What pleased you today?

This episode takes a lighter choice of a powerful question. Rather than taking a deep dive, we stay on the surface of our daily lives and take a look at moments of pleasure or joy in our days. 

Each day, however mundane or difficult it may be, contains some micro moments, or clues, of joy or pleasure. Paying attention to those moments and tracking them can help create more of these experiences and on the way build our wellbeing and resilience.   I hope you find listening to this episode useful (and joyful!)

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the sixth episode of the Powerful Questions podcast. I am recording this episode on a sunny August day in London. It is a time when many people in the northern hemisphere take a break, and the powerful question at the centre of this episode feels like a natural fit. This time, we’ll take a look at: “What pleased you today?” While it may sound simple, it is yet another powerful question that I encourage you to consider using well beyond holidays or vacations periods. 

So far, I have focused on very deep questions… questions that require you to reflect on and consider past periods or experiences in your life, or deeper things that you value. 

This time, I’ll take a lighter, yet still powerful, approach with my choice – the question for this episode is what pleased you today? And I want to emphasise the focus on today, or some alternative short period in your life. For example, what pleased you this morning? What did you truly enjoy in the last meeting you went to? With the last person you spoke to? I’d invite you to focus on really brief moments in your overall life! Moments and experiences that can easily pass by unnoticed.  Energy, strengths and inspiration can be found, tapped into and activated, even with a focus on such brief moments in our lives.

Many of us live hectic lives… running from one meeting to another, working on a never-ending stream of tasks and commitments, navigating emails, a ceaseless stream of notifications from our social media platforms, virtual conferences, family commitments and the odd phone call.  

Some days, I feel I can barely take a moment to breathe as time flies by, while on other, definitely rarer days when the pace slows somewhat, I actually feel that I miss that “noise of busyness”. In that context, which is experienced by many, it is really difficult to stop for a moment during the day or at the end of the day to reflect on what actually pleased us, today. 

And yet… It is absolutely essential and for more than one reason!  Reflecting on and capturing what pleased you today could give you more energy to carry into the next day. It can also raise the chances that you will experience more pleasing moments in the future because you are orientating yourself and your awareness to the better parts of each day. Paying attention to what pleases us each day helps us tune in to granular details in the everyday and exercise a very important mental muscle – the muscle of noticing. By exercising this quote-unquote muscle, we begin to see subtle clues in ourselves that indicate we are pleased. It may be a fleeting smile, a sense of openness, relaxation or connection, a sound or word or the way we phrased something, or other ways we expressed our delight.  

Finally, I can almost guarantee that you already know very well and will remember very vividly what didn’t please you today – what frustrated, annoyed or angered you. These experiences get imprinted in your mind a lot quicker and stick around for longer! 

So, what pleased you today? 

Or perhaps you could think of when did you catch yourself, however briefly, actually enjoying something? 

What was surprisingly pleasing today? 

I would also focus on what pleased you rather than what did you appreciate. To some it might feel like a matter of semantics and, of course, there is nothing wrong in reflecting on what you appreciated today. In fact, you can add it to the reflection on what pleased you today. The reason I prioritise a focus on what pleases us is because it actually packs in a higher level of energy and because, sometimes, we can appreciate something more easily while ignoring the things that truly pleased us. 

In addition, I, and many people I come across, can feel embarrassed about recognising what pleases or delights us. Sure, many can acknowledge that they appreciate things but, somehow, we’ve picked up the thought that enjoying something that delights us almost feels as if we’ve gone too far with appreciation, and we end up having a sense of guilt about experiencing pleasure or joy.

And perhaps what pleased you today was not something you did, but rather was something someone else did. So it might be worth also thinking about what did others do today that pleased you. If they did, did you respond in such a way that they knew it pleased you? That’s important because if the person who did something that pleased you knows they did, they might do it again…

Let’s expand our awareness and noticing muscle further.  What did you do today that pleased or delighted others around you? It may have been a surprise to them and even to you. How did that experience start and evolve, what exactly did you do or say, or how were you a source of that delight? How did it make you feel? 

Out of that experience, what would you like to experience again?

Another source of pleasing experiences lies outside your acts, or those of others.  It might be something you experienced, felt or heard today.  For example, twitting birds in the morning, the fact your trip to work went smoothly, the colours of the sunset you managed to see or a piece of music someone played.  It might be valuable for you to reflect on what else you experienced, saw, felt or heard that pleased you today.

You could also use this question with others. They might be surprised to be asked what pleased them today, so give them a moment to think about it. Chances are they will be able to remember something pleasing. The impact on the conversation you have from that moment on will be noticeable, for sure. 

I hope you begin to see the value of asking yourself or others what pleased you today. Let me throw in another potential benefit for your awareness. Essentially, if you reflect regularly on and capture what has pleased you each day, it helps develop, in you and in others, what some call “an attitude of gratitude”. Having that attitude helps improve your emotional and mental state. It also builds your resilience. Even if you miss a few days, the impact of tracking what has pleased you each day will stay with you and sustain your state of well being.

So, as we bring this episode to a close, and until we meet again, I’d like to ask you a final question. You can probably already guess what will it be – what specifically pleased you as you listened to this episode?