Living Joyfully, Unapologetically
Jackie Capers-Brown - Be You Bravely
Award-winning Executive * Self-Leadership Success Strategist * I Teach Women, Teams & Leaders How to Get Unstuck, and Brave Their Greatness to Achieve Uncommon Success.
During the past 14 months, I have engaged in a one hour walking meditation four days a week. I started it because I wanted to lose weight and as I approached my 61st birthday in December, 2022 - I began to ask myself, "What is it that seeks to emerge in and through me in service to others as I navigate my life forward?"
During the previous five years, I had started several projects, a few that were very successful and others that weren't. I've been working in business since I was 15 so I understand that everything you do won't always be a homerun.
It was something about approaching my 61st birthday and being born in 1961 that caused me to feel a heightened sense of purpose and intentionality about the actions I would initiate during this season of my life.
Walking has always been my proven go-to for releasing stress and weight. As I embraced a healthier way to process the grief I experienced after the loss of my son, I began to practice mindfulness techniques.
My morning meditation practice inspired my walking meditation practice.
Both practices has helped me to calm my mind and experience the energy of stillness within and oneness with my soul.
As a result, I began to realize that I had been in a holding pattern. So, during my mindfulness practices, I set the intention to allow the answer(s) to emerge as to WHY I was in a holding pattern.
Own Your Truth
Wisdom grown out a continuous mindfulness practices creates a receptivity to natural joy, delight and happiness.
When we experience feelings of JOY and those related to it, such as, cheerfulness, zest, contentment and optimism are all waves of energy that often pervades our mind, heart, body and soul.
When we develop a practice that helps us to live joyfully, unapologetically, we begin to fire and wire new neurons that create new neural pathways in our brain associated with feelings of JOY. According to neuroplasticity research, "The?more often the firing of one neuron stimulates another to fire, the stronger and more efficient that causal connection becomes."
The combination of both my meditation practices during these months have allowed me to see that suppressing the JOY that I was feeling in my heart about life because people around me were experiencing several major challenges was an act of betrayal that I was inflicting on myself.
I didn't want to be viewed as someone who wasn't empathetic to what they were dealing with. This approach was not healthy for my well-being and state of wholeness. If anything, it was creating needless suffering and affecting the focus and energy I was demonstrating toward creating change in my personal life and my business.
Several friends shared that some of it probably was because of the global pandemic and how it had disrupted all of our lives, and how the energy of fear became a contagion around the world, too. So, I should give myself some slack and see it as a bump on the road to achieving new milestones.
I agreed. I thought I had been doing a pretty good joy processing my emotions through my journaling. I didn't think about how my emotional energy was being impacted by the people around me the most during the COVID pandemic.
Once I accepted the truth that I'd been emotionally affected by the pandemic in ways that I hadn't been aware of, I accepted that whatever I was experiencing is my truth.
I've learned through adversities the value of loosening my grip on how I think things should be or want them to be - to avoid needless suffering.
When I began to develop the practice of loosening my grip it didn't always feel natural. This practice requires us to demonstrate the courage to let go of our ideas or some thing that we have up to a particular moment believed to be how life is.
This practice asks us to accept life as it is and be courageous enough to move into the unknown by loosening our grip on what has been our familiar approach to how we handle a challenge.
What I know is this, I began to practice mindfulness as one of the tools that I used to process the grief I experienced after the unexpected loss of my teenage son. It was difficult for me to see how the experience of losing my son was for my greater good.
Three years later when I joined Toastmasters and began to share snippets of my journey, I had an Aha moment when club members felt moved to share how what I had shared in my speech assignment helped them to see a situation they were facing with a new perspective.
Their encouraging feedback helped me to see the value my experiences could have in the lives of people, beyond my work as a leader within the organizations I worked for.
By owning my truth about how I was diminishing my joy because I didn't want to be seen as indifferent to the challenges that the people around me were dealing with, I suffered.
Deepening my awareness of how I had been emotionally impacted by the COVID pandemic, social unrest and other challenges that had taken place in our country and in the world, helped to expand my awareness of the importance of acknowledging how we feel about things beyond our control. Instead of just grinding through situations.
Loosening our grip to ideas, beliefs, and familiar approaches to how we have handled something in the past to engage the unknown without knowing exactly how what we think will work - is definitely outside most of our comfort zone. Mindfulness encourages us to perceive letting go as an act of generosity.
Check In With You
Before I go on, have you taken the time to review how you were thinking, feeling and behaving a few years prior to the COVID pandemic? Is your energy on the upswing or does it feel stagnant? Take the time to identify what you truly feel.
Have you been experiencing any of the following:
It's okay if you've been experiencing any one of these states of being. Life gets busy and you may not have an established routine that keeps you grounded in the truth of the creative power within you to manifest new possibilities in your life.
One of the most important steps you can take when experiencing any of the above is to tune in to the truth in your heart and allow yourself to reconnect to your truth instead of numbing yourself to avoid your emotions.
By creating a sacred space to just acknowledge the truth of your emotions helps you begin the process of to reconnecting to your heart and soul.
The process of releasing emotional turbulence is pivotal to avoid turning your emotions inward and thinking and believing that their is something wrong with you because of how you're thinking and feeling.
It's important that you respect whatever you are experiencing right now so that you begin to get the clarity you need to determine if you need additional support from a therapist to process what you're experiencing, or perhaps you need more inspiration, motivation and a proven map to activating the potential within you.
Living Joyfully, Unapologetically
Think about a recent moment when you were generous. Did you feel a sense of delight?
Mindfulness teaches us that generosity brings us joy. We feel joy when we think about being generous. We feel joy when we actively participate in the act of giving. We feel joy when we remember our act of generosity.
Living joyfully, unapologetically is not something you seek - it's who you become - as you expand your awareness of what delights you and fuels your soul (the essence of your true SELF) with joy!
Living joyfully, unapologetically arises naturally when our joy is not attached to anything or anyone having to be a particular way for the peace of joy in our soul to arise within us.
As we are delighted in the people, things and experiences that bring us great pleasure, we are mindful that we have the power within us to create our happiness. It's not dependent upon external circumstances.
We have the ability to experience any emotion by mere thought alone. The invisible power of our thoughts is that ALL of our experiences are defined by our thoughts. Our mind ONLY works from the inside-out.
The acceptance of this fact about how our mind really works will help to alleviate unnecessary suffering you may experience when you attribute the cause of any emotion to an external experience. You feel your thoughts.
Your ability to experience the delight of joy by the mere thoughts that you pay attention to has within it the power to usher you into a new level of personal freedom and empowerment.
Your mind, heart and body can abide in a greater ease and flow as you deepen your appreciation for your life and how you can use your gifts of greatness, talents, knowledge and experience to improve your well-being and in service to improving the well-bein of others.
In this generous state, you will live joyfully, unapologetically and deepen your practice of being energetically aligned with your soul's purpose.
10 Questions to Ask Yourself When You Don't Feel JOY In Your Life
These powerful questions will help you create clear intentions about what joy looks and feels like to you.
Your answers to these questions can help you make joy a priority in your daily life - instead of waiting for something to change before you experience joy.
Pull out your journal, tablet or blank sheets of paper.
Be honest with yourself as you answer the questions below.
Awareness is the catalyst for change.
Self-awareness helps us to meet ourselves where we are in this moment with love, compassion and empathy. At the same time it enables us to recognize that we will always be the agent of change we need to discover the next version of our best self and to create new possibilities in our lives beyond what we imagine!
Conclusion
Think about a past moment in your life when you were able to be happy when things weren't going your way - what did you learn about yourself in that situation?
What are you thankful for from that situation?
Whatever lesson and wisdom you gained from that situation makes it easier for you to handles tough times.
Be grateful for where you are right now. Now is all that you have.
Whatever you may be experiencing right now is teaching you about who you are and what you are capable of.
Joy is a high state of consciousness that is independent of any circumstances.
Living joyfully, unapologetically doesn't mean that you deny the truth of your experience or what's taking place in the world. This will only cause you to suffer.
Living joyfully, unapologetically means that you can see and accept the truth of reality while expanding your awareness to reframe your perspective on an experience in such a way that you are receptive to allowing JOY to be the energy inhabiting your mind, heart and body.
Joy fuels the strength of our faith and our willingness to embrace the unknown to experience new possibilities in life.
Friend, do your best to remove whatever ceiling you have in your mind about the measure of JOY you can truly experience in life.
The first place you can start doing so is with your answers to the ten questions above by setting a daily intention to cultivate JOY in a way that resonates with your mind, heart and soul.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. I appreciate you.
Please share it with someone you know who would benefit from it.
Success Becomes You,
Jackie B
P.S. In addition to my Empowered Soul Masterclass, registration is open for my Get Noticed, Get Promoted: The Blueprint.
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