How to Healthily Indulge in Secret Pleasures

• Importance of Self Care
• The Superego, Ego and the Id 
• Activities to Pamper Ourselves with That Do Not Need Others’ Cooperation
• What are Secret Pleasures
• Why Secret Pleasures
• Unhealthy Secret Pleasures
• Healthy Secret Pleasures

Importance of Self Care

• God made us as humans with our limitations.
• We need to recharge and refuel to function normally.
• We need more than physical sustenance.
• We need to be dependent on God for our spiritual sustenance, as He is our only source of spiritual sustenance: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. In Him we have fullness and abundance of life.
• Our soul need attending to for mental wellbeing.
• The Superego, Ego and the Id
• Our “Superego” functions as a “parent,” who tells us what we ought to, must and should do. 
• Our feeling of guilt comes from the superego which functions as our conscience.
• Our “Id” is like “the little kid” in us, who wants to do whatever it wants to do, whenever it wants to do it, however way it wants to, and not do what it doesn’t want to do.
• The “Ego” functions as “the adult,” who sees that the Superego needs to be married to the Id to achieve a healthy balance in our lives.
• The Ego function as an “air traffic controller,” indicating when we need to listen to the superego and when to indulge our Id.

Activities to Pamper Ourselves With That Do Not Need Others’ Cooperation

• Make a list of ten things we enjoy doing for ourselves, by ourselves, to pamper ourselves with, that do not need others’ cooperation.
• They are NOT productive activities. They are to be activities that we indulge in.
• These are simple activities that do not cost much money so we can do them every two weeks. 
• Since they do not require others’ cooperation, talking on the phone or cooking for others do not count.
• These are to be “selfish” things we do for ourselves.
• We can however, pay for some of these activities: Getting a manicure, getting a massage (depending on our budget).
• Even if we don’t do all ten different things, we make sure we attend to our id at least ten times in a span of two weeks.
• Examples of things we indulge ourselves with: 
• Take a long shower.
• Sing in the shower.
• Take a walk for fun (not for fitness).
• Take a bubble bath.
• Read a frivolous book.
• Take a nap.
• Daydream.
• Watch the clouds.
• People watch.
• Scrolling through social media.
• Etc…
• It behooves us to have one or two of these self-pampering activities that we feel nourished by: I write poems for fun, not to be spiritual or productive, but they also nourish me when I do write them. 
• The activity has to do with the motivation: Not to be productive, but for fun and for pampering ourselves with.
• For some people, it could be trying out a new recipe or making something new and sharing it with others. The goal is to cook for ourselves - not to be hospitable or generous - even though others could end up benefiting from it.
• Have three of these ten activities be secret pleasures we indulge in.

What are Secret Pleasures

• Secret pleasures are things we do that give us a “rush,” that we have gotten away with something we “shouldn’t have done.”
• They originate from our Id: The kid in us, who wants to only do whatever we feel like doing.
• While doing things to pamper ourselves with are important aspects of self-care, secret pleasures give them more umph.
• o qualify something as a “secret pleasure,” it’d have to be something that is: Not productive; Not “healthy;” Not constructive. It has to squarely fall under the purview of our Id.

Why Secret Pleasures

• Secret Pleasures pack a great deal of power when we do them.
• hey are quick and easy ways to help balance our superego, especially when we are short on time or energy.
• Secret Pleasures give us relief from our daily grind: “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.”

Unhealthy Secret Pleasures

• “All play and no work make Jack a failure in life.”
• Unhealthy secret pleasures could be over-indulgence in our secret pleasures.
• Too much of a good thing is not good: Overindulgence in any sort of pleasure is unhealthy by its definition.
• Unhealthy secret pleasures can be sinful behaviors that are contrary to what the Bible teaches, as in lust. Lust and anger are two things that have bottomless pits: The more we act on these two feelings, the more we want to act on them.
• They can cause us unnecessary angst because now we have to deal with the guilt that comes from rebelling against God, and/or cause us having to deal with the added weight of guilt.
• Addictions: If we are addicted to something, a substance or a behavior including pornography - they need to NOT be on our list of secret pleasures, as they are addictions. We need to stay away from addictions or any behavior that would lead us down the path of addiction.

Healthy Secret Pleasures

• Healthy secret pleasures are activities that help to balance our hard work. 
• Behaviors that are “naughty,” that we might feel embarrassed if others were to find out that we’ve done them: So, we don’t tell others what we’re doing!
• It’s important that we feel like we’re hiding something from others by doing our secret pleasure. We need to feel like we’re getting away with something: Or else it’s just activities that we pamper ourselves with.
• They give us a relief from our hard work and running non-stop on the “hamster wheel,” and from us having to be constructive all the time.
• Examples of healthy secret pleasures could be: 
• Playing video/computer games when we are supposed to be working on a project or our school work.
• Taking a nap when we are supposed to be working on something.
• Eating unhealthy food.
• Scrolling on Instagram or Snapchat, or Tik Tok or Facebook, binge watching YouTube shows or other shows: Any time-waster.
• Lying or lounging around when we’re supposed to be working out: Scrolling on our gadget at the gym/during workout.
• For some people it could be allowing our bedroom/apartment/house to be messy, not cleaning up right away.
• For some people, it could be to order or eat out when there’s perfectly good food readily available at home at no extra cost.
• Staying up late at night just for fun: Without it negatively effecting our next day’s function. So if staying up during a work night would cause us to fall asleep the next day when we’re needing to be awake for, we wait to stay up on the weekend.
• or some people, it could be spending a couple of hours doing window shopping online or in person, without purchasing them.
• It could be planning/daydreaming about breaks or vacations without acting on them.
• We are INTENTIONAL in doing these activities: They are thought through and planned so as not to give us negative effects from messing up our day/next day’s performance at work or school.
• Scheduling in three secret pleasures every two weeks is a good start: Or repeating the same secret pleasure for our three allotments every two weeks.
• The KEY is to indulge without over-indulging.
• I Corinthians 6:12: “’I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.”
• Any of our secret pleasures should not master us or become compulsions or addictions.

If we have an addictive personality and indulging in a particular activity would cause us to become addicted to it, where we lose control - then we do NOT have it as our secret pleasure: It has become a source of problem vs pleasure, even though we experience the activity as pleasurable in the moment. For example, if we are an alcoholic, drinking a glass of alcohol cannot be a secret pleasure: It is indulging in our addiction.