To Love, To Work, To Play
--- Life in the Balance
The Pleasure Prescription
(Paul Pearsall/ Magna Publishing/November 2004/160 pages/$13.95)
국내 미출간 세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 (주)네오넷코리아가 해외에서 저작권자와의 저작권 계약을
통해, 영미권, 일본, 중국의 경제·경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게
정리한 요약(Summary) 정보입니다. 저작권법에 의하여 (주)네오넷코리아의 정식인가 없이 무단전재,
무단복제 및 전송을 할 수 없으며, 모든 출판권과 전송권은 저작권자에게 있음을 알려드립니다.
The Pleasure Prescription
To Love, To Work, To Play --- Life in the Balance
The Big Idea
Are you stressed and unhappy? Are you feeling burned out? Anxious? Unmotivated?
Do you feel you have too much to do in too little time? You are not alone. More and
more of people struggle with a lack of pleasure in their daily lives and the illness that go
along with stress.
Take a Pleasure Prescription! Psychologist and author Paul Pearsall is an expert on the
relationship between pleasure, stress, and the immune system. According to him, it isn’t
too much stress but too little joy that is killing people.
We know more than we think we know, Dr. Pearsall reassures us, about what is good
and healthy for us. He invites us to embrace a new contentment, and his compelling
lessons gleaned from science and an age-old wisdom light the way.
Why You Need This Book
This book shows how the latest research in physical and emotional health validates the
Oceanic Way – the principles and practices of ancient Polynesian cultures. The five key
components of this Way are patience, connection, pleasantness, modesty and
tenderness.
The Pleasure of Patience
There is a mental illness called cyclothymia. It is a type of “impatience madness,” and it
refers to a person who is in a constant state of flux between lively, “up” moods and
feelings of depression.
Cyclothymia has been called “the fine madness,” a mood disorder that relates to a
sense of failed perfectionism and under-development of the seventh sense resulting in
lack of daily life pleasure.
SYMPTOMS OF CYCLOTHYMIA
1. Elevated self-esteem, accompanied by cynicism
2. Abundant energy to the point of agitation, followed by periods of complete
fatigue and withdrawal
3. High productivity accompanied by periods of no motivation or direction
4. Distrust, discomfort and inability to receive compliments, perhaps because they
serve as stimulants for even more effort
1. Impatience with others’ flaws and with one’s own
2. Excitability and quickness to anger
3. Strong convictions about the correctness and validity of their own views
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4. Grandiosity to the point of poor judgment, accompanied by destructive
impulsivity
5. Chaotic intimate personal and professional relationships
6. Disregard for personal health and safety, to the point of substance abuse, sexual
promiscuity, reckless driving, and other life-threatening behaviors
PENNY FOR YOUR PATIENCE
On the first day, place three pennies in a pocket, which you will now call your “patience
pocket.” Every time you become impatient or irritated with yourself or others, reach into
the pocket, gently turn one of the pennies between your forefinger and thumb, and
count ten breaths without taking your hand out of the pocket. Then, take one of the
pennies from the pocket and give it to someone, or leave it where someone can find it.
At the end of each day, see how many pennies you have left. If you still have pennies in
your “patience pocket,” save them and add them to three in your pocket the next day.
If, as the week draws to a close, you begin to jingle as you walk, congratulate yourself
on developing equanimity, and celebrate by taking your pile of pennies and putting them
in a charity container!
The Cycle of Connection
We all need periods of being alone. They give us the opportunity to contemplate and
reflect. But isolation makes us sick and may even kill us. Isolation is not the absence of
people around us; it is a feeling of being lonely and disconnected, somehow left outside
the “whole,” even when we are among others.
Without the nourishment of social support, a lonely heart hardens and breaks. Like an
unwatered flower, it literally atrophies and dies. The lonely have four times the chance
of dying from their heart attack than the more socially connected.
UNITY LESSON
To personally, interpersonally, and transpersonally experience more harmonious unity
in your daily life, take a few minutes to assess your unity lesson.
Try the following exercises and write down your responses. Check back on your record
to see if you are connecting sufficiently to practice the pleasure prescription in your own
life.
Personal Connection: Lie down and scan your entire body from the top of your head to
the bottom of your feet. Listen for messages from your body.
Interpersonal Connection: Spend at least five minutes a day sitting quietly with
someone. Don’t try to make a connection, just let it happen. Don’t discuss problems, just
be quiet together.
Transpersonal Connection: Select one ritual to practice everyday without fail. As you
put more meaningful rituals in your life, you will feel the presence of all of those went
before and the joy of knowing that all connections are forever.
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The Power of Pleasantness
Here are the ten myths about anger that can lead us to automatic angry actions. Do you
believe any of them? After knowing the truth about them, can you put them behind you?
Anger myth 1: Unexpressed anger leads to cancer. There is very little research
supporting the existence of the so-called “Type C” or cancer-prone personality.
Anger myth 2: Unexpressed anger raises blood pressure and causes heart disease. In
fact, the very opposite is true. Expressing anger raises blood pressure and significantly
interferes with the efficiency of the heart.
Anger myth 3: Depression is anger turned inward. Popular psychology still suggests that
our emotions work like liquids trapped within our body container. Dam up the flow in any
in one place and it will flood out in another place.
Anger myth 4: Showing your anger is just being truthful about your emotions. The
problem is that emotions exist to give color to our experiences and often distort and
exaggerate them.
Anger myth 5: Showing your anger is how you get justice. When we feel frustrated and
angry, we are often seeking justice for a perceived trespass.
Anger myth 6: You are at your most powerful and effective when you are angry. Good,
hot anger may help when you are being threatened during a robbery or physical assault,
but it is almost useless when it comes to day-to-day life.
Anger myth 7: Venting your anger prevents violence. From our belief in this free
expression, we have reaped one of the most violent societies in history.
Anger myth 8: Parents should get their anger out with one another in order to be better
parents. All major studies of family life clearly support one warning: never, never fight in
front of your children.
Anger myth 9: A good anger explosion clears the air. This is the catharsis theory of
anger, which suggests that a good fight once in a while naturally cleanses and
revitalizes a relationship.
Anger myth 10: Nice gals and guys finish last. It says that the more anger you express,
the more success you will achieve through your assertive confidence and resulting
competitive edge.
We all “lose it” sometimes. The key to pleasantness is to not get angry with yourself
because you get angry. Like unhappiness, we all must have our angry times and can
learn from them.
A Chinese sugar-cane worker once said, if you are patient in one moment of anger, you
will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
The Magic of Modesty
Selfing can be understood as trying to enhance the ego, being totally self-sufficient, and
working hard to get one’s perceived entitlements. You know you are moving away from
a pleasurable life when much of your time is spent in activities that have the following
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eight self-focusing – or selfing – factors.
1. Endless days. You feel your work is never done. This is often shown by trying to
do several things at once, making careless mistakes in the simplest tasks, and
feeling emotionally fatigues though you are not physically tired.
2. Distraction and forgetfulness. You feel a general sense of agitation.
3. Busy going nowhere. You feel that your task has no clearly definable goals.
4. No idea how you’re doing. You feel you are getting too little tangible feedback
about your efficacy.
5. High responsibility with little power. You believe that you have high
accountability but little control to do what you should or would like to do.
6. Everything is a big effort. You feel pressured, work hard, and do more than
you need to just to get simple things done.
7. Never enough time. You feel that the clock is always ticking and you check
your watch several times an hour, trying to save time or feeling afraid your time
will run out.
8. The weight of the world on your shoulders. You feel under pressure to live up
to your own or others’ expectations.
The Gift from Giving
To help bring more uncritical relating into your life so you can relish the pleasure of
lasting loving relationship, remember the following rules:
1. Give five compliments for every criticism.
2. Watch your flooding level when you are in conflict.
3. Watch for the “disgust dimple.” We react with a nonloving expression, and
contract the “dimpler muscles,” the small, powerful muscles that pull the corner
of the mouth to one side.
4. Watch for the “anger lip.” When we are feeling contempt, we usually are
feeling that we are much better than someone else or that our territory has been
violated.
5. Try the “Saturday List.” With anger, don’t express it, don’t suppress it, confess
it.
6. Remember the “F Index”. When couples monitored the number of acts of
sexual intercourse and arguments in their marriage, researchers discovered
what they called the “F Index” which they expressed as “the frequency of
fornication minus the frequency of fights.”
TENDERNESS LESSON
Commit yourself to helping one complete stranger every day. That help may be as
simple as doing someone a favor while driving in traffic, helping someone carry
packages, paying someone a favor while driving in traffic, helping someone move
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ahead of you in line, sharing a silly joke with a stranger, or some other gesture of
benevolent consideration.
The pleasure prescription requires a life of taking care to help make and keep the world
in better balance. Leading a gentle, non-critical, giving life, being a partner rather than a
dominator, confiding in and helping others, and finding the humor in the common
problems we all encounter.
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[세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 영문의 경제·경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게 정리한
요약(Summary) 서비스입니다. 영문 서비스는 단순히 서적을 소개하거나 광고를 위한 Book Review가 아니라 세계의 베스
트셀러 도서의 핵심을 체계적으로 정리한 도서 정보로써, 이 서비스를 통해 세계의 정치·경제·문화의 흐름을 빠르게 파악할
수 있습니다. 세계 지도층이 읽는 세계 베스트셀러 도서를 가장 빠르고 효율적으로 접해보시기 바랍니다.]
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