OVERCOME ANHEDONIA
We are used to thinking that pleasure is a reward. It must be gained by a lot of hard and at times tedious work. Therefore you have no strength left to be happy. Nevertheless scientists claim: inability to experience pleasure is a disease that can have very serious consequences. Fortunately, curing it is easy and pleasant. Just relax and experience pleasure! “A temperate person is a weak-willed type who cannot resist to reject pleasure", - claimed American writer Ambrose Bierce. At the dawn of the third millennium his joke turned into a diagnosis. Civilization has been gripped by an unknown illness – anhedonia (
SLEEP INSTEAD OF A “ROLEX”. The poll results, conducted among well-off Americans by the US State Department, show: having earned their first million by the sweat of their brow, most of them discovered that the simplest things, which cost almost nothing, bring the most pleasure. If you stayed in bed until noon last Sunday, you can consider you bought a one million dollar present. Recently the newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” has published information about the amount of time financial magnates and political leaders spend in bed. A lot of businessmen and senators confessed that after years of hard work and inconceivable self-restrictions they can enjoy an opportunity to sleep for at least 8 hours a day. After that journalists have declared a long sleep to be a symbol of a well-off person as well as Haute Couture suits and Swiss watches. But not all successful people are as wise as the characters of the article. A lot of careerists keep depriving themselves of that and other natural needs… and, eventually, they get dog-tired from their own ambitions. FROM ROCKFELLER TO PICASSO. Psychologists think that the main symptom of anhedonia is loss of interest to almost any activity, entertainment and sex. Incredible but true: the more you have succeeded in business, the higher the risk of catching the apathy virus is; it deprives you from the ability to enjoy everything that is worth living for. You are relatively safe from this disease if you have at least one hobby left like fishing, playing golf or a lively interest for football, which the German coach Frantz Beckenbauer neatly called “the most substantial of all unsubstantial things”. “Knowing how to spend your leisure is the highest stage of civilization”, the Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell said. Thanks to his numerous hobbies (philosophy, logic, mathematics, literature, social activity) and a skilled alternation of work and leisure, he retained a keen interest to outward things; this honorable Englishman lived for almost 98 years! Although his doctor strongly recommended him to turn to vegetarian food or at least to keep to separate nutrition, Russell thought the reason for his longevity was his passion for bloody steaks and fried potatoes. And there was something that was undoubtedly true about it: the pleasure he experienced from eating his favorite food compensated its unwholesome qualities! Financial bigwigs of the past – Pitkern, Hayee, Mallon, Carnegie spent untold wealth on exquisite food and exotic recreational activities. William Randolf Hearst, for instance, almost went broke building his Palace of pleasures in San Simeone. Incredible but true: despite the luxuries and maybe thanks to their thirst for pleasures, those people had longer and more interesting lives than those who came after them, and working for 16-18 hours a day, they did not suffer from nervous exhaustions. Let us take a look at John Rockefeller, for instance.
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