Dear Diary,\u00a0 most of my previous thoughts about happiness and joy have primarily fallen into two camps.\u00a0 The first camp is in response to activity; if we feel happier for doing something.\u00a0 The second camp can be described as a state of being we feel without stress.\u00a0 However, \u00a0the more I’ve meditated upon my second camp thoughts, the more I’ve understood it is more of a trauma response assumption.\u00a0 The absence of stress does not automatically mean a presence of joy.\u00a0 The lack of stress could lead to apathy,\u00a0 exhaustion, or many other conditions of the human experience other than joy.\u00a0 Joy is much more of a mindset.<\/p>\n
The presence of stress can act like a dam upon the flow of joy, building up a reservoir waiting to be unleashed, but that is not always the case.\u00a0 We must invest in and sustain our intention for this situation to maintain itself.\u00a0 Our environment must support our intention, or it will lose over time.\u00a0 If we are surrounded by people telling us we shouldn’t be joyous, we are more likely to believe it over time.\u00a0 If we are surrounded by people behaving a certain way, we are more likely to emulate their behavior over time.<\/p>\n
Nelson Mandela said, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”\u00a0 If our environment contradicts our intention, we are likelier to operate from fear over hope.\u00a0 In such a case, we work to avoid consequences rather than achieve successes.\u00a0 We will never rise above a neutral position when the primary goal is to avoid consequences because our environment will drag us back into a negative state.\u00a0 Similarly, we will never rise above our opinion of ourselves.\u00a0 If we believe we are unworthy of joy, we will never be joyful;\u00a0 we can have momentary happiness in response to actions (the first camp), but fleeting moments fade quickly.<\/p>\n
Intention and Joy need resiliency to thrive.\u00a0 Life will always deal you setbacks from time to time.\u00a0 It isn’t easy to develop resiliency without experience.\u00a0 Do you have ten years of experience developing your intention and your environment or one year repeated ten times?\u00a0 Have you done the same thing repeatedly, hoping for a different result?\u00a0 Nothing changes unless something changes.\u00a0 Have you practiced avoidance all along, afraid to make the personal or environmental changes necessary to break the dam?\u00a0 It is only avoidance if it requires your attention, and much of modern life’s attention-seekers can be ignored.\u00a0 They aren’t likely to contribute positively to your environment anyway.<\/p>\n
What is joy?\u00a0 Joy is a response to activities bringing cheer to our life and a cultivated mindset allowing for those activities to exist.\u00a0 Joy is also a passive state of being born of an appreciation and gratitude for life. \u00a0\u00a0Joy can be found in the peace of a quiet snowfall,\u00a0 a warm meal with loved ones,\u00a0 an uplifting song,\u00a0 a timely joke, the sense of completion of a job well done, and so much more. \u00a0Joy can be found in stress, but the scales must be balanced.\u00a0 We excel at focusing on the negatives, so purging the worthless negatives can be of great value.\u00a0 Construct an environment allowing you to focus on hope and happiness rather than fear and fighting.\u00a0 You are worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Diary,\u00a0 most of my previous thoughts about happiness and joy have primarily fallen into two camps.\u00a0 The first camp is in response to activity; if we feel happier for doing something.\u00a0 The second camp can be described as a state of being we feel without stress.\u00a0 However, \u00a0the more I’ve meditated upon my second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[304,337],"tags":[312,321,319,323],"class_list":["post-28321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-diary","category-the-mindfulness-journey","tag-312","tag-environment","tag-joy","tag-trauma"],"yoast_head":"\n