Tag: joyful moments

The Winter of Joy and Renewal

The Winter of Joy and Renewal

“People in Alaska run to the windows and cheer when it snows!”

I could see the joy on my daughter’s face as she related what she’d seen.  She was a 3rd year medical student spending 4 weeks at a regional hospital in Anchorage. The people with their noses pressed to the glass were hospital staff and patients.

“Why is everyone so happy?” she asked.

“Because when it snows it means we can get outside and play!”

She laughed.

“In Vancouver, BC where I grew up people groan when they see snow, they think about having to shovel their walks, unbury their cars and the hazardous condition of the roads. Unless they’re heading to the ski hills, a big snowfall is viewed as a nuisance.”

But here in Anchorage, Alaska it was cause for celebration; it set everything aglitter and life opened up.

A different set of ‘lenses’ saw the snow in a completely different way.

New Lenses

Her story reminded me of this past year. In 2020 were all given a new set of lenses with which to view the world. While these lenses saw heartbreak, they also brought many wonderful things into sharp focus.

Joy in Small Things

Almost everyone I talk to (myself included) was surprised by the joy they found in small things. Things that hadn’t been noticed before or dismissed as nothing special. Suddenly viewed from these lenses they were magic.

Hygge

Have you heard of the Danish word hygge? It’s not a word so much as a concept or way of being. Not translatable into English, it is essentially a coziness that evokes a feeling of contentment and joy. Hygge is a big, overstuffed chair, a weighted blanket and a good book. It’s drinking cocoa by a crackling fire and cuddling a pet or loved one, it’s the sun sparkling through the trees, new bursts of growth, a smiling face, having coffee with a friend socially distanced on a blanket in a park, watching a lazy turtle on a pond, a surprise phone call from a friend, the smell of baking wafting through the kitchen, the crunch of  the sourdough crust as the first cut is made, the dance of a candle flame. The joy button is pushed, and feelings of contentment warm the body and spirit.

Wintering provides access to Joy

I’m not going to endure the winter like I do year after year, I’m going to use it to rest rejuvenate and reflect. This winter I’m going to give myself full access to joy.

As we celebrate the new year and enter the winter season let’s look at it as British author Katherine May does. She released a book last year called – Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, and it’s a wonderful read. Wintering, according to May is not just a time of year. Everyone has their own personal winters, or seasons of difficulty in which we must nurture ourselves and our souls to come out better than we were upon entering them. Sometimes winters are in the summer. Other times, like last year, they begin in March and last for an unforeseeable length of time. Winters like those May speaks of are a time to welcome our hardships (they’re coming for us regardless, but embracing the cold makes them hurt a little bit less) and give ourselves the time and space we need to get to the other side.

In Wintering, May talks about the magical transformation trees in northern climates undergo: “the changes that take place in winter are a kind of alchemy, an enchantment performed by ordinary creatures to survive.”

Is it magic? No. It’s nature, it’s joy and it’s in you and it’s in me.

I received a holiday card in December, “kindness is like snow” it read, “it beautifies everything it covers.” This quote by Kahlil Gibran – accompanied by a man in a crown holding a robin while a goose and a fox have tea in the foreground-is the kind of specific beauty you can only find this time of year.

I intend to bask in it and let the cold, now and the darkness magnify the beauty all around me.

Start everyday with joy in your heart

Take a moment every morning to activate your joy center. Ask yourself – how I want to feel?  Take a deep breath and wait for the word to come into your consciousness. Once it does draw, write, print or doodle it on the the page in your OH MY WORD journal. Channel your inner 6-year old, colour it and make it beautiful.  You’ll feel the joy starting to bubble from within.

You have selected the lenses you will wear today. All your experiences and thoughts will be seen through these.

Have a joyful day.

Cheryl x

Don’t have an OH MY WORD journal yet? You can get one here.

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Amazon.ca

Chapters/Indigo

Please share with anyone you know who needs more Joy.

 

Choose JOY

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

Choosing JOY

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 create instant joy.

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.

Remembering joyful moments
What brings you joy?
The joy of children is contagious

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!

Giving joy to friends

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.

Celebrating unabashed JOY

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.

A page from my OH MY WORD journal. Today I choose to .. feel JOY

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 Journal can be a helpful tool in creating 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:

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Amazon.ca

Chapters/Indigo

Please share with anyone you know who needs more Joy.

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