By nature, people seek intrinsic pleasure, prioritizing how they feel over the meaning of what they feel, think, and do. Intrinsic pleasure flows from feeling to thought: from the bodily sensation of what you accomplish, experience, give, or receive to your understanding of its meaning.
Joy is maximized through extrinsic pleasure, or by prioritizing the meaning of what you feel, think, and do over how you feel. Extrinsic pleasure flows from your thoughts: from the understanding of the meaning of what you accomplish, experience, give, or receive into the actions you take to advance your purpose in yourself and in the world. These feelings come because of the value you mentally associate with them. They can be just as intense as intrinsic pleasures, but they can endure as long as the meaning that generated them continues to prove true.
Joy from meaning is more enduring than joy from physical pleasure. Pleasure based on physical experience can only last as long as the physical situation that generated it. These feelings can be intense, but they are never enduring, and can disappear completely if future experiences reveal them to be other than what you thought they were. Joy from meaning is not as fickle as physical feelings. It is not limited to the continuation of a physical experience, and will continue as long as the underlying understanding guiding one’s thoughts about value and purpose remain unchanged.
Joy from meaning is stronger than joy from physical pleasure. Physical pleasure in and of itself is insufficient to overcome the many challenges that will threaten it, such as perspective-changing additional information or overwhelming emotional pain. However, when strong enough, meaning can provide sufficient motivation for you to continue to strive in your purpose against any negative feeling, including pain, sorrow, anxiety, fear, and depression.
Joy from meaning lies more within your control than physical pleasure. Meaning is not maximized through emotion, but through intentional exercise of reason. Your physical situation is subject to the choices of others; your reasons and choices are not.
The joy that comes from following your purpose will dwarf any joy that can come from the pleasure of a purely physical experience. With time, extrinsic pleasure will always come to dominate intrinsic pleasure. The mental meaning of what you find truly valuable will always overcome the feeling of what you experience only physically. No matter how pleasurable a physical experience might be, it will fade, but your mental appraisal of its value over time will remain to the extent your understanding of reality is correct.