I don’t think anyone would ever describe me as an overly joyful person. I’ve struggled with my mental health my whole life and when people would say things like “choose joy” or “gratitude is the answer”, it would - no doubt - be met by a hard eye roll from me. So if the idea of being joyful or choosing happiness feels like a gross cliche, I feel you. Stay with me here.
I never wanted to be the “make your own sunshine” or “lemonade out of lemons” girl. But I didn’t want to stay stuck in a cycle of negativity and angst either. On my journey to find that middle ground of allusive happiness, I found a few things that bruised my ego but freed my soul - just enough to let the light in.
You have control.
You are responsible for the energy you bring to your life. And not just for those around you, but for yourself. When things are hard, when things feel heavy, when it seems like the odds are stacked against you… you have a choice: you can give in to those feelings and that perception or you can choose something different. You can choose perspective, attitude, acceptance. Sometimes it’s just a matter of realizing that you don’t have to stay where you are.
You’re not in control.
Wait, what? Didn’t I just say you have control? Okay, you have control over yourself and the way you choose to show up. But of everything else, you do not. I know, low blow to my fellow control freaks and perfectionists out there. But it’s true. We do not have control over other people. We don’t even have control over most of the circumstances we find ourselves in. We can show up and do the work and do all the right things, and sometimes it still doesn’t work out. Because? Yep, you guessed it. We aren’t in control. The sooner we embrace that, the easier it will be.
You carry what you pick up.
Recently someone in my online yoga group shared this with me as we were talking about how to keep finding what feels good even when it’s hard. It’s this idea that sometimes life can feel heavy because we’re holding things we don’t need to be. We carry the weight of so many things that aren’t always ours to carry - other people’s feelings, their expectations of us, honestly sometimes it’s our own expectations of how things “should” be right now. What are you carrying? What can you put down?
Curate joy today.
I love the idea of curating something because it means I don’t have to make this shit up on my own. To curate means “to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation”. Think about things that spark joy (thank you, Marie Kondo) and acquire as much as you can. Remember sitting down with a pile of magazines, tearing out all the pictures you loved, and putting them together on a big poster board collage? (If not, you should really try it. Your teenage self would be proud.) The next time your day goes sideways or you wake up and it’s already upside down, start collecting little pieces of joy. A song. A deep breath. A good cup of coffee. That little sandal hanging on your rear view mirror. Curate joy.
Hopefully you found a few things here in my ramblings to help point you in a more joyful direction - if you, like me, have found yourself in a heavier than anticipated season. And sometimes life is just like that, right? It’s okay to admit things are hard (one last little nugget of wisdom for you there).
What does curating joy look like for you today? If you’re up for it, share it in the comments. Let’s curate some joy together.