What Is A Joy Practice And How Does It Benefit You?
Photo by Content Pixie on Unsplash
A joy practice is a lot like weaving. It is naturally open to all of life, all the resources available, and different options for using them well in each circumstance. It is a friendly approach to daily living, to oneself, to others, and to the environment. To develop joy as a practice, you need several things:
- decide to make joy rather than fear your primary anchor in life. This commitment will shift your attention and choices naturally and reduce conflict in your life.
- make joy your intention in all aspects of your life. Setting your intention to joy helps your inner child feel cherished, makes it easier to take care of yourself, and helps you notice those who are not invested in creating joy so you can sidestep their drama. Joy can make natural boundaries easier.
- welcome all aspects of yourself into your life. Those qualities like curiosity, wonder, creativity, and kindness that modern culture often disrespects become extremely valuable for creating joy. You can be more yourself and create joy – how good is that!
- pay attention to the goodness in yourself and others. Notice the good that has been created and that we have inherited. Notice the good crested by nature. They are all part of the joy-making in life.
- become attuned to the intelligence in all things. Consider how the intelligence in one thing supports the intelligence in other things. A great example is trees and birds.
- ask how you can use the intelligence of joy to support and contribute to the thriving in the world. Joy is a beautiful, thriving energy. What is your role in creating more thriving?
- investigate what in your life serves joyful thriving and what is dragging you down and why. What can you reduce or eliminate? Streamlining can open up more time and space for joy in your life.
Shifting your life to be about creating joy in whatever way makes sense for you based on your gifts and situation is a beautiful thing to do. It helps you minimize a lot of drama in life, especially the current social noise fighting necessary and long overdue changes to restore and rejuvenate our natural environment and rebalance social structures so they are more equitable.
There is much joy to be had in restoring human life to one that serves the good and the common good so that everyone has a seat at the table without overconsuming our natural resources. There is much joy to be had in being a part of this change. Our ancestors sacrificed so much so we could survive as a species and get to a point where life could be filled with goodness. This is our next step. I hope you are as excited as I am about it.
