How to enjoy practically anything

On my bike ride this morning I was benefiting from a practice I call, “find a way to enjoy this.” It’s a great tool for getting through tasks you’d really rather not be doing at the moment. In fact, it works for practically any moment of malaise.

It’s simply this: instead of concentrating on how much your butt hurts, whether your knee is going to start aching soon, and how strong the headwind is, you tell yourself, I will find a way to enjoy this.

Most times, that’s all it takes. The complaining part of your self shuts up and the self that is open to the present moment takes over. What happens then is the annoying aspects of what you are doing cease to matter.

If you need to, you can concentrate on things about the situation that you actually like. For example, when you are working on a budget, think of how the certainty of numbers has a calming effect. Enjoy the gleam of the toilet you’ve just cleaned. Take the opportunity to bless each artifact of your existence while you dust it.

But the mantra, I will find a way to enjoy this, often works on its own and the annoyance and worry drop away without further ado.

Yesterday I was repeating it every five minutes when I was helping to work out the final round of logistics for the upcoming Congo Cloth Market at the big Mennonite USA convention in Pittsburgh next week. And then during the tedious negotiations with the designer on a cumbersome new feature on the website I’m responsible for. (I ended up talking with him about Africa.)

I must credit this mantra to my daughter, who learned it from our friend Sang, the irrepressibly joyous moving force behind the DoJo Kitchen Tai Chi and energy healing group.

And perhaps Sang learned it from St. Paul, who claimed, in words I remember from the King James Version of my childhood, “I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.” (Philippians 4:11)

I haven’t tested this particular mantra in really hard times. But I know that it prevents daily annoyances and difficulties from festering into deeper unhappiness. And it increases one’s capacity for discipline, for doing the kind of work that may be rewarding in the long run but involves a lot of practice or tasks you’d really rather not do.

Training for a century ride or any athletic endeavor is not inherently fun. Any profession requires sacrifice, preparation, jumping through hoops, and bits and parts that too often end up on the procrastination pile.

Faced with these, the judging self (who has named the situation distasteful in the first place) turns away and sighs, woe is me, I hate this stuff. But the resolve to, instead, find a way to extract pleasure from the very same situation makes it magically happen. I stop complaining and dreading. My mood moves first into neutral territory and then I become open to pleasure.