Finding Pearls of Joy Everyday: Recipe for a Joyful Life
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
By Suzanne Glover
Pearls of joy can be found everyday despite feeling despair and unhappiness. In fact, if you bring yourself into the present, you’ll be stumbling on happiness before you know it.
Finding joy in your life can seem difficult when life just “isn’t going your way.” But, living a joyful life – despite your circumstances – takes making a shift in your awareness from the past/future to the present and helping yourself “feel good” now.
LET’S FEEL GOOD NOW
First, as I write this article, I’m finding joy in a song that is inspiring me to share with you how to find joy in your life.
Go ahead and listen to it for a minute so you know how I’m feeling as I write these words… and you can even hum along with it as I’m doing. (Song credit: Loreena McKennitt “Caravanserai”)
RECIPE FOR A JOYFUL LIFE
So, how do you find joy when life seems miserable?
BECOME PRESENT
STEP 1: Bring yourself into the present moment instead of worrying about the future, or trying to change the past (which is obviously impossible to do, yet so many of us spend oodles of time “in the past.”)
TOP TIP for bringing yourself into the moment: Monitor your reaction to any given situation. You have four choices:
1- Can you change the situation?
2- Can you change yourself to be happy in the situation?
3- Do you need to leave the situation?
4- Do you need to let go of your desired outcome for the situation?
Do you have power to change the situation or do you have to “let go” and either leave or accept the outcome because you really don’t have power to change the situation?
For example, many of us Baby Boomers are watching our parents age and “transition into the next realm.” When doing this, it can be very hard to find any joy at any given moment, but the key here is remembering to find those pearls of joy in everyday living that can feed our own souls while we endure something over which we have no control [i.e., the aging process and physical decline of our parents.]
You always have control over your reaction to any given circumstance and finding joy in the situation [or changing the situation to be more joyous for you] will set you on the path for living a joyful life.
On the next page, I discuss stumbling on happiness by taking action steps…
