Well, the office revamp is still going on – today we put together a new wardrobe, which was going to finish off the revamp, give me some storage in there, and turn my office into a little dance studio too cos the doors are mirrored (I’m not a prima ballerina, I just always wanted a dance studio!). Anyway, the mirrored doors are the reason the office revamp is still in progress – 2 of them are broken. Sigh. Still, one was fine and Ikea were lovely and immediately agreed to replace them. So, next week I should have my new office completed! I hope. Meanwhile, I was talking to a client today and we were talking about Joy and being Joyful, which reminded me of this article: enJOY!
– Conscious Joyfulness –
The dictionary definition of joy is ‘a deep feeling or condition of happiness or contentment’. Sounds wonderful – I’ll have some of that! So, how often do you feel joyous? All day every day? Once a day? Once a week? Every now and again? I have a vague suspicion (I could be wrong) that it isn’t that often.
After all, we’re not programmed for joy are we? We’re programmed to be stressed, exhausted, busy and tense. So, we walk round scowling rather than smiling, we worry rather than getting excited, we are more serious than frivolous. Hmm. Which state would be more fun? Which state would be easier? Which state do we work on?
Interesting eh?! We’d enjoy life so much more if we worked on the state of joy, but most of us instead work on the state of stress! You may be frowning at me right now – why would you work on being stressed?! Make no mistake about it…every time you spend time on worry, anger, criticism, negative thoughts and actions you are working on your stress.
Perhaps not consciously, because if you were conscious of ‘working on your stress’, you would stop it. Here’s what we do: something upsets us or stresses us out. Then we worry at it like a dog with a bone. Then we talk about it with our friends, and every time we repeat the story (depending on the level of stress/worry/pain, anywhere between 5 times and 200 times) we relive the pain/stress/worry and charge it with a tremendous amount of energy and exercising our stress muscles so they get big and strong.
When I started thinking about this article, I realised that I too do not feel joyous 24/7, and I started looking for specific examples of things that brought me joy in the last week. A smiley moon, sunshine and starlight, catching up with friends, hearing about achievements and good stuff happening for people, connecting to a higher power, music, dancing, laughter, a good book, a new idea, a hot bubbly bath and a magazine, random acts of kindness, love, spending time with my family…the list goes on and on.
And do you know what I found very curious? I had barely noticed these fabulous things – I was far too busy worrying about something else altogether! Now, I’m going to spend more time working on joy, rather than stress. What about you?
– Something to Play With –
Spend 3-5 minutes brainstorming the things that make you joyful. Then decide to live a joyous life and consciously bring more joy into your life. For example, plan one joyous activity a day for the next week, and see what a difference it makes to your outlook. Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave me a comment below.
Love
Donna.x