2 Important Tips to Help You Access More Joy

This post originally appeared in The Joy Thief newsletter. To get more articles like this straight to your inbox, subscribe.

JOY, noun.

A feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

There are two things you should understand about joy.

1 | Joy is not a linear emotion.

Joy is not a goal that we work towards, achieve and then tick off our list. Joy is an ongoing process. It’s not something we can ever be done with. Some days we will feel joy so strongly it’s as though we’ve soaked up so much joy that we are absorbed by. Our joy is overflowing and spilling out of us into the world. Other days we feel so little joy that the desperation of joylessness takes over. We feel like an arid desert, no joy in sight, and when we think we can see joy we realise it’s a figment of our imagination and we quickly imagine it away again. Joy will come and go, always.

2 | Joy is not an emotion we feel in singularity.

As with all emotions, we often don’t feel a single emotion at any given time. Instead, we are a complex mix of emotions, sometimes contradicting emotions. That’s why times like now are so confusing and overwhelming. We might be feeling joy at the first signs of spring, at having spent time with loved-ones, at having had a restful weekend. But at the exact same time, we are feeling anxious about the future, sad about crises that are happening, guilt for not being personally impacted and carrying on with our normal lives. We feel joy right alongside other emotions and the contradiction between them can be overwhelming.

The world is a mess. We’re facing multiple crises; climate change, wars, a pandemic and ongoing social injustices. It’s ok for us to seek joy and feel joy.

I’ll leave you on this note, share your joy, it is a symbol of hope. Spread joy and hope, sometimes it’s all we have.