Making Joy A Habit

Starting a new blog is exciting and gets my blood pumping and my mind racing with an incredible amount of ideas. Where to start with a new blog is the question I keep asking myself. So as I sit here at my keyboard the message I keep hearing is to inspire my readers. This should be easy since I have always been ‘the cheerleader’, the one who feels it is my job to cheer people up, raise them to a new level of joy and help them find their passion and live it.

“Making Joy a Habit” is the title of a workshop I developed and began teaching about 6 six years ago. What I was seeing in the world were people ‘making misery a habit’ and I wanted to teach others how to change the perspective of what they were experiencing. Making Joy A Habit truly comes through your perspective of events and situations that you find yourself in on a continual basis. When you finish your shopping at the grocery store do you glance at the receipt and see a decline in your checkbook or do you see an abundance as you put the groceries away? Perspective changes your outlook and provides the pathway to your sense of joy or misery.

Recently, someone very close to me suffered a sudden upheaval of their world. In the end, when all was said and done, their world is a better place. It was through accepting the situation and maintaining a positive outlook that the week of inconvenience turned into an enjoyable opportunity.

In my humble opinion, an individuals’ level of joy is directly related to their level of acceptance. Acceptance gives you the perspective that all is as it should be in your world. This keeps the momentum in a forward moving position. When you lack acceptance, you are in essence, resisting whatever situation you are currently experiencing. This resistance will keep you stuck in place like a self-imposed prison.

Habits are created through repetition and to make joy a habit requires maintaining a positive outlook regardless of external events. Mantra’s can be so cliché during times of crisis and you may ask yourself, “how can I possibly feel positive about losing my job and wake up saying all is as it should be”. This is the hard part, the part that requires you to trust and have faith. We are always provided with exactly what we need to further our growth as individuals. Making joy a habit tells you that losing a job is merely an opportunity and when you embrace that with enthusiasm you begin to manifest something more.

I hope that this first blog will inspire you to Make Joy a Habit.

Peace,
Kimberly

I originally wrote about Making Joy A Habit in Bellesprit Magazine on my birthday in 2013.