Cultivating Joy (When You’re Really Not Feeling It)

I write this at a time when joy eludes me, for any number of reasons. Being single and childless during the holidays. Hormones. The huge blimp hangar that burned down across the street, spreading asbestos-laced ash and debris across our neighborhood. Warnings to stay indoors with windows closed and air off for weeks now. War. Hate. Politics. Omicron.

There are micro and macro, physical and metaphysical factors. Real and imagined. And in this moment, no, I don’t feel joy. But that’s ok. I’ve learned not to panic when I’m uncomfortable.

For years now, I’ve been rewiring my traumatized brain and reforming my melancholic disposition towards what’s good. Here’s what works for me:

Seeking help

We don’t have to go through these periods of time alone. Therapy, medical professionals, support groups, spiritual communities, life coaches, healers, mentors, teachers, family, friends. I’m grateful that I’ve finally overridden my reflex to isolate. It’s the original sin, hiding. But now, asking for help is my most authentic prayer. And the answer almost always comes embodied in other people.

Sitting in self-love

Whether in meditation, journaling or walking out in nature, I spend time giving myself what I most desire. Acceptance, compassion, understanding, support, encouragement. Love.

Years ago, I spent my time trying to manipulate the people around me and my life’s circumstances to get all of those things. I was cultivating misery. When I finally made connection with God (substitute your own word for something bigger than yourself), I began unlocking my own capacity to generate everything I sought so desperately on the outside.

Resource for sitting in self-love:

Here’s a beautiful guided meditation by Sarah Blondin (on the free app Insight Timer): Accessing the Sacred Life Within You.

Contrary action

It was a revelation to me that my desired state of being could be constructed from a series of thoughts and actions repeated over time. In other words, I could create the life I wanted. Today, miraculously, I can pause when I’m feeling something uncomfortable and respond by choice. Oftentimes I choose the opposite of my first impulse. Like reaching out when I want to isolate, smiling at the checkout person when I’m feeling sad, turning my attention to support a friend or coworker, going on that date, getting out of my comfort zone … these actions lead me back to joy.

I fired a couple of therapists because they kept telling me to think and do the opposite of what I was feeling. It was infuriating. If I could do that, wouldn’t I have done it already? I wanted them to work some expert psychological jiu jitsu to cure my estrangement from life, like on TV. But they kept coming back to simple solutions: What if you thought about it this way? How about you do this thing?

They were trying to teach me how to reframe, but it sounded like a cop out—like they were regurgitating something I could have read in a self-help blog like this. I didn’t believe it could work. And I wasn’t willing or capable of trying. Until I was. How I became willing—that involves the realm of the spiritual.

Self-help blogs like this are personal testimonies to the science of healing and growth brought to us by psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines, melding with the spiritual to bring about change. Showing others how it works.

I wholeheartedly apologize to those two therapists. :) And thank you to all who work toward healing and human transformation in this world, across the spectrum.

Resources

The incomparable Oprah Winfrey and her co-author, Arthur Brooks, recently published the book, Build the Life You Want.

They condense decades of research on happiness into actionable tips and practices that lead to greater happiness (because it’s a spectrum, not a destination).

Speaking of research, consider participating in this citizen science project on joy, and by doing so you can discover which micro-acts of joy work best for you.