Articulating Your Joys
I’ve found that prioritizing real, embodied joy—which starts with the process of actively noticing what activities and connections bring us joy and then nurturing them accordingly—has been more important than ever as we move through our collective COVID crisis. That’s because the way out of digital overwhelm is not by heaping on more tasks and shame-inducing to-do lists; the way out of digital overwhelm is leaning into the simple pleasures in life.
So, how do we figure out what brings us joy? And once we’ve identified the little things in our day-to-day that bring a smile to our face and a skip to our step, how do we welcome more of these joys into our lives?
The path to embracing joy
The process of embracing joy is not effortless, it’s effortful. It's not mindless, it’s mindful. It requires courage and curiosity, requires you to maintain an openness to the possibility of what could be. But if you’re willing to put in the time, the return on investment you receive just might bring you to your knees in gratitude.
The first stage is simply awareness. We can’t expect to bring more joy into our lives if we don’t know what actually brings us joy.
Noticing and naming your personal joys
Joy looks different for every person. That’s part of the beauty of this complex emotion—joy ends up being a reflection of all the elements that uniquely make you, you. Feeling stuck? Maybe this will help get your awareness flowing. Here are a few things that bring me joy these days:
Joy for me is sporting pom-pom necklaces repurposed from my (COVID-cancelled) birthday party. It’s painting my fingernails at home with a sparkly shade I picked out just for me. It’s catching glimpses of this colourful weaving by Nova Mercury I hung in my living room, a bouquet of tulips that I bought on a whim, just because I felt like it. It’s claiming moments in the day to take my powder-blue bicycle for a spin, and then taking a break to write at a picnic table drenched in sunlight.
What (or who) has made you smile lately? It can be big things or little things, brief moments or regular habits. If it brings you joy, jot it down.
How to nurture your joys
Noticing is about your attention.
Nurturing is about your effort.
Making change takes work. There’s no way around that fact. It takes work, but it’s worth it. Once you’ve identified your joys, your focus should shift to nurturing. How will you create more time and space for joy in your life? The nurturing process is about undergoing a mindset shift and then putting in the time to change.
Ingrid Fetell Lee helped shed some light on the road towards a joyful life. A designer by trade and author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness and the blog The Aesthetics of Joy, Ingrid has made it her life’s work to explore the answer to the questions like: How does the physical world influence our intangible emotions? And how can we create a more joyful world?
She’s a wealth of knowledge and insights and—no surprises here—she was a total joy to speak with. Listen to my interview with Ingrid Fetell Lee here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
And today, I’ll leave you with this one last question: What simple pleasures have brought you joy through quarantine, that you plan to carry forward into your life?
