In this transcript, Hollis leads a candid exploration of pleasure, from quick dopamine hits to the weight of guilt, to a deeper, more heart-felt experience of pleasure.  

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to another installment of this wonderful podcast where we explore all of these nuanced feelings and experiences and details of life, sometimes with the purpose of coming to some strong conclusions about how to approach these things, how to navigate them, and sometimes with the purpose of just exploring them and hoping that our dialogues and our conversations peak your own curiosity, self-interest, self-expansion, and self-exploration.  

This week it's just me on this episode, and I'm going to be talking a lot about something that I've been thinking about a lot. Honestly, it's been a conversation I've been having with myself for years, and I don't know what exactly set it off, but I know that it came to me at some point, probably within the last 10 to 15 years, and that is our relationship to pleasure. And this was posed to me as a question either from someone or something that I read, and it was, do you know what brings you pleasure? And do you know what pleasure feels like? And do you allow yourself to experience it?  

And at the time, I remember thinking, I don't even know what pleasure is or how I would define it, and that's not to say that I haven't experienced a lot of pleasure in my lifetime. I mean, I can give you countless examples from being a rebellious teenager, having way too much fun with my friends, you know, being an indulgent 20 something and having fun with my friends or having fun with myself or doing things that I love to do. I think that I am the type of person that actively pursues what is pleasurable and what feels good in my life, but it had never been something that was defined for me. And the more I started to think about it, the more I started to really recognize how much I emphasized it for myself and how often people don't emphasize it for themselves at all, and how often others tend to put pleasure aside for the sake of responsibility or for the sake of somebody else's pleasure or for, you know, a countless number of reasons. But as someone who fully, wholeheartedly believes in living for the things that light you up, I feel like it is really important for me to have this episode where I discuss exactly what pleasure means and how to pursue it for oneself and how to pursue it without guilt and for the sheer fact that it inspires us to live more deeply in our bodies and in our own lives and in our experiences.  

When I was really little, not to out my mom or anything, but she was always trying out different fad diets when I was little, and I was the type of kid that loved food. I still love food. I mean, I use food metaphors and analogies all the time. I probably used a million of them on this podcast already. Food is the light of my life in so many ways. But when I was younger and I would see her trying out these diets, I would always say why, you know, why would you not want to eat what you enjoyed? You know, just eat it. It's fun. It's delicious. It makes you feel good. And obviously now as a 30 something year old woman, I understand why we don't eat certain foods, why we do put restrictions on ourselves, because it maintains health, it maintains mental health and physical health. You know, I think also food and diet is a whole other conversation. But all that to say, I have always been the type of person that has emphasized doing what feels good, even if you are sacrificing something else that maybe for the long term is actually better for you. And that's something that I've had to curb over the course of my life and in my process of becoming an adult.  

I recognize that pleasure really can come in the form of things like discipline or the long game. But it's also something that I've recognized a lot of people tend to withhold from themselves, almost as if they are non-deserving of it. And when I think about just living as a human being in this lifetime, so much of what we have to experience has to do with pain and has to do with sacrifice and has to do with suffering in a lot of ways. Heartbreak is something that I think we experience on a daily basis in this world and just feeling separate or confined or unable to really embody what it is that we most desire. And pleasure, though I think it has kind of gotten a little distorted in our culture over the last 10-20 years, maybe even longer, but at least in my lifetime, I've seen it really become kind of distorted into these sort of saccharine little tidbits of dopamine hits and whatnot.

Pleasure is something that I think, when you're able to find it and it's really resonant, it's not just a quick little bite of candy, it's something that really, really feels nourishing. Those experiences, those people, those conversations, those memories are what define so much of our lives more so than the challenging moments, and more so than the experiences of pain. And when you look back on your life and you think about the things that lit you up and that you felt deeply connected to from your heart, those are the pleasurable experiences. Those are the pleasurable moments. So it's something that I want to emphasize that we all seek in some capacity and today I kind of want to break down how it is that we can go about seeking pleasure and seeking the experience of really deep, resonant pleasure on a really kind of soulful level so that we can live more in pursuit of those experiences and with a focus on those types of experiences. So that we can fill up our lives with more joy and more of what feels really, really good for our bodies, for our hearts, for our spirits. And again, less in a kind of quick hit way and more on a I'm going to enjoy this because this feels so true to who I am and what I want, and it feels so good, it just lights me up, sort of way.

So the first thing that I want to say and preface to all of this, which is something that we often do in these episodes, is talk about the root of the word ‘pleasure’ and where it comes from. And ‘pleasure’ originates from the definition to please. And this is pretty self-explanatory, right? How do you please oneself? How do you please someone else? How do you please your spirit, your heart, your mind? What are the things that naturally bring you that sense of gifting yourself? And when we're talking about expanding pleasure in your life and expanding your awareness of your own pleasure, I would love for you to start thinking about what are the things that feel like they're gifts to yourself? That thing that makes you feel good. When you think about asking for something and you say, 'Can I have this please?,' that saying implies that you really want something, not that you are asking for something because you have to have it. I mean, sometimes that is the case, but it really also has this imprint of I want this because this is going to nourish me and it's going to make me feel really good in some capacity. It's going to give me a little bit of life.  

So what are the things that you gift to yourself on a regular basis and also what are the things that you don't give to yourself or that you frequently deprive yourself of that you do really want? And to make sure that we're not dipping into the side of indulgence here, or unhealthiness, or creating dysfunctional visions - what are the things that, if you did give them to yourself, they would actually encourage a level of health and a level of healing?  

So OK full disclosure, I started out this year 2024 on a really, really rough note. It's been a big emotional roller coaster and it's been difficult for me to find my footing on a daily basis. And in the course of this roller coaster, I have rediscovered my love for knitting. I used to work at a knitting store 12 years ago. And so it was a part of my life for a while, but I completely dropped it, and in this process of wanting to find something that would calm me and would help me feel like I'm being productive, while also creating something and feeling like I'm using my energy and creativity in some way, I found my way back to knitting. And I have been voraciously knitting. I said to somebody recently if I gave anything else, the amount of energy and time that I have been giving to knitting, I would probably be making millions of dollars right now. But it's one of those things that is not necessarily financially stabilizing. It doesn't necessarily have a bigger purpose or a broad grand purpose. But it's something that has allowed me to find pleasure in my days where most of the time I felt a lack of pleasure, or I felt more of an experience of wounding.

And so what are the things that you love to do and when you think about them, they light you up in some way or maybe they used to light you up that you have put on the back burner. The things that you know that when you participate in them, you almost feel like you're entering into a healing state or a flow state? I like to think of it like when you put on lotion and how it just feels like your whole body is being cooled and moisturized, and it just feels like you're giving love back to yourself. What is that metaphorical experience like for you in other activities or experiences or with other people? Start to get clear on what those things are. And the list can be so, so small, but just putting a little more emphasis on them and recognizing that these are the things that most bring you that spark of pleasure.  

And then the next thing that I would encourage you to start thinking about is, where does guilt factor into this? I don't think that we can have a conversation about pleasure without discussing guilt or even a level of shame or embarrassment. It's usually the things that we feel most excited about, that we feel the most connected to from our heart, that we feel the most vulnerable around and we can start to get really, really sensitive to how that is perceived by other people or how societally accepted it is. It becomes more susceptible to criticism because it's something that we hold within our hearts, and we feel is an extension or an expression of ourselves. So, when we're talking about the things that give us pleasure, where do you hold a level of guilt or which experiences do you hold a level of guilt around?  

I know that once we start to talk about guilt and especially about shame or embarrassment, it starts to feel a little icky and we can start to feel experiences of discomfort and even, you know, physical experiences of discomfort. But I would really encourage you to start thinking about where that guilt comes from. Was there something that was said? Was there something that you experienced? Did somebody tell you it was wrong or not OK or make fun of you? Or did you see something or witness something that told you that? Where does the guilt or the shame or embarrassment come from? And how can you start to rewrite the story that you have around that guilt so that you can open your way to allowing for that pleasure. Allowing for your own enjoyment.  

And again, there are levels to all these things. Obviously there are things that aren’t socially acceptable and they're not socially acceptable for a reason. And I'm talking about things like hurting other people without their consent, etcetera, etcetera. But for the most part, I think a lot of us harbor guilt or shame around things that are so, so small that when we actually put them down on paper and we start to pull apart and parse out the narrative that we have because of the guilt, we start to recognize that it's really not as big of a deal as we think it is. Or that we recognize that we have some wounding around those things and it's a space for us to start inviting in some healing and apply a salve to that wound.  

I'll give another example here. When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with emo music. All I wanted was to be a cool scene kid. And I tried really hard to be one of those people. But I also loved R&B and hip hop and pop music, but I would not let anyone know that I loved these other genres. I would listen to them secretly on the radio. And I would hide it as much as possible from all of my friends and anyone that I knew, because I felt like I would be ostracized or I would be made fun of. And as I've gotten older and my music taste has gotten even broader, I recognize that I still hide a lot of the music that I listen to from other people, and I don't talk about it as much because I think that it's going to be too weird. That people won’t understand what I like or that they'll look at me and be like, why do you why do you listen to this...this is so strange.  

As I am saying this out loud, I hope that you can see that this is something that is so small and that most people will not care. But to me there is an old, core wound that I have of not wanting to be ostracized and wanting to be accepted and appreciated by people that I really looked up to and thought were really inspiring.

And maybe you're thinking of your own story that is similar to this, where you might be holding on to an old wound that you don't need to be holding on to or you don't need to be covering up. And by simply unraveling a little bit of that tenderness, you can start to make way for more enjoyment and more uninhibited enjoyment of what it is that you might be hiding or harboring or keeping from yourself or from others.  

Now the next part of redoing, reexamining, reexploring our relationship to pleasure, is actually practicing the pleasurable practices, actually doing the things that make us feel really lit up from the inside. And often there are many little things that we do on a daily basis that will naturally bring us pleasure and it's become organic. But for the things that we really want to do that maybe we're scared to do, or that we've held a lot of guilt and shame around for years, it can be really, really, really hard to take that next step to doing the thing that we know is going to feel really good. So this is where I really recommend baby steps. Simple, manageable bite-size pieces of the thing that you want to do.  

So, let's say you want to start riding your bike more often because you rode your bike as a kid and as a teenager and it was so much fun and then you stopped riding as an adult because work got in the way, family got in the way, whatever. But decide, I am prioritizing riding my bike because I know it's going to feel so good for my mental health, physical, and emotional health, everything. So, if you haven't ridden your bike in 10 years, you don't want to go out and ride for 30 miles. You want to ride, maybe around the block. You want to look at your schedule and say, oh, I have 20 minutes there, let me just ride around the neighborhood. Let me just pull out the bike and my helmet and set them up in a space where I can see them on a regular basis and say, oh yeah, I remember you. I remember you.  

You want to set yourself up so that the expectations are low. And the expectation on yourself for making time and space and having the energy to do the thing is really, really low, so that when you choose to do the thing, it's a choice that comes from with pleasure. You want to do the thing because you see it and you remember it and you're like, oh yes, now I have the time. You're not scheduling it like a dentist appointment, you're not telling yourself, oh, I told myself I was going to do this thing, so I'm going to do it! You want to do it in a way that feels natural and feels organic, and it feels like, oh, I can do this. I'm not setting myself up for feeling like a failure. I'm not getting on my bike after 10 years, telling myself I'm going to ride 30 miles and then getting to mile 5 and being like, wow, I can only do 5 miles. I'm such a failure, blah blah blah. And then starting to go down the guilt and shame spiral all over again.  

You want to approach it as if you were completely new to the experience and you're exploring it as an opportunity and it's something that you get to do. Because there is nothing that that says not pleasurable as a forced activity that you're putting on yourself. So how can you start to set yourself up in a way that the door is naturally opening for you to take the next step and letting it build organically from there? Let's say it's simply pulling out your clothes for your bike ride that you know you're going to take tomorrow or setting out your bike so that it's easy for you to grab whatever it is that you have to do and then very slowly, in your own time, based on your own natural rhythms, starting to increase the experience of that pleasurable thing to the point that feels good for you.  

So I recently started water coloring again. Last year, I got really, really into it. It happened very organically. I had pulled out the materials, found all the things that I loved, started pinning things on Pinterest that I wanted to paint, and then one day I just got into it and I got very into it for a few months. And then I let it go, but I have not let it go completely. I know that it's something that I really enjoy doing and that I will probably pick up again when the time feels right, but I'm also not getting mad at myself for not being committed or staying consistent with water coloring. It's something that, because it's pleasurable, I get to do when I want to do it, and I have it in my back pocket as something that I can do when I want to do it. So knowing that you can build to the point that feels good for you, and then you can always put it on pause, that's part of the pleasurable experience. It's part of the experience of pleasure that you get to luxuriate in the flow of and the gravitational pull towards the thing as it develops and as it occurs. You don't have to force yourself into it.  

But that said, as we're building our relationship to pleasure, making it as easy as possible for you to start easing into the pleasurable activities, is going to really set you up for success. And then turning up the volume on the experience when you have it, allowing yourself to be in the pleasure while you're having it, so that you can imprint it onto your body and onto your mind. There is something about being very conscious of our experiences and that creating an imprint for us to come back to. If we're just doing the pleasurable activity but we're not acknowledging that it's bringing us joy or that we're in the experience of fun, then we're more likely to forget it or to not value it or appreciate it as if we were very conscious of it, or as if we were allowing ourselves to be more embodied in the experience. So showing up to the experience when you're in it and letting yourself fully experience it and be aware of the sights, the sounds, the smells, how you feel in your body will just make it all the more natural for you to come back to that or to want to come back to that experience or activity, or that person or that thing more often.  

Now, I say all of this, and I know that it's all easier said than done. The same thing with many of the things on this podcast are easier said than done. And especially if you're the type of person that puts pleasure on the back burner and sets it aside for taking care of others first, it's going to be difficult. And this is for all of you out there and myself included, that I just want to state the reminder that our lives are a series of choices, and we can make choices that either feel really good or feel really not so good or something in between, you know? But if we have the space for the choice, if we have the possibility for the choice, we don't always have the ability to choose pleasure, but there is usually a way that we can choose something and find the pleasure in it, or allow it to be more pleasurable. You know, driving to work in traffic is not pleasurable, but you can make it more pleasurable if you're listening to the music that you really love or listening to a podcast that you really love or calling up a friend that you really love or making yourself a delicious coffee to accompany you on that ride. You know, there are so many things that we can do in small ways to remind ourselves of the power of our own choice and the power of our own autonomy and our ability to invite pleasure into our lives in small ways all day, every day.

And by doing that, more often, by choosing the small pleasure, the small, simple pleasures on a daily basis, it can make it that much easier for us to see the things that we really want. The things that maybe we're most afraid to go after. And say, I can do that because I've done it so many other times on a smaller scale. Because what we're doing when we give ourselves those simple pleasures, those little acts of enjoyment on a regular basis, is we're showing ourselves how to please ourselves, how to give ourselves the love and the nurturance that we deserve, and the joy that we deserve. And the more we make space for giving ourselves joy, and the more demonstrations and acts of joy we give ourselves, the more we can trust ourselves to do the bigger things, or at the very least, if we reach out for the pleasure that we want to have, or the thing that we want and we're not able to get it, we're reminded, and we know very, very securely that there are so many other things that bring us pleasure. And that we don't have to rely on that one thing, that one big thing that we were brave enough to reach out for that maybe we didn't get back in return or that we weren't just given. We don't have to put all of our eggs in that one basket. We can look at the rest of our lives and say, you know what, maybe I don't have that one thing, but look at everything else that I have.  

At the end of the day, I think pleasure is really just gratitude. You know, I think that we can find pleasure in virtually anything and everything if we're open to it and if we allow ourselves to experience it. But it starts with appreciation and the more we build up that appreciation and the more we recognize all those little things that contribute to the joy of our life, the more we don't need everything. We don't crave things that aren't for us. The more we also know what is for us and the more we can allow ourselves to indulge in the pleasures that bring us authentically joy. The things that are really, really going to light you up that maybe won't light everybody up, but it doesn't matter because you are satisfied, you are fulfilled by it.  

So I hope that after listening to this, you can step into your day or whatever it is that you're experiencing at the moment or next, with a little more of your twinkling eyes sparkling for something that brings you joy, or that lights you up. You know, you can look at things and be like, oh, look at that candy over there that looks delicious. Or, you know, whatever tantalizes you and you can consciously pursue it in a way that is guilt-free and is really fulfilling and nurturing. Delight in what is in front of you and your life will be full of pleasure and joy. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode and we will catch you in the next one.