Joy & Happiness: One Day at a Time
As you consider your wellbeing, do you think about the words you use every day? The way you speak to yourself (or others) and the way you think everyday directly affects your feelings, your physical health, and your success. Moreover, your mindsets and belief systems prompt you to speak and think as you do. They either set you free to experience life how you choose or limit your greatest potential. A positive shift in mindset leads to greater joy, happiness, and success one day at a time.
I believe part of the foundation of joy is peak performance in maintaining relationships daily. This includes a relationship with you. How much do you love yourself? How well do you take care of your personal needs, physical body, preferences or desires? True joy comes from acquiring a love of yourself, and love of your life. How much do you enjoy your life? When you arise, do you dread your day or do you look forward to it? Do you feel like you had a miserable night sleep or that you rested well? Do you appreciate the things in your life, or do you constantly look at what is wrong or what else you could have?
In addition to loving yourself more, joy comes from loving others better as well. Loving yourself, your life and others more will greatly enhance the joy you feel. On a typical day, you have interactions with an inner circle most of the time: Your spouse, family members, friends, neighbors, fellow employees, and maybe even your boss. Anyone you have the most contact with is in this social circle. Do you find that you seek great qualities about them when you speak to them, look at them or think about them, or do you notice their faults more? Do you focus on their faults more, or do you naturally see the good in them? Do you even see their unique gifts and what they offer you and others around them? I want you to have greater joy by “peaking your relationships” through acquiring greater love of yourself, your life and others and then be able to maintain them.
Let’s say you are really good at implementing things that take care of your needs, desires and welfare. Then one day you arrive late to a meeting because you slept too late. Will you chew yourself out for that, or will you have the strength and ability to maintain a love of yourself, despite your actions and choices? Your goal should be to acquire and maintain a love of yourself, your life and work. This is the way to joy and happiness. Do you have a satisfactory or greater love of your life and work? I can help you to acquire it, but it is up to you to maintain it.
What if a job proposal does not go through, or some employees do not follow through on meeting their goals or their part of a project? Can you maintain a level of acceptance and peace in despite of their actions and choices? The same goes for others–acquiring the love of others and seeing the good in them. You need to do it every single day, and it comes from true acceptance. I don’t mean that you have to condone and encourage behaviors, actions, or words you disagree with. I mean to accept the current reality. Ask yourself if you are going to let those behaviors, actions or words steal your joy, especially when you have been working hard to become more joyful.
To help illustrate my point even further, let’s look at the following quote from a book called One Day At a Time: “If I am under pressure & setting myself deadlines, I will stop for a few minutes and think of just this one day and what I can do with it.”
When people set goals and deadlines with work, we often feel pressure. If you have deadlines with work, even if you set them yourself, you probably experience the pressure of them creeping closer. You may question if you have progressed enough and risen to the occasion to get things done in a timely manner. If you feel that pressure with regard to deadlines, the healthiest and most joyful way to manage it is to stop and think of the current moment, the hour or the day, and look at what you can do with it. There is so much less pressure in reality because right now, this moment is truly all that you have.
If you allow your analytical conscious ego to constantly go into thoughts like, “Oh my gosh. Tomorrow this is due and I meant to have it finished,” or “Next week is the deadline and I have this going on this weekend,” then it is time to stop and realize that your only options are the ones presented to you in the current moment. That will relieve a tremendous amount of stress and pressure from your body and your life. Stress and pressure does not come from the deadlines, your life, your job, or others. It comes from your belief, interpretation or thoughts around those deadlines, your work, or outside things. It is your mindset about these things that causes an instantaneous effect on your body. The kinds of thoughts you have instantly effect the cells in your body, and that energy shift is what we label with different words, emotions, feelings or sensations, like feeling good, happy, down, sad, or stressed. It is only you that can put pressure on you and limit how much joy or happiness you experience.
Even if you have a boss that chews you out constantly and seems to put pressure on you, it is how you handle the situation and what thoughts you have around it that causes you stress (or not). People who have a level of inner peace and acceptance and know they are doing the best they can each day, hour, and minute will not be phased by a boss that tries to put pressure on them. It is just that person’s way of handling situations, but it does not have to infiltrate into your life, to your level of peace or joy. How you choose to focus your mind, thoughts, and energy is up to you. The secret is to focus every day, and that is how to maintain joy and happiness.
So as you go through each day and face interactions with people and various pressures, remember today’s suggestion: “If I am under pressure and setting myself deadlines, I will stop for a few minutes and think of what I can do with just this one moment.” You will feel so much more accomplished, joyful and peaceful with this reality check; truly being in what is happening rather than your mind projecting you into the future. It is possible, each moment, hour and day at a time.
If you would like more help or more information about how to apply this suggestion to your life, please contact me. I wish you well on your journey to greater joy and happiness in relationships and life. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!
