As I am writing this the rain is coming down relentlessly, the garden is awash, even the birds look fed up.
Personally I hate the dark short days, and it can feel as though everything is swallowing me up.
Like most people I know all the things I should be doing to change my mindset,but sometimes it just feels so hard to recover the joy in my life.
I am not normally someone who has low moods, but it has been a challenging year for lots of different reasons, and I think I have lost the ability to feel joy.
Also like everyone I have a public face, I can turn on the smile, laugh at the right time, when inside I am falling apart.
So when we feel this way, how do we find our joy?
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves a few questions.
Firstly what is blocking our joy?
What things in the past have made us joyful?
Maybe we are talking to ourselves in a negative way, the more we do that the more negative we can become.
Obviously there are many reasons for us to feel low, being apart from those we love, but every time we stand on that brink of desperation we are only hurting ourselves and the possibility is that we fall down the black hole.
Life is precious and can be short so we have to find that inner strength to pull ourselves from that brink.
From our personal lives to global unrest, it can be hard to find joy, but the alternative is not where we want to be.
Joy is a state of mind.
Write down things that have given you joy, think of joyful memories, thinking of things that make you feel sad, will only make you feel even sadder.
So, we all know that exercise makes us feel better, a short walk can lift your mood, but take notice of things around you when you are walking, really take notice, look up not down. Smile at the person coming towards you, it not ony helps you but the receiver will also feel joy.
Do something for someone else, again it is beneficial to both parties.
Refocus your energy in discovering something new, anticipation of learning something new will lift your spirits.
Give yourself permission to feel joy, even if feeling low.
Focus on good stuff, there are good things happening, it is just that we seem to close ourselves off from noticing them.
When you look up in the night sky, full of stars, why do we feel joy? Because it is awesome, it makes us stop and pause for a moment, hopefully we will experience calm. Allowing ourselves to be astonished is uplifting.
There is a difference between happiness and joy, happiness is something we feel fleetingly, whereas joy is something we feel deep down in our soul it can’t be taken away, however dire our circumstances are.
Recently I have been doing a Mindfulness and meditation course, which to be honest hasn’t been easy at all, I am still practising, but I do find if I take time out to just sit still and be present it can help me, breathing being my anchor.
I try to count my blessings, think of three things before you go to sleep, they will be there, however difficult the day has been.
We spend countless hours worrying about things that are out of our control, of things we can’t change, we have to keep practising to let them go.
Joy is something that everyone needs in their life.
Joy brings meaning to life. It brings life to life.
