About #Joy

Try to define it; it's not easy, but we all want to experience it. In my view, it's definition must begin with the acknowledgement that it is first and foremost a DESTINATION. We must aspire to get there because if we don't know where we are going we can't get there but even we did get there we wouldn't know where we ere and you wouldn't appreciate being there.

I explained joy to my 17 year old son in the following way. Think about a well of joy, one that you are adding water to every day (so that later you can take water from it). I said, "when you look up at the clouds and can recognize their beautiful formation that's worth a quart of water to add your own person INTERNAL well. When you look at the sunset and marvel at its beauty, that's worth another quart to add because you have experienced JOY. JOY puts a smile on your face and leaves an indelible positive stain on all that passed through it!

Then imagine, I said to my son, that you went out on a date and had a great time laughing and enjoying each other's company; that's another quart, or that you got the grade you wanted on a test...and so on. These joyful moments, we must recognize, can be very tiny or big and could come from any direction about anything. We have the power to create them too; they don't just happen. It is our desire to be in a joyful state that makes them happen more often because we are leaning into the possibility and definition of them happening.

So, we must pause and know that we are experiencing JOY and what it feels like so we can constantly move toward this as a destination in our lives. We must want to go there, be there, and help others get there--and in helping others, we must remember our feelings, share them, and inspire others to have them. Joy is not one and done, such as that experienced through the possession of material things; no, joy of the moment and in the moment each and every day.

So, why is this relevant to a LINKEDIN audience, you may wonder? The answer is that in every aspect of our lives--as employees, as bosses, and company owners, and in our personal lives, if we do not prioritize JOY as the experience that we are having and that we want others to have we will fail.

In our political lives, as well, we must realize that the ultimate measure of optimality is that the foundations for people are being laid down and secured with all that we do so that everyone can experience JOY in small and big ways on a regular basis.

We must recognize that everyone needs a well, one that is simultaneously filled with their own personal recognition and understanding that the destination in life and of living on a daily basis is JOY and that it is necessary to take the necessary steps to get there. Getting to JOY is a process that can only be enhanced by external phenomena but the state of being joyful cannot not be created externally alone; It must start with us internally first. Then, what we need is a minimization of external barriers that prevent us from arriving at our intended destination of being able to experience and possess JOY in our hearts, souls, minds, and in living and working conditions.

JOY in both a destination and process- and each part of the equation matters. It is up to each one of us to do our part to make the process better for ourselves and others so that we can arrive at our destination in all that we do. When we can exclaim that we have done a good day's work, we have arrived at the destination that day; when we can say that our leaders at work helped us to arrive there, that was a good day, and importantly, when we can say that the leaders of our nation help us all to be inspired, motivated, and incentivized to be JOYFUL, oh my, that's Shangri-la where we all want to be!

Sharon T. Freeman, Ph.D., President of Gems of Wisdom Consulting (www.gemsofwisdomconsulting.comO