The gorgeous, lazy, sensual days of summer are upon us, sisters. What’s a girl gonna do?

Sunday I spent the morning in bed reading a new novel, then meandered with husband David out to the private patio we made last summer by the waterfall and pond.

We feasted on a bowl of luscious organic black cherries, listened to the water and the birds, and just exhaled...ahhh...David made a dinner of curried cauliflower and sweet white corn while we re-watched the Wimbledon finals...ahhh...then a candlelight bath, and then...

and then I wanted to pick a fight with this lovely man!

I was suddenly anxious, critical, and nasty.

Yikes! It's a good thing I know about pleasurestats, or I would have hauled my poor self, and my beloved, right down into the muck after a 5 star day.

See, we all have internal gizmos--much like the thermostat for your central air--that let us know when we've hit our "upper limit" of pleasure and happiness. Just like the AC kicks on when the temperature gauge in the thermostat registers an upper limit, so we feel anxious and create difficulty and drama when our happiness reaches the upper limit of what we can allow ourselves.

That's the bad news. I don't know about y'all, but I'm perfectly capable of mangling my own happiness when I've had a string of days like Sunday. It used to confuse the hell out of me (why am I feeling so awful when I've had such a good time?) until I discovered pleasurestats.

Here's the good news, ladies. Research shows that our pleasurestats (the researchers have a clinical term for them...I  much prefer "pleasurestat"), though stable over time, are perfectly amenable to being raised.

Where pleasurestats are set has a lot to do with old beliefs, guilts, and fears we all carry around happiness and pleasure. Here are some of mine, custom-made to damp down too much happiness (I call these The Nags)

    * If I'm too happy, something terrible's bound to happen. David and I call this "earthquake thinking." His Armenian grandmother, suffering deep in her bones from generations of Turkish atrocities, would solemnly tell young David when he left her, "Watch out for earthquakes." Hunh? We laugh, but how many of us hunker down when the going gets good, steeling ourselves for the next metaphorical earthquake?

    * I don't deserve this much pleasure and happiness. The "deserving" model of pleasure invokes the Almighty and Ever-watchful Bean Counter busily toting up when I've been naughty and when I've been nice. If left to this Bean Counter (who scowls like my mother, my, my third grade Sunday School teacher, and my high school headmistress all rolled into one) I'd never deserve any pleasure--my sins are far too many, I'm not perfect, and there's always another good deed to be done before I earn a little happiness.

    * What about all the suffering in the world? What I've learned in thirty-five years of service (including several years of working in Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong) is that bringing myself down doesn't do a damn thing to help others. This doesn't mean hardening my heart-there's plenty of grief in there for others' pain. What it does mean is that I do a whole lot more good from happiness. I've discovered, the hard and long way, that the best gift I can offer others is my deeply pleasured self.

What you'll find as you sashay down this pleasure-path is that you'll need periodically to reset your own pleasurestat, in order to allow yourself to live an even more luscious, pleasured, generous life. Here are some tips on how to tinker, or even overhaul:

    * Enroll a coach. Most of us can't bootstrap ourselves into higher pleasurestats. A certified life coach or skilled psychotherapist can help more than anything else. Someone who is there just for you, who can create a safe and pleasured place for you to stretch into more pleasure and release what's binding your joy. I couldn't be relishing this voluptuous adventure I'm on with y'all, and with my own clients, without the support of my own bold and dionysian coach (thank you, Harriet!)

    * Enlist girlfriends. Five or so years ago a bunch of us pleasure-loving, heat-seeking girlfriends got together and called ourselves the Pleasure Babes. We've helped each other fertilize our own gardens of earthly delights, and supported each other through the inevitable bumps of life. We've consistently helped each other raise our pleasurestats. How grateful I am to them, I could never ever express-I love y'all so much!

    * Read books, watch movies. You can "catch" pleasure and a raised pleasurestat with the luscious company of books and movies that thrum at a higher setpoint than yours. I'll let y'all know in every newsletter some of the high-vibe resources that have helped me and helped my clients. I invite you to send me in your own favorite resources too, so I can pass them along here to other pleasure hungry sisters!

So what did I do last night to halt my slide down the slippery slope? I named which Nag had me in her wretched grasp, first to myself and then to David (it was "earthquake thinking"). I did some self-soothing (more about that in a later issue). I called one of the Pleasure Babes for lifting up. I also realized I was exhausted, and just plain needed sleep.

After about 45 minutes (much less time than it would have taken to have a fight and find our way back from that), I was back in bed with my lovely man. Much too tired to make love, but delighted to cuddle and reconnect.

We'll make up for lost time tonight...