Use a link in my podcast description below. Talk soon.