Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. When we feel joy, we feel great about ourselves and feel fulfilled, powerful, confident, capable and lovable. A lot of times we express joy in a physical way by jumping for joy or squealing in delight, we feel jubilant and buoyant and enjoy life to the fullest.
Unfortunately a lot of people have eliminated joy from their lives only to become a tired, overworked and grumpy version of themselves and the experience of joy is only reserved for big, once-in-a-lifetime moments like unexpected surprises, marriage, love or babies.
However, it is possible to find joy in our everyday life if we deliberately go out to find it and switch our mindset from being focused on the negative to being focused on the positive and intentionally start to look for joy in our daily lives.
Decide today that you are going to let more joy into your life and fill your heart and soul with emotions and feelings that make you feel good. Remember, you are the only one who has the power to make the decision to choose joy over sadness.
Here are our TOP 10 tips to bring more joy into your life today.
#1 Re-Write Your Story
Take the first step towards a more joyful life by re-writing your story into one that you actually like. Don’t sell yourself short and undervalue your accomplishments. When you look back at your life, there is a lot that you have achieved so far, so count your blessings and build on that. Now look at the things you always wanted to do but were too afraid to take the leap of faith. Don’t let fear hold you back and go out and do it. Think about all the activities that give you the greatest joy and sense of accomplishment and make it your mission to do more of that starting today.
#2 Make Self-Care Part of Your Routine
Bringing more joy into your life means that you make time for yourself to hit the reset button. Make self-care a big part of your daily routine and carve out at least one hour a day to give yourself a respite of the craziness of your life and indulge in some joyful relaxation. Forget the last few emails you think you need to answer and don’t stress about the miscellaneous to-do’s. Make ‘Me’ time a priority and your life will be a lot more joyful.
#3 Stop Worrying
A surefire way to experience more joy and happiness lies in changing your internal dialogue. If your thought pattern is filled with worries, there is no space for happiness and joy. Keep in mind, joy doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on around you and everything to do with what’s going on inside yourself. Joy and happiness are already within you, you just need to access it and one of the fastest ways to get there is to let go of worries.
#4 Appreciate the Small Things
Our days are filled with small moments, people or things that more often than not go unnoticed or unappreciated, because we either think that they are not significant or we simply take them for granted. Our culture programmed us to celebrate the big wins, but if you make it a habit to celebrate the small things, you can instantaneously bring more joy into your life. Real life is happening right here, right now and if we are waiting for the big win to happen in the future, we deprive ourselves from feeling joy in this very moment.
#5 Be Happy Now
We’ve heard it all before. People say ‘I’ll be happy when I buy a new house.’ ‘I’ll be happy when I lose some weight.’ ‘I’ll be happy when I get my dream job.’ ‘I’ll be happy when I find my perfect life partner.’ But what about being happy right now? Happiness is a feeling that is available to you right this very second. You don’t need the dream house, dream partner, dream job or dream body to be happy. Focus on feeling happiness right now and the rest will magically fall into place, because your happiness will attract everything you want into your life.
#6 Spring Clean Your Belief System
We are the master creators of our own reality, but a lot of us don’t realize how powerful we really are. The truth is that our reality is based on our perception, so how much joy, happiness and contentment we experience in life has a lot to do with our belief system and what we choose to perceive as joyful moments. Challenge your belief system and get rid of the negative tone to allow a more positive, stronger one in.
#7 Give Yourself Permission to Experience Joy
We live in a crazy busy world and our mind can get cluttered with the million and one things we need to do, so we put off experiencing joy. However, the longer you deny yourself joy, the longer it will be before you feel it. Give yourself permission to feel joy right now and see how it positively affects every area of your life.
#8 Let Yourself Dream
Joy and happiness come into your life when you decide to feel it. Let yourself dream about a joyful, happy life and imagine how it feels like, how you can experience it and how it will change your life for the better. The way our brain works is that once you visualize your joyful life, it will look for proof to give it to you. Dream about joy today and your brain will find joy for you.
#9 Laugh More
Laughing makes us feel good and while this may not be surprising news, think about the last time you really laughed so hard that you weren’t able to control yourself? We are so busy being responsible adults that we forget to giggle like kids. Make it a point to laugh more, because research shows that it reduces your stress levels, improves blood flow, enhances your immune system and strengthens your relationships.
#10 Help Others
It really is amazing how helping others, even if it’s just a small favor, brings more joy into our lives. Maybe it’s the feeling that we matter or the thank you we receive afterwards or the knowledge that we made a positive impact on someone else’s life. Whatever it is, research shows that helping others has a huge impact on our life satisfaction and brings more joy into our lives.
Shift your perspective to allow more joy into your life. Decades of research show that if you experience more joy, you not only increase your subjective levels of well-being and life satisfaction, you can also translate this into better physical health.
FIND JOY IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
Joschi & Monika
#BoldNaked