Being Easily Pleased

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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One key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.
Mark Nepo

There is beautiful grace in being easily pleased. I want to be the person who has a perpetually positive, genuinely honest, cloud-with-a-silver-lining, roll with the punches, serenity-prayer-breathing attitude about life. I want to be the person who stands my ground while also being profoundly flexible. I am not sure exactly what that looks like.

What is the difference between being easily pleased and being a push over?

Being easily pleased is an authentic space. Being easily pleased is a position of strength. Being easily pleased is just more fun at the end of the day. Being a push over necessarily indicates a loss of power within a power play that does not even have to happen. Being a push over erodes trust in relationships. No one ever really knows the other persons thoughts, wishes, and desires when one person is being pushed over or allowing themselves to be pushed.

How can I be easily pleased with an outcome that is not my desire?

Being easily pleased with an outcome that is not my desire is the key to true joy. The first part, and perhaps the hardest part, is letting go of having a desired outcome to begin with. If we don’t have specific desired outcomes, or are open to multiple outcomes, then joy can more easily enter in. The next part is staying present to what I am feeling during the process. Allowing hurt, anger, and disappointment to wash over me and just keep flowing. The final part is reflecting over the experience and maybe even finding something to be grateful for in it.

What does joy look like?

If joy can come from approaching life with an attitude of being easily pleased, a first step to being joyful is knowing what it looks like. It is knowing how it tastes. It is knowing what it sounds like. It knowing how it feels. It is an active choice to create joy with every fiber of our being. After that, it is possible to move toward having more joy.

Joy is a decision.

The idea that happiness is a decision is not a simplistic notion. The world is a tough place and our position in it can make it hard and cruel. The complexity of our position can make choosing joy seemingly impossible. It is precisely that complexity that can make the choice to be joyful difficult. That is where having a proactive joy strategy can come in. A proactive joy strategy means surrounding yourself in the people you love, spending a deliberate portion of your hours doing the things you love, and taking time within it all to serve others in some way. That is the heart of being easily pleased.