Create Joy

By Dr. Dina Evan

There are times when we may feel as if we live in a small circle that contains our job, beliefs, bodies, perhaps a few friends and family, and it’s joyless.

We don’t stop to peek over the edge of the circle to see the hundreds of additional new ideas, hope, awareness’ and realities available to us. So we feel stuck, tired, perhaps depressed, and without a sense of joy in our life. At any given moment we can push the edge of that circle out a bit to see what wondrous things are possible — what we may not have considered. Maybe you may have wanted to learn a new language, learn to dance, paint, cook, write a book, create a garden or sculpt. Give that to yourself.

See yourself  being of service.

Even if you are differently-abled, you might find great joy in reading to kids at an orphanage or a home for kids. You might want to read to the elderly or if you have the strength, serve the homeless in some capacity because serving others is always joyful. Don’t say you don’t have time, feeding our soul is something we all need to take time for.

Make time for being peaceful.

Meditate or just sit quietly and you’ll be astounded at what comes into your awareness. Start thinking about the things for which you are grateful and the people who bring you joy. Renew those activities or reconnect with those people. Call people you love, especially those with whom you have lost touch, and remind them how important they are to you. Those connections are the ones that give us joy and fill or hearts with so much love.

Invite your grandkids or kids over for a picnic on the bed. I did that recently and my great grandson suddenly looks at me curiously, crawls across the bed, and grabs the skin under my chin and asks me what ‘that’ is. I told him it was my waddle. He immediately called over the other grandkids and they all had to touch my waddle. The rest of us cracked up laughing and the next day I, of course, went immediately back to my chin or waddle exercises still laughing over it. Kids always bring joy with them. If you don’t have any children, give a single mom a break and get to know your friend’s kids. Become a mentor and a friend. The mom will appreciate it and you’ll get the joy from being with the kids.

Commit to your own healing.

Very often the reason we can’t feel the joy in life is because we pull our wagon full of pain and anger from the past and there’s no room left for joy. It’s hard to feel joy while being filled with resentments, anger or suffering. You owe it to yourself to dump that stuff.

Recognize you have the power to be joyful.

In the same way that joy is a feeling, so is sadness loneliness and anger. And here’s the truth. If you have been feeling these things for a long time, you have created a little neuronet in your brain that is now your default — which leaves you believing all of those emotions are true and real. The only way to heal that is by creating a new neuronet which is focused on joy or happiness. The way you do that is to notice when the mad, sad or angry thoughts and feelings arise, and say to yourself cancel, cancel or erase, erase or delete. For reasons scientists have not yet figured out, that process tells the brain not to retain the last thought permanently. Then replace that thought with opposite thoughts like my life is filled with joy, or I have love in my life or wealth flows to me freely. Whatever the unloving thought was, replace it with a self-loving thought and before long you will begin to work off your new default reality. You deserve it and no one but you can give that to you, so go for it!

Dr. Evan is a marriage, family, child therapist and consciousness counselor.
http://www.drdinaevan.com
602-571-8228.