Why Joy Is So Important
Over the past several months I’ve been sharing quite a bit about the spectrum of challenging emotions and while this seems to have been quite helpful to many based on your feedback, what I want to do is shift gears a bit and highlight some of the pieces that lead to the less than desirable emotions.
In one of my recent coaching sessions, my client had a revelation that much of her self-perceived negative behaviours boiled down to one thing; a lack of pleasure and joy in her life. A lack of attention to creating consciously pleasurable experiences in one’s life is a common phenomenon I see with my clients, and especially with women who are primary caregivers within their families. By the time they have taken care of everyone else, there’s a level of overwhelm or exhaustion that precedes the prioritization of pleasure and joy.
It’s important to note that pleasure and happiness are not the same. Pleasure is produced when dopamine is released in the brain. It is the “feel good” neurotransmitter which is why people continue to chase it. Happiness is produced when serotonin is released in the brain.
While similar, the differences between pleasure and happiness are listed below:
Pleasure
Short-lived
Dopamine is released
Serves as a “reward”, as a result, you may continue to seek it
Can lead to unhealthy addictive behaviours
Happiness/Joy
Lasts longer
Serotonin is released
No reward is present, it serves as a result
Mood is level
Human nature drives us to actively seek out experiences that bring us happiness/joy, but when you’re grinding it out with work, family etc. It can be hard to keep track of that and then we’re left with a significant amount of people who aren’t feeling joy in their lives anymore.
This may seem like it comes from a privileged lens, however, how many times have you caught yourself judging a panhandler for using the money to get high (assuming this is what they are going to do with it), or a struggling single mom for getting her hair done when you “thought money was tight”?
Why is joy important?
There's research to prove that joy boosts our immune systems, fights stress and pain, and improves our chance of living a longer life.
Being joyful could quite literally add years to life!
3 main reasons joy is necessary in our lives
1. Joy makes us resilient
The most joyful people are resilient and the most resilient people are joyful.
The basis of this theory stems from a study done by Barbara Fredrickson at the University of Michigan. She discovered that positive emotions broaden our mindset which then builds our skills. This is labelled as the “Broaden-and-Build” Theory.
2. Joy makes us resistant
We will have experiences that seemingly break us and that’s where resiliency comes in. Resistance is about never falling victim to the scenarios that shouldn’t break us. Even in an environment that steers you toward negativity, you can resist and not be a product of that environment.
3. Joy makes us healthy
Without practicing the discipline of joy, we fall susceptible to all sorts of health concerns such as loneliness, numbing, and anxiety. This goes to show, if you want to live a holistic healthy lifestyle, you don’t just need to go to the gym. You need to practice joy.
I want to highlight that I started off sharing elements of happiness and joy as one, however they are not the same. Happiness is fleeting and often based on external circumstances. But joy is an internal positivity that’s connected to hope. It’s a sense that everything will turn out okay. With joy, you don’t have to put on a happy face. You can be joyful in the midst of the toughest situations. You cultivate joy.
Cultivating joy
In sessions with my clients, we often talk about cultivating joy and one of the easiest ways is getting more present to the simplicity of present moments. When I gave one of my clients the homework of noticing when she felt joy in her week, she reported back saying she felt a bit silly at the time she felt the most joy; it was after a particularly hectic evening that included yelling at the kids to get to bed. When her youngest resisted the regular routine, she paused and took the time to get present with him and snuggle. She said that feeling him soften against her and snuggle in while he told her about his day was the purest joy she’d noticed in a long time.
The joy occurred because she’d made the space to notice and be present to it. Presence was the key.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of ways you can BEGIN cultivating and being present to joy in your life:
That first sip of coffee in the morning
Taking a bath
Watching the sunset
A peaceful place to sit
Clothes fresh out of the dryer
Climbing into a bed with fresh sheets
The feeling after finishing a tough workout
Listening to the sound of rain
Laughing
Walking in nature
Getting present to those elements of joy all around you make space for you to savour and expand on that emotional state. The more it expands, the more easily you’ll be able to access it in challenging moments.
Beyond all the positive impacts joy has on your emotional system, it also affects your body in positive ways (of course it does!). Besides the straightforward promotion of a healthier lifestyle, it also boosts the immune system, fights stress & pain and supports longevity.
Other ways joy supports a healthy body are:
1. Your Brain
As mentioned above, when something you perceive as happy happens, your brain receives the signal to release dopamine and serotonin into your central nervous system (which consists of your brain and spinal cord). This then causes reactions in other bodily systems.
2. Your circulatory system
Your circulatory system consists of your heart, veins, blood vessels, blood, and lymph. Of course, joy isn’t the only emotion that affects this system (fear, sadness, and other emotions can cause reactions in these parts of the body as well).
3. Your autonomic nervous system
This bodily system is responsible for all the things your body does without conscious effort from you, like breathing, digestion, and dilation of the pupil; this system is also affected by feelings of joy.
Reclaiming joy from burnout
When a person goes through burnout, it often seems like joy is so far away from the current experience, but by applying a few simple techniques to your life, which do take patience and commitment, it’s really about the understanding that your time and joy is just as worthwhile as everyone else’s.
Begin applying these simple strategies find your way back to yourself.
1. Prioritize your Self
If you truly want to overcome your burnout, you’ve got to start by learning how to put yourself back at the top of your list; something that doesn’t come naturally to us all.
2. Nurture your relationships
Surrounding yourself with others who reciprocate can be helpful in assisting you to regenerate. By reaching out to nurture the relationships you have, you’re boosting your ability to deal with stress and overcoming burnout.
3. Take time off
It’s not always possible to bolt for a month or two, however, what you can do is unplug, and take a little time away for you to seek the well-being that you need in order to feel joy again.
4. Get mindful
As you practice mindfulness more frequently, you'll improve your capacity to center yourself. Cultivating joy multiplies when you develop your inner resources by devoting time to them. As you progress, feelings of calm and satisfaction will become a more permanent part of your being.
5. Reconnect With Meaning
Reconnecting with the meaning that brings us authentic and fulfilling joy is one of the ways of overcoming burnout. We can do this by rediscovering those elements which bring us confidence, self-esteem or even just small moments of fleeting pleasure. It doesn’t matter what it is that gives our lives meaning; that’s a process that can only be defined by you and you alone.
Joy, like attention, is an intention, cultivation, and a practice. It is both a capacity we all have and one that can be trained and developed. I’d love to know whether this has inspired you to intentionally seek out more joy!
If yes, let me know in the comments below which of the tools above you’ll try!
Jessica xo