The Pressure to Enjoy: When Forcing Joy Makes You Miserable
What a tough trip to China taught me about guilt, joy, and acceptance.
Have you ever been on holiday and, instead of having fun, you start feeling that you’re not enjoying it enough?
That was me, recently, in China.
By all accounts, I should have been having a great time. I was with the love of my life, on our long-awaited three-week summer break.
These days are supposed to be precious. The kind of time you look forward to all year.
Except I wasn’t thinking that at all.
What I was actually thinking was: I’d rather be at work than on this so-called vacation.
Not exactly the memory I was hoping to build.
The Messy Reality
Here’s what was happening. The days started at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m.
Alarms blaring, no time to ease into the morning.
We packed our bags, and raced to train stations crowded with what felt like thousands of people.
By the time we reached the next destination, it was straight out again to see the sights: ancient temples, emperors’ palaces, traditional Chinese buildings.
All under a scorching sun and in suffocating heat, humidity and mega-crowds.
These, put together, were a recipe for a very unhappy version of me.
Heat alone accounted for about 70% of my distress. Add rushing, no healthy food, and noise to the mix, and the needle of my inner dashboard was slamming into the red.
Then came the guilt. These were my holidays. A few precious days a year. Time I’m supposed to “make the most of.”
And instead of enjoying it all, I found myself counting the days until I could go back to my normal routine at home.
The Value–Expectation Gap
I was experiencing a Value–Expectation Gap.
It’s the space between the ideal we hold in our minds and the reality in front of us. For me, the ideal sounded like this: “Holidays are precious. I only get a few days a year. They should be full of joy, wonder, and beautiful memories.”
The reality was sweat dripping down my body, my skin breaking out, overstimulation and the screaming thought: I don’t want to be here.
I realized the gap between those two visions created a whole extra layer of suffering.
It wasn’t just: “This is uncomfortable.”
It became: “This is uncomfortable, and I’m wasting my precious time, and that means I’m failing at making the most of a time I’ll never get back.”
That inner script turned ordinary travel fatigue into a crisis.
The more I told myself I should be enjoying, the less I could. I spiraled into guilt:
Guilt for not enjoying what’s supposed to be special.
Guilt for ruining the mood for my husband, who loves this kind of travel.
Guilt for not being the kind of person who can just “go with the flow.”
At one point, my mind even jumped to dramatic conclusions:
Maybe I don’t like traveling anymore.
Maybe I’ll never enjoy these kinds of trips again.
What if this becomes a marriage problem?
Looking back, it’s almost funny how far the mind will run when we’re tired and overstimulated. But in the moment, it felt very real.
Dropping the “should” narrative
One morning, I decided to skip the visits and stay at the hotel to recharge.
I journaled about my distress for a while, then copy pasted my ramblings into ChatGPT with this weird question:
“Do you see the kind of exhausting inner dialogues and back and forths going into my mind?”
The response I got made my eyes go wide:
This made a huge difference. I felt my whole body instantly relax.
I could just stop at “that’s okay”. No more shoulds.
My trip wasn’t going to be fantastic and “that’s okay.”
I would enjoy what I could: spending time with my husband, slowing down the visiting pace, taking mornings off at the hotel to recharge, breakfast buffets, etc.
Every time the “what if” thoughts popped up, I repeated the phrase in my head like a mantra: “This trip isn’t my style, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to mean anything else.”
That tiny shift transformed the rest of my trip.
The Paradox of Joy
The paradox of joy is this: the more we pressure ourselves to feel it, the more it slips away.
When we release the demand to “make the most” of every moment, we actually create space for peace.
China wasn’t my easiest trip. But it taught me something precious: When I release certain narratives, I get rid of pointless suffering.
There is tremendous power in this mental exercise.
Peace comes when we drop the shoulds.
What about you? Have you ever felt the pressure to “make the most” of something special and found it made things worse?
What helped you ease the pressure? Tell me about it in the comments ✍
This is very honest and beautiful Ilham🌿
Suffering doesn’t only come from the heat, the crowds, or the travel. It comes from the story the mind tells: “This should be fun. I should be enjoying this.”
When you let go of those “shoulds,” the trip changed. The stress softened, and peace came back.
Joy isn’t found by forcing life to match our plans. It’s found by meeting life as it is...always 🙏
Ilham , what you have written is honest . Keep it up 🍬✨✨I like when you say peace comes when we drop the should 🧚🏻♀️