A few weeks ago in early January, I was having a conversation on twitter with fellow PhD Lisa Munro and others about the importance of practicing joy in 2017. Yes, joy. Yes, now, of all times. Lisa wrote an excellent blog post on this subject, where she discusses establishing joy as part of her New Years intention, and the quiet power of practicing joy “in the middle of such terrible things.”
Here’s a gem from the post about practicing joy – but don’t stop here. Go and read the post for yourself:
“Joy requires being present. Like, really present. There’s no way to find joy while distractedly scrolling through Facebook while reading tabloid headlines in the grocery store and secretly wishing ill on the person in the express lane with 32 items. Joy requires our full attention.
Joy requires great vulnerability. It doesn’t seem possible to be worried about looking cool and experiencing joy at the same time. JOY requires letting go of what we want people to see in favor of experiencing something genuine and being real about it.”
I have also been thinking a lot about joy this year. Like Lisa, I usually choose words instead of specific resolutions to start every new year. And like Lisa, joy was one of my words. However, until reading her post and talking to her about joy as a practice, I hadn’t developed any useful tools to help me focus on this theme for this particular year. After several of us shared our tips in our twitter conversation, I decided I needed to start a gratitude journal. I have been using it every single day since. Continue reading “Some thoughts on Joy, Resilience, and Practicing Gratitude”