Choose JOY
“We cannot cure the world of sorrows. But we can choose to live in joy.”
Joseph Campbell
There is a lot of frustration and unease in the world right now. Fear and uncertainty are at an all time high. Many of us have lost the capacity to find joy and see the magic in being alive. After all a lot of us are just trying to make it through the day. We’re stuck in a struggle because we don’t have clarity and we can’t move forward because we don’t know what the future looks like.
CHOOSING JOY
These are exactly the times when we can’t forget about joy it steers us in the direction of understanding and connects us to who we truly are. I don’t know about you but I’m not waiting for joy to find me I’m taking the bull by the horns and choosing it. I’m on a mission to capture it and bring it into my life.
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
Henri J. M. Nouwen
JOY JOLTS
I’m creating JOY JOLTS for myself. These are sudden abrupt moments I give to myself that immediately spark joy, soothe my spirit and take me out of my head and into my heart.
Here’s some of the JOY JOLTS I’ve given to myself so far:
• Reread saved messages, cards and notes from loved ones and friends. Makes the heart swell instantly.
• Found pictures of myself as a kid full of excitement, wonder and awe and posted them. Enliven my spirit.
• Deleted all social media that doesn’t uplift.
• Replaced the regular news with good newscasts like these… www.goodnewsnetwork.org www.happynews.com www.gimundo.com
JOY JOLTS that take a little more time
Heart opener
Oh…oh ….oh…I love these they feel so good. I include them in my yoga practice daily. If you aren’t into yoga you can still give yourself a heart opener. Place your hands on your heart and take a few deep breaths. Connect to your physical body and tune in to the thoughts and energy of your mind. Notice what’s going on up there. As you continue to breathe with your hands on your heart, allow your whole body to fill up with a sense of openness to your upcoming day. See yourself joyfully connected to your day. Even if there are things that feel overwhelming or intense, invite the energy of joy into those moments and see how it makes your body feel instead. Before you close out this ritual and begin the day, ask yourself “What is one self-loving act I will do for myself today?” or “What is one self-loving choice I will commit to for myself today?”
Noting what makes you joyful
Take out a pen and paper and write out the things that make you feel joyful. Anything and everything that you can come up with — write it down. When you feel complete, close your eyes and begin to slowly allow each of those ideas to enter into your body, almost like a visualization of the moment being present inside of you. Feel into the vibration you connect with when you recall these things. After a few moments, notice how you feel. Begin to breathe through those feeling of joy without any restrictions. Visualize yourself with joy inside of your whole body for the rest of your day or week. Ask to be shown what joy ‘looks like’ for you for the rest of the day. See yourself embodied in this place and let it settle into each cell of your body, mind and heart. Take this visualized feeling into the day with you and open up to that feeling with a deep breath at any moment to come back to your joy state.
Giving JOY
Perform one act of kindness during the day to give joy to someone else. Anything from a text message to someone you love letting them know that you appreciate them to holding the door open for someone qualifies here. Make an email introduction to two people who may be able to support one another’s work. Plant a small herb or give someone a plant. Make the simple effort to recycle or pick up a piece of trash on the street. All of these micro-moments can create a macro-impact on those around you and You!
Make a JOY JAR
A Joy Jar is about noting, collecting and celebrating the joy in your life from the small moments to the big ones. Capturing and transferring them into a tangible form that can be seen and reviewed at any time. From a neurochemical standpoint celebrating ‘joys’ over and over provides a dopamine rush that makes us feel good all over again.
Create JOY
Another way to joy is to ‘create’…when we aren’t creating a part of us feels stuck and frustrated. Creating is expressing ourselves from our hearts instead of our heads and makes us feel good. How do you create? Do you build, cook, sew, knit, weave, write, doodle? There are thousands of ways to create. Do a little bit every day.
Tapping into Creativity every morning
Every morning I tap into my creativity. I start by asking myself, who I want to be or how I want to feel or how I want to express myself today. I sit quietly. I wait for the one-word response. You’d be surprised how quickly one little word can cut through a lot of baggage and bring you back to center. I draw and colour my word in my OH MY WORD journal. This 5-minute process triggers my creativity and instantly brings back the joy of my 6 year old self. This feeling plus the ‘thought interruption’ I’ve created in my brain sets the tone for the entire day.
YOU DESERVE JOY
You deserve to be awed by life. You deserve joy that lights up your life. Our lives today are filled with new challenges making it essential to give ourselves the JOY JOLTS that fill the heart, soothe the soul and give us the joy, peace, and fulfillment we crave.
OH MY WORD is a helpful tool to create more JOY in your life.
OH MY WORD is a science backed, 5 minute daily journal that will help you zap the anxiety and amplify the Joy in your life .
- Replaces negative thoughts with positive joyful ones you choose
- Positive thoughts flood the body with dopamine and serotonin
- Helps relieve stress and anxiety
OH MY WORD Journal can be purchased here:
Please share with anyone you know who needs more Joy.
27 Replies to “Choose JOY”
Very motivational post. Life is kinda funny. It’s not hard to find the bad or down times because they seem to creep up inevitably like weeds in the grass whether we like them or not. Therefore there’s no need to focus on those. So it’s best to focus on the good times and cherish those special moments, loved ones and times we have, because we just never really know how much time we all have on this earth.
We deserve joy no matter the circumstances and situations of life. Life is give and take. We will give joy to receive joy too.
Adding more joy to your life has many health benefits and is very rejuvenating. I agree that we can consciously cheer ourselves up and focus on positive things that matter with a little will power and motivation. Bringing joy to others is also a great way to create good energy for yourself and those around you.
We all need to find joy in every way we can. Choose to enjoy life and live it to the fullest.
Finding joy in times like these is hard but a must. There is a difference between being flamboyant as suppose to doing your job and still take time to smile. JOY starts from within. It is all up to us whether we find it or not.
Happiness is a choice. Not because there is a pandemic it does not mean we no longer need to be joyful. We just need to think positively.
I agree, in this hard times having joy and bein greateful for what we have can make a huge difference in the way we live our lives, as we can’t control everything else that’s happening and thinking negative only will bring fear and frustartion.
I’m currently stranded alone and away from home for 3 months now because of the pandemic and made a hug impact with my mental health. I’m very anxious most of the time and depressed. To fight it, I do exercise regularly, think of happy thoughts and binge on my favorite movies. That gives me joy.
We have to find happiness and contentment in ourselves. We need to learn to live life to the fullest extent.
Live life by accepting all circumstances as part of the life process to make yourself more mature. I am now because of all the life experiences that I have lived. In the past I might not have had this kind of thought if I hadn’t gone through all this.
Our experiences(and how we react to them) shape us into who we are to ‘become’.
I can relate to deleting all social media content that doesn’t uplift. I have even gone as far as blocking negative people. It helps quite a bit!
We have to keep reminding ourselves that we are in charge of our lives. We make the choices:)
I’m happy to see I have something in common with you. My kid pictures also bring me a lot of joy no matter how sad I feel
I am actually amused that there are sites that focus solely on positive news. That’s opne I have to check out haha!
Same news just framed differently. Looking at it from another angle…different set of lenses.
The current pandemic has taken away a lot of joy from people. However, it is at times like this that we need our joy the most. Thanks for the ‘joyful’ article.
Regardless of what we may be dealing with…cultivating joy is our responsibility. We can’t wait for it to find us:)
I’m on board with your heart-opener technique. I love yoga and I can see this totally working for me.
The heart opener is powerful.
Writing things down is actually very therapeutic. It’s one of those simple things that people take for granted yet are very helpful for our well being.
Writing things down, doing what I call a brain dump and getting all the thoughts (not necessarily to be reread) and setting a daily intention.,
I enjoyed reading about your joy jolts. I hope you don’t mind me using them for myself haha
I always keep a notebook with me wherever I go. It helps with writing down those magical moments that bring me joy.
Ever since I adopted yoga I have noticed that I am a much happier and joyful person. Anyone out there who hasn’t done so yet is really missing out!
Performing one act of kindness in a day to give joy to someone else as you describe is a very powerful idea. As you give so shall you receive.
After reading your article I can understand how the OH MY WORD journal can be useful. I think I need it in my life.