Dear Diary,<\/p>\n
What is joy?\u00a0 Joy is a response to activities bringing cheer to our life and a cultivated mindset allowing those activities to exist.\u00a0 Joy is also a passive state of being born of an appreciation and gratitude for life.\u00a0 How do we go out creating joy actively as opposed to having it spring up as a reaction to something positive?\u00a0 We cultivate joy by practicing mindfulness of our circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0 Mindfulness is being aware of what you’re doing while you’re doing it.\u00a0 Mindfulness extends to tasks as well as people.\u00a0 We pay attention to the people we’re spending time with and the jobs we choose to do.<\/p>\n
Attention is currency, and quite a few people are trying to get you to spend yours elsewhere.\u00a0 Advertisers, Influencers, Preachers, and Media Figures are all trying to tell you what to think and manipulate your emotions to capture your attention.\u00a0 If, for example,\u00a0 you’re perpetually angry because the media feeds you a controlled narrative, it will be more difficult to practice mindfulness to cultivate joy because you have a finite amount of attention (currency) to spend.\u00a0 Furthermore, groups like advertisers, influencers, preachers, and media figures want to introduce problems to you to be a solution, and negativity sticks much more than positivity does.\u00a0 Negativity prompts us to take action; negativity is an easy way to demand more attention.<\/p>\n
We must set up a proper environment if we intend to practice mindfulness to cultivate a positive mindset.\u00a0 So much of life happens outside of our awareness.\u00a0 How often do we get in the car and drive somewhere without actively thinking about it?\u00a0 Perhaps we’re thinking about a shopping list or what is on the radio.\u00a0 Our environment impacts us constantly, regardless of whether we are aware of it.\u00a0 Our environment should draw out the best in us and inspire us, which means different things to different people.\u00a0 Your environment may need to be minimal but functional, and someone else’s may need to be beautiful and precise.<\/p>\n
The environment also means things we surround ourselves with mentally, emotionally, and socially.\u00a0 We could be sitting in a perfect meditation space, but if we’re watching something detrimental on our phone, the benefits of the room have been nullified or reduced.\u00a0 We often have good intentions but fall just short of achieving our goals.\u00a0 By falling short, we have to use our resiliency skills.\u00a0 Resiliency isn’t just our ability to resist negativity; it is our capacity to navigate to the resources that sustain our well-being and negotiate for these resources to be provided in meaningful ways.\u00a0 Mindfulness comes back full circle because we had to set up the resources in advance to be available as needed, including sometimes removing harmful things or people from our environment at the cost of short-term stress.<\/p>\n
Mindfulness is a skill.\u00a0 As we choose to seize control of our actions and choices, we refuse to let those others with their agendas make decisions for us. \u00a0Their choices do not lead to our joy, but their bottom lines.\u00a0 As we define ourselves through our choices, we can learn what makes us happy and move in those directions.\u00a0 We can build an environment that supports those choices on active and passive levels and build the resources to rely on when bad days inevitably happen.\u00a0 Joy is not a constant, but we don’t have to make misery one, either.\u00a0 If something is nagging at you when you’re smiling, it will do worse to you when you aren’t.\u00a0 Pay attention to yourself and set yourself up for success; you are worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Diary, What is joy?\u00a0 Joy is a response to activities bringing cheer to our life and a cultivated mindset allowing those activities to exist.\u00a0 Joy is also a passive state of being born of an appreciation and gratitude for life.\u00a0 How do we go out creating joy actively as opposed to having it spring […]<\/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":[312,321,319,313],"class_list":["post-28342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-diary","category-the-mindfulness-journey","tag-312","tag-environment","tag-joy","tag-mindfulness"],"yoast_head":"\n