Welcome to 2022.
My last newsletter for 2021 was on hope, and as we start out in 2022 it’s heavy on my heart to share on JOY.
What is joy?
Joy is an inner feeling. Happiness is an outward expression. Joy endures hardship and trials and connects with meaning and purpose. A person pursues happiness but chooses joy.
We often think of joy as something that happens to us—we enjoy ourselves at a party, or we enjoy a meal—but the truth is that joy is something that happens in us.
Joy is a choice.
We choose joy like we choose a positive mindset. We choose joy like we choose to see possibilities, answers, and options.
But often, we don’t choose joy.
Why is that? Because we quit choosing joy. We expect someone else to be responsible for it. We expect our boss or teammates or spouse or children to make us feel joyful in our lives.
We give away the one thing we can control—our choice—and accept whatever we get from the rest of the world.
Sometimes being a joyful person amid this crazy world seems impossible. Well then, let the impossible commence. Because one of the secrets to being defiantly joyful is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the circumstances going on in your life or your world. Defiant joy does not depend on feeling happy.
The joy of small things that makes life large.
What are the small things in your life that bring you joy?
The smile of a child, a sunrise or sunset, walking on the beach, your toes in the sand. I look at the little ‘finches’ outside my office window that I feed and they bring me great joy as I watch them fly in and out. I love all of these things and they bring me joy. But my joy is a choice that I decide to look for every day.
If the heights of our joy are measured by the depths of our gratitude, and gratitude is the way of seeing things, how often do we stop and think about what we are grateful for?
What if this year we do as C.S. Lewis says in his book Surprised by Joy – “Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears – take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else.” He is saying, enjoy the moment in the midst of uncertainty and that it’s the perspective of smallness that cultivates surprised wonder and in turn that grows gratitude, that yields joy.
For me Joy is an action – feeling joy begins in the action of thanksgiving and gratitude.
It’s a choice.
What if in 2022 in the midst of again, so much uncertainty we make the decision to find joy:
- Find joy in the small things
- Find joy in the unexpected
- Appreciate the people around us
- Look for the good in the circumstances in which we find ourselves in
- Start a gratitude journal and each and every day for the remainder of the year write at least one thing you are grateful for.
Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of an open hand. Let me encourage you to open your hand and heart to joy in the small things around you. We all have them; those small moments or things that often go unnoticed or unappreciated because we think they’re either insignificant or we take them for granted because we live in a culture that celebrates big accomplishments. But what if we made it a habit to embrace and celebrate the small things?
Real life is happening all around us, while you’re waiting for the big thing, you hope is going to give us some sort of inner peace, contentment or joy. The truth is that often the things that matter most are the small ones.
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
Let me encourage you to choose JOY, to fan the flame of joy, look for it everyday in the small things that will surprise you this year, no matter what!
Love Wendy xx
