Chapter 3: Appreciate the Good things in Life
The good things in life are often the small things, the things you do not have to buy for a lot of money. They are there, even if you can’t see them right now. They are things that give you joy and pleasure and fill you with excitement. They make life enjoyable.
When you were a kid, you were more in the moment. You found that the small things made the world go around. For example, if you found out that your favorite food was going to be served at lunch at school, you appreciated that very much and your excitement to eat washed out any sadness or stress that you may have been feeling at the time. Now, as an adult, you may gotten out of this habit. So take some time to appreciate the good things in life and regain your appreciation for life as a whole.
Appreciate the smell of food. The smell of baked bread or chocolate chip cookies, filling the air and making your salivary glands activate. The smell of a freshly sliced tomato or cantaloupe. Let these smells consume you as you cook or as you walk through the aisles of the grocery store. These foods give you life and they are so yummy. Their pleasant aromas provide you with at least a brief moment of olfactory pleasure.
Appreciate the first sip of coffee or tea. Appreciate how the taste overwhelms your senses. That first taste only happens once a day. Enjoy it, savor it even.
Appreciate laughter. Hilarious comedy routines, inside jokes with your friends and family, and laughing with your kids are all times when you abandon the world’s worries and have a good time at the soul level. You reach a point where you feel nothing besides the force of your laughter and the sore feeling that a good laugh leaves in your belly muscles. You may even cry a little. In this moment, you are gone, in a good, happy place.
Appreciate feeling of your first morning stretch when you first get out of bed. Your muscles are stiff and stubborn but you make them comply. The feeling is so comforting that it is hard to describe. The stretching sensation reaches deep into your cells, into your core. You feel it all over and it feels good. You then feel refreshed and more prepared for the day ahead.
Appreciate the feeling of the cold, bright and fresh on your exposed skin. Appreciate the pretty way that your breath plumes in front of you. There is nothing like cold to wake you up and give you vitality. Then appreciate how good the warmth of a fire or heater and a hot drink like cocoa feels when you break out of the cold outside.
Appreciate the sensation of a pool enveloping you in its cool, inviting water on a hot summer day. You may have been burning up getting to the pool, and the soles of your feet may feel burned from the concrete at the pool side, but now you are refreshed and relieved from the heat.
Appreciate the scent of your fabric softener, so familiar yet so sweet. Appreciate the smell of your favorite fragrance as you first spray it on and it cloaks your body in scented mist. Appreciate the smell of your lover’s fragrance too.
Appreciate the comfort of an old movie. You have seen it a million times, but it brings back nostalgia from childhood or a different era in history. Appreciate your popcorn and your loved ones around you as the TV makes the walls of your living room flicker different colors. This is home. This is comfort.
Appreciate the smooth, soapy feeling when you first slide into a bubble bath or when you take a hot shower after a long day. Feel the suds race down your skin and over your feet before they swirl down the drain. As your tension and your dirtiness drains away, you can clear your mind. Appreciate the softness of your towel as you get dry, and the sensation of your clothes sliding on over your clean skin.
Appreciate having a picnic or barbecue with the people that you love. While you try to fend off flies and ants, you connect with Nature and your family. You enjoy good food and the sunshine. You make a memory. You enjoy the smell of barbecue smoke and meat dripping with sauce, or else you enjoy the skewered veggies if you are a vegetarian. Appreciate how you have all united to share this experience and to enjoy the sustenance of life, food.
Appreciate that moment that your favorite song randomly comes on. You have your iPod on shuffle or you are listening to the radio and out of nowhere, you hear those familiar first few chords. Your soul alights in excitement for the rest of the song.
Appreciate opening a box of chocolates and trying to select one that you like. You feel suspense. What if you picked one of the nasty ones? Then, when you get the tasty one that is your favorite, appreciate the delight of the bright sweetness and the resulting pleasure of each bite.
Appreciate every moment of sex. The sweat, the body scents, the pleasure, the breath, the sense of being close to someone. Sometimes the best things in bed are not sex itself, but the sensation of skin contact and tactile touch. Appreciate how just the brush of a fingertip or the flick of a tongue can feel so purely and shockingly amazing.
More than anything, appreciate what seems good to you. Appreciate the simple and even weird pleasures that make you smile and feel whole. We are all unique. Some of us love certain sensations that are inexplicable to others. Find that happy sensation or activity, where your cares fade away and you feel only satisfaction, enjoyment, and contentment flood your body.