Finding the joy in every single day

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a challenging week in the Goddard household.  Our eldest went down with a cough last Tuesday (the same day that the media was covered with headlines about how the testing system was failing!).  So we found ourselves in self-isolation, doing battle with the testing system, trying to remember how to manage work and kids all at the same time with both of us busier work-wise than we were earlier in the year.  It has been tough, really tough.  It has taken all the tools that I coach my clients with to keep myself at just about ok!  

And it has also been a week filled with many moments of pure unadulterated, awesome joy.

I talk about finding joy a lot and I think some people wonder why I keep blathering on about it so much!  “Well of course we could all do with a bit more joy but we’re rather busy here!”  

So let’s start with why I think it is so important.  The human brain is very much still rooted in a primal way of working and quite frankly it’s more than just a little bit lazy!  It will tend to pick up and notice the evidence around it that supports whatever you already believe to be true (the technical term for this is confirmation bias, but I quite like the idea of my brain lazing around!).  So if we are going through life focusing on all the ‘must’s and the ‘should’s and the ‘have to’s and the ‘life is so hard’s, life will keep feeling just that way; hard.  If we make a conscious choice to start noticing the good stuff instead then life will feel….less hard!

I’m not saying here that you should only feel joyful and should actively try to ignore the ‘not so good’ stuff.  Absolutely not.  Brene Brown describes the idea that we cannot selectively numb our emotions.  If we try to cut off the ‘bad’ stuff, we will also cut off the ‘good’ stuff.  What we can do is choose to notice the joy more so that our default is to notice the joy and to act in a way that brings us more joy that we can then notice and act on…. It can become a rather delicious feedback loop.

I encourage people to start small.  Because big wild joyful acts are wonderful but actually the bigger impact overall is the little moments every day.  It’s like food.  You could eat one huge meal once a day but it won’t keep you satisfied in the same way as spreading it out into some smaller meals!

If life feels tough right now and the idea of joyfulness feels a bit alien, here are some simple places to start:

• Gratitude - look around you right now and find 3 things you are grateful to have in your life.  That could be something as big as your partner or children or as simple as the card on the shelf that came from a friend and makes you smile.  Take a moment to just enjoy the presence of those things
• Mindfulness - spend some time in your senses, enjoying what you experience.  Do this while you’re cooking, or out for a walk in nature.  Notice the smells, the colours, the sounds.
• Laugh - Watch a favourite funny film or show or even short videos on YouTube to give yourself a belly laugh!
• Tap into some fun! - What did 7 year old you love to do?  Go do that!  Get on the swings while you’re at the park with the kids (or even on your own!), run down a hill so fast you feel like you’re flying, spend time painting or drawing or whatever just feels GOOD.  
• Dance/Sing - Confession time, I may have discovered a playlist lately called ‘90’s guilty pleasures’!  For me these are the tunes that were really uncool to like when I was a teenager in the 90s but secretly I loved so it’s been lighting me up (and probably annoying my family!) that I’ve been singing along while I work all week!

Take some time to do something every single day that lights you up.  You deserve it.  And the more joy you find, the more you will keep finding!

What one joyful thing will you do today?

If joy feels hard to come by and you would like to talk about how I could support you in finding more of it, then let's talk. For a free exploration call, book using the link below:

https://calendly.com/jengoddardcoaching/exploration-call