The first time I experienced traveling to a new country was a trip to Thailand around 2015. Interestingly, it's not the wonderful people, the temples, the food, or the language I remember most (though I love those things). It was the feeling of euphoria I had being there—being somewhere I'd never experienced before and seeing someone I loved after being separated for months. I distinctly remember walking down the sidewalk, past buildings and street vendors, my vision nearly blurring and my feet feeling like they were floating. This was during a time when I had very few resources, didn't know where my career was headed, and was fearful about the future. And yet, I was fully intoxicated with life.  

Maybe you find yourself at a crossroads right now or enduring something you wish would change or ease. As a society, we have often been taught to plow through and "figure it out." If you've read Navigating Resistance with Intuition you know that pausing is often better than pushing through. Yet, even while figuring it out, barreling through, and finding solutions, there is often a part of us screaming for two very important things: hope and joy. And, I believe hope and joy are the very ingredients in the elixir of euphoria.

In our modern world, the word euphoria sometimes connotes drug-induced absenteeism or mania. When I looked up the origin of the word euphoria—beyond the standard definition of "intense excitement"—I found something fascinating. The word actually means "the power of enduring easily." Wow.

The power of enduring easily.

If you have hope and joy, and you have a love of those around you, no matter what is going on in your life, these things give you the power to endure easily. And if you can endure easily, life, regardless of how imperfect it presents itself, becomes the drug. Life is what intoxicates you. You can produce these psychological effects not from something outside of you but from within you.

Here are some ideas to evoke euphoria in your life:

1. Contemplate a time when you felt euphoric. If it's comfortable for you, close your eyes and bring up a moment you felt euphoric. Rather than focusing on the environment during this time, focus on the feeling in your body and see if you can enhance the feeling right now in your physiology. Remember, your body doesn't live in the past or future; it lives in the now and follows your mind. What you are experiencing now is what it will experience. Why not try a bit of euphoria?

2. Go somewhere you've never been, even if it's in your own neighborhood or city. That museum you've wanted to visit but never have? Go there. That street you've never turned on but always wondered about? Walk or drive down it. It's easy to get caught up with figuring things out in life, but life is meant to be seen, learned from, and interacted with, even in the midst of finding solutions to your challenges. Your deep, inner craving for new experiences, especially when you feel stuck, is because new experiences are not only a natural and normal desire but can also be a doorway to joy.

3. Start a new creative project—and destroy it. Have you ever seen the Buddhist monks who create beautiful mandalas and destroy them once finished to represent the impermanence of life? The same concept can give you a sense of euphoria. Starting a new creative endeavor in and of itself can create euphoria, and if you'd like, keep it to that. But if you find the project evokes feelings of needs to be finished, needs more work, or not good enough, destroy it. This gives you a creative outlet in a new way and provides freedom in letting go.

Whether you're facing a challenge right now or just seeking a little more hope and joy in your life, I hope you contemplate invoking euphoria and the wonderful anesthetic it can bring, making enduring just a little bit easier.