Let’s face it, when you’re trying to be healthy it can sometimes feel like life is no fun.  You have to say “no” to a lot of things you normally enjoy and life can feel like one restriction after another.  “No thank you,” to the donut at work or the dessert after dinner.  “No” to a cigarette break when you finish your report or clean your house.  And even “no” to the offer of a second margarita at Happy Hour, even when the guy you like is buying it for you.  Making changes, even when we know the long term will reap benefits, can feel a bit dull in the moment.  That’s why when you feel the loss of pleasure in your life, it’s important to add new things that you enjoy.  Giving yourself rewards for making positive changes not only reinforces your new behavior, but helps to fill the emptiness that can happen when you feel life’s pleasured are being taken away.

According to Learning Theory, a branch of psychology that studies how we acquire and retain information and behaviors, a “reward” is anything that causes a reinforced behavior to increase.  This can take the form of giving something positive after a desired behavior (getting a pay check) or taking away something that is negative (skip doing the dishes when you’ve gone to the gym).  So be creative.  Give yourself a mix of rewards to keep life interesting.  For example, get your nails done when you haven’t smoked for a week or take the afternoon off from doing laundry and chores to see the movie you’ve been waiting for.  Plan out your rewards to celebrate the commitment you’ve made to sustain your new behavior.  Time frame rewards are very powerful.  Everyone in AA knows the intense meaning of getting your sobriety chip for one week, one month, one year, and so on.   Recognizing that we are on a roll of success helps maintain our success.

But choose your rewards wisely.  We can easily fall into traps that actually undermine our efforts.  How many of us have rewarded ourselves for losing weight with an ice cream sundae? Or because we’ve kept to our budget all month, we buy that gadget we had our eye on?  Select rewards that you can feel good about rather than ones that you will feel guilty about later that actually reinforce the undesired behavior.  Just by making something a reward we are giving it a positive status.  I still remember my friend and I suddenly realizing our mistake when we took our young kids for a Happy Meal at McDonalds when they worked hard on a project at school.  As our kids got excited on the drive over, it suddenly occurred to us we were teaching our kids that fast food was a treat!

Life can be hard and thankless at times.  It’s so important to pat ourselves on the back and acknowledge our accomplishments.  Part of becoming an adult is learning to do this for ourselves rather than waiting for the world to do it for us.  No fairy is going to swoop in and give you a Starbucks gift card just for resisting the urge to yet at your children or buy you a diamond pendant for facing your fear of the dentist.  Yes, there is the reward of pride and self esteem, but sometimes it’s nice to give ourselves a little bit more.  After all, you’ve earned it!

Some inexpensive rewards:  Go for a picnic lunch, listen to some wonderful music, plan a coffee date with someone you enjoy, do something creative just for the fun of it, play a game, take a bath, read for pleasure, look through old photographs, take a leisurely walk (not for exercise, but for looking at something beautiful), take a nap, make a new smoothie, sit in the sun and rest, anything you enjoy but never have time for!