Rachel Anzalone here and today, I’m talking about pleasure. 

“Pleasure is not a word that we often think about when we are thinking about business, when we’re thinking about entrepreneurship.” 

Most people running a business think about everything else before thinking of pleasure. And yet, there’s this feeling, or expectation that the pleasure is somewhere out there, just beyond the next goal or project. 

What I often see is a focus on either impact (my visionary friends can relate!) or profitability above all else. The desire for impact is always there. What I’ve seen is a belief that the revenue must grow first for the impact to happen. 

What if that’s not the case at all? 

I learned about this firsthand, and when you hear my story, I hope it helps you see how pleasure is truly the key to everything. 

While at a retreat, I realized I had created a pattern in my life. I could see what wasn’t working and I was comfortable letting things go. What didn’t work was the expectation that joy, and abundance would quickly follow. I was skipping the work of investing in myself, and my own pleasure.

I wanted to skip ahead without cultivating what I really wanted. Here’s what I learned and want to share with you:

“We have to cultivate the joy and the pleasure. We can’t step into what’s possible for us until we learn to embrace this first.”

It’s counterintuitive to what we’ve been taught. We’ve been told that we must earn the right to pleasure and happiness and many of us have spent years doing just that, only to find it continues to be elusive. 

That’s why pleasure must come first. 

For help doing this work, reach out to me here or connect with me on IG.