How to feel differently

I'm not intentionally choosing to have a negative attitude

I'm surrounded by messages urging me to be positive and make the best of things. Like so much advice, if I knew how to be positive I would already be doing it. Who wants to be having a bad time?

A few years ago, I was stepping out of an airport with Susan Bratton, founder of Savor Health and author of the Meals to Heal cookbook. When the automatic doors opened and the careful climate control of the airport crashed into a wave of hot, sticky Texas air, she said something like “feel that humidity!” Indeed, I was feeling the humidity. Only, she said it like it was a good and even pleasant thing.

Until that moment it had never occurred to me that it was possible to enjoy humidity. Somehow realizing that being miserable was not the only possible reaction changed my whole experience. Subtly, sure, but it’s pushed me to notice the neutral and even positive parts of a humid day.

It's funny how knowing that other people enjoy something can help me slowly adjust my experience. Some people like humidity. Some people like being blasted with wind. Some people like foods where savory and sweet mix together. Since I enjoy leaving the house and don't want to travel with my divider plates to keep my food from touching, I've been working to learn to enjoy these things. If other people just like these things during their first encounter with them, surely it’s possible for me to at least not hate them.

So much of care work is the same. There are plenty of tasks other people find rewarding that I loathe. Meanwhile, people cannot believe that I find managing paperwork and cleaning to be oddly satisfying. I suspect most of us have an unpopular chore we secretly sort of enjoy. Surely, there is the potential to find pleasure in just about any task. Or, you know, not spend every second resisting the urge to throw a tantrum.

Only, how does one learn not to hate something? For all the people who tell us what we should do, far fewer give any useful suggestions for how to do it. Sascha Chapin wrote an actual explainer on how to learn to enjoy something. The post is very much worth reading, but the key takeaway is tuning in to all the details of your actual experience in the moment with curiosity.

Wallowing in pity involves its own enjoyment. I think most of us know it's best appreciated as an occasional, short-term treat. I’ve just started reading Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote and he’s already made it clear that trying to force ourselves to be positive only dooms us to failure. We can’t simply choose to be happy. With time, we can cultivate a way of seeing the world that makes it easier to find our center each time we’re thrown off-kilter.

What a gift it is to be easily delighted — or, even more magical, satisfied with what we have. Sometimes life is an endless slog. If we're capable of noticing and enjoying life's mundane pleasures, there will always be sparks of joy while we’re slogging.