How to Spark Joy in Your Life
So, in the last post, we established that resolutions are pointless. It’s in the root word. They’re resolute. One screw up and a resolution is done. Goals, on the other hand, are actionable steps that gradually take us to where we ultimately want to be.
That’s what we’re heading – goal setting.
But before we can establish accurate goals, we first need to focus on our adrenals and get our nervous system in the “rest and digest” phase rather than “fight or flight.”
So, for now, we’re going to continue with ways to lower cortisol levels so we’re eventually able to sit down in stillness and structure goals that align to what we truly want in life. You’d be surprised how much those goals change and how deeper and more fulfilling they are when you reach them from a place of perspective rather than arbitrarily throwing something out as a resolution on January 1st.
For the next couple of weeks, the best thing you can do is learn to care for yourself. I know, it sounds stupid and it sounds like a waste of time, but self-care is essential. It sends a message to your brain that you are worth keeping promises to and that you value yourself. We are willing to sacrifice for and prioritize things we value, so you need to ingrain in both your conscious and subconscious mind that you are worthy of care.
And remember, self-care doesn’t have to be expensive and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. If you’re a mom of younger kids, it can be something as simple as taking them outside to see what you find in nature at a park or in your own backyard. Or if you’re burnt out from being around your kids, give them a ball, let them run around, and you just take a moment to breathe.
While you’re outside, breathe deep. Exhale fully, farther than you think you can, and then take a really slow, deep breath and feel the fresh air in your lungs. Our bodies were designed to coexist with nature. We were never meant to be inside 24 hours a day, staring at a computer or phone screen. If the weather permits, you can always try grounding.
Moms – listen to the laughter of your children and let it fill you with joy. Motherhood is all consuming and it can be overwhelming. Sometimes we forget to enjoy it because we’re so busy keeping everyone alive, fed, and clothed. But the next time you hear your kids laugh, breathe it in. Memorize it. Internalize it. Feel it. Let it light you up inside. That kind of laughter doesn’t come often later in life, so let it fill you and resonate with you. Let it speak to your soul. Let your soul connect with it and remember what it was like to have that kind of joy. As we get older, our laughter becomes less and it shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Laughter and lightness give way to stress about friends or homework and eventually bills and relationships and all things adult. We push out laughter and trade it for stress. Try to reclaim some of that feeling of joy at just being alive.
If you watch children, they run because it’s fun. At this point in my life, the only thing that would make me run is an injured child or a bear chasing me. There are things we give up as we get older and life starts to weigh us down, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can reclaim joy and laughter. We can reclaim the wonder of moving our bodies just for enjoyment. We can change it all just by changing our perspective on things. Movement feels good. It’s been perverted by the diet industry to be a means to an end; a tool for weight loss, but that’s not what movement is about. Movement is enjoying being in our bodies. Movement is leaning into a stretch and noticing how good it feels. Movement is working in your yard or cleaning your house and just appreciating what your body can do. You can find joy in any type of movement.
There’s a quote that I’m sure you’ve heard, it’s something along the lines of “someone out there wishes they had your problems.” When you have to go out to your back yard to cut down a fallen tree (us right now), remember someone else wishes they had a backyard. When you’re tired of driving your kids to and from every activity they have, remember, someone else wishes desperately for children. When there’s dirty dishes in the sink, it means you’ve had food to eat. When the laundry has piled up, it means you have clothes to wear. Every single thing in your life is a blessing.
There are going to be bad days, and yes, there are still going to be things that suck. Life can be overwhelming. And that’s okay. It’s okay to have bad days and feel horrible. The trick is to not get stuck there.
So much of joy and happiness in life comes down to gratitude and perspective. If we change our perspective, if we look at life as happening for us rather than to us, if we take moments to be grateful for everything we have and everything we are, we open ourselves up to a completely new way of living. We live in abundance rather than scarcity. We live in gratefulness rather than selfishness. We live in calm rather than chaos. It’s simply a matter of taking a couple of minutes to be grateful for the miracle of you being alive, of you being able to breathe oxygen and have feelings and thoughts.
In the next article, I’ll focus on activities you can do to lower your cortisol levels further. But for now, take a moment and sit in gratitude for what you have and TRULY enjoy life – not just cognitively – feel that feeling of joy.
If you need some help, here it is. Once you learn how to access this feeling, you’ll be able to find it even in the midst of chaos.
Find a quiet space where you’re not going to be disrupted. Sit or lay down in a comfortable position and just breathe for a minute. Start with the deepest exhale you can manage. Wring out your lungs of all the stagnant air sitting in them. Then take a deep, cleansing breath. Now start box breathing, (breathe in for the count of 5, hold for the count of 5, breathe out for the count of 5). Do this for a couple of minutes until you feel calm and clear.
Now, connect with your soul and find your joy. I know, it sounds weird, but just give it a try. Picture where you imagine your soul sits in your body. I picture mine in the center of my chest, but if yours sits in your pinky, so be it. Now focus on that point and really breathe into it and connect with it. Picture a bright light radiating from it and lighting up the room. Now remember a feeling of joy and lightness and love and let that feeling glow from within you. Feel it. Really feel it. And then sit with it. Hold onto it for as long as you can. Often, you will feel it start to fall away, but you can bring it back. Feeling this feeling of joy and connection is like a muscle. You’ll fatigue after a moment and slip back down to where you started, but just consider it a weightlifting rep and do it again. Take yourself to that high euphoric state again and hold it there for as long as you can. It’s going to be a struggle at first. But the more you do it, the better you will become at it.
Now, before you let that feeling go, associate it with something. It can be a color or a number or a word – anything that feels like it’s locking it in. You can simply picture the word joy radiating from you, or gratitude, or the color white or the number 7 – whatever you want to use as your trigger, solidify it in that trigger. And then slowly let it fade away.
You’ll probably still feel the residual feelings of joy for a moment so rest in it and enjoy it. And then take another deep breath and slowly come back to the world around you.
It’s a five minute exercise, but the more you do it, the easier it is to access that emotion and that feeling of euphoria and joy. Soon, you’ll find yourself being able to access this feeling even in the most stressful moments and you’ll learn to shift your emotions around certain things.
I’m going to leave you with a final thought.
The chances of you existing on this planet, at this time, in the place you are is something beyond calculation.
Even if you calculate the odds of your parents meeting (1 in 20,000) and them staying together long enough to have kids (1 in 2000), the probability of you existing is 1 in 10 followed by 2,685,000 zeros.
And that’s just with your parents’ DNA.
But you are so much more than that.
You are a DNA combination of your ancestors that goes back to the beginning of humanity. Your specific DNA will never be expressed the same way for the rest of time.
And you are more than your DNA.
You are a patchwork of your experiences and your upbringing that is unique to only you. You are a product of your environment and the singular perspective you bring to it and take from it.
You are stitched together by your experiences and the people you have met along the way.
You are an anomaly; a rarity.
You are precious.
No one can do exactly what you do in the way you do it.
That in itself is a miracle.
Take a moment to appreciate that.
This is the second article in the new series on goal setting and making positive changes in your life. To stay updated about new articles, sign up at the very bottom of this page to have the next article delivered directly to your inbox.
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