How are you actively creating more joy in your life?
The seduction of all botanicals is crucial to my wellbeing; they bring me JOY. I’ve introduced nature into my home and business by creating an aesthetic. Gardening and flowers are a big part of my life! Perhaps, unknowingly, I’ve been generating reservoirs of happiness to pull from that buffer me from the lows of everyday life.
In my opinion, the joy of true happiness is often unattainable if our quest becomes more about creating a perfectly curated experience of the world — an Instagramable moment of life. Often I see us transfixed in trying to measure up with a commercial and linear way of living, rather than matching our desires to the cycles of nature.
Mindful joy seeking
In recent years I’ve paid close attention to why joy is essential in our lives and am personally striving to discover how to incorporate more of those unpredictable genuine feelings of happiness. When these blissful feelings surge over us so unexpectedly at any given time we experience true moments of joy.
I seek and find happiness when I reduce stress with self-care or cook a favorite recipe for family and friends. Happiness is also found when I make time to go urban camping with a girlfriend when I make time to sketch every day or share my passion for gardening with you.
What is joy?
By identifying the things that bring us joy, we begin to consciously self-sooth into intentional states of happiness. Sadly, so many of us have lost touch with that feeling of happiness. By not knowing how to cultivate joy we can often resort to quick fixes like alcohol, drugs, and addictive foods. We can also seek fleeting moments of happiness from our phones or by watching endless hours of TV. All of these distractions rob us of genuinely experiencing the time we’ve lost.
To help me understand and journal my own moments of happiness, I began by creating a Goal Tracker. This is a simple tool that I draw and share every month in my email newsletter. I use it regularly to help keep track of all the times I sense the joy in my daily life. I also create it to help you document your daily routines and track habit-forming actions to help you reach your goals. When we reach our goals, we experience joy!
Luckily, with this tracker, I mindfully see, feel, and smell joy throughout the day and it delights me each and every time I catch myself with a smile or a gasp as I incorporate more moments of pleasure in my life. The Tracker has helped me to visually and physically identify those moments of joy. Noticing even the simplest of seconds add up.
No challenge is too enormous for the yearning heart
If the challenge of keeping a joy tracker seems daunting, at this point, be patient with yourself. It does take time, but remember, the goal of this exercise is to help us identify the different sources of joy in our lives and to understand a bit more about why they bring us joy so we can incorporate more of them into our lives.
“The most successful givers aren’t doing it because they’re being told to. They do it because doing it is fun. It gives them joy.” – Seth Godin
By identifying even the smallest of things and consciously observing the emotion of joy rushing through the body, experiencing those feelings forces us to be present, which enriches the mind and soul. We learn to ask ourselves daily, “what choices will I make today to make me feel happy?”
So I share with you my personal self-love Tracker here. This tracker makes me feel happy as I track my moments of joy, hence the bouquet of flowers. Each time I sense a feeling of joy come over me, I fill in a petal. The goal is to fill in as many petals as possible throughout the day and, at the end of the week/month, I have a visual representation of my joy. I am gifting myself the bouquet of flowers as a show of appreciation for the kindness I exhibit towards myself.
I hope you find it as useful as I have and that you share all of your happy moments with me. What brought you joy today? I’d love to know what happiness entered your life and encourage you to share your joyful moments below.
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