If You Want A Life Filled With Joy, Start With These 11 Simple Tasks
The first step is breaking free of what keeps us stuck in happiness-destroying cycles.
DisobeyArt | Canva Happiness is a goal for nearly all of us. After all, the pursuit of happiness is practically built into our DNA.
Sadly, many people start their journey looking for success, thinking it will deliver happiness. In reality, the opposite is true. According to a study of more than 1 million people, it's the pursuit of happiness that brings success, not the other way around. So, if you want a life filled with joy, start inside and build from there.
First, take a moment to absorb this: Happiness and joy are not the same as achievement, accomplishment, and success. The latter are defined by external circumstances, while happiness and joy are internal. Joy comes from practicing attitudes and responses that help create the feelings and emotional responses we desire.
11 tasks that can lead you to a life filled with joy
1. Practice gratitude
If you are religious, you know of blessings and prayers to express gratitude. But if religion and spiritual practice are not your thing, then you can just say, "Wow!" or, "Awesome!" out loud when you open your eyes to recognize both the miraculous and mundane.
A meal, a flower, a sunset, recovery from illness, news of birth — the list is infinite for what we can express gratitude and awe towards.
Life coach Cena Block explained how "It's so tempting to ruminate on negative thoughts, but it can be super difficult to overcome, especially if it's a habit. It's not healthy to dwell in the past, and you really can't experience your future until it's here. Instead, use the "pause" button. Press pause and reset your thoughts. Remind yourself, that I'm here now. This present moment is the only thing that matters. I am grateful for this moment. Training yourself to stay present is important. This is a great and easy way to practice gratitude."
What you may find is you can brighten your day and improve your mood by just simple acknowledgment and awareness of what is already there. No need for a pilgrimage to find awe or to express gratitude in living.
2. Have meaningful conversations daily with friends or colleagues
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Some of us resonate with people and embrace friendship. But when we're on video conference calls all the time, it can seem so isolating, lonely, and frankly depressing with so many restrictions.
However, we can build meaningful and loving conversations into daily life by simply scheduling calls with those who bring us joy by just being together, as evidenced by a review in the Journal of Urban Health. When possible, schedule a walk with a friend and enjoy each other while getting some fresh air and exercise.
3. Contact family or friends for fun
During stressful times, people now seem to be more open to just checking in to see how loved ones are feeling.
Why not schedule a call a day to a loved one just to express caring and interest, and maybe to share a story about something that brightened your day?
4. Do an activity to feed your wellness
Even if you don't have a steady practice of meditation, yoga, or exercise, you can start by just taking time in your day to do something physical or mentally refreshing.
Stay away from the refrigerator, and find some quiet time to do whatever you feel will give some energy and invigoration.
5. Learn something that interests you
Learning can bring you joy if you expand your interests. Reading, listening to a webinar, or taking an online course can feel energizing, as supported by a paper in the Oxford Review of Education.
If you like, you can enroll in a language course or watch a video series for a destination you intend to travel to when you're able. Learning for learning's sake can be fun, but learning to better prepare for one of your bucket-list dream vacations can enhance your pleasure.
6. Watch, listen, and read for entertainment
With so many streaming video series on Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and other platforms, we now have easy access to wonderful series. Don’t worry about not being productive — just enjoy!
7. Express love to someone by blessing, word, and action
There is a simple spiritual message: "Make your life a blessing." The APA advised just expressing appreciation, and love, and doing small acts of kindness can make us feel deep joy and contentment.
8. Bring joy to someone else
In Sanskrit, there is a word for feeling joy from someone else’s happiness: muditaI, as explored by an article in The Journal of Positive Psychology. It is the opposite of feeling joy from someone else’s misfortune, called "schadenfreude" in German.
Knowing the difference between these two motivations allows you to accelerate your happiness and put a break in your despair.
9. Rewrite the story you tell about yourself
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We all have attitudes, interpretations, and limiting beliefs that we may unconsciously filter experiences, people, and events.
Do you feel you're not smart enough, attractive enough, misunderstood, and devalued? Our upbringing, culture, and environment instill "truths" that don't serve us well.
If you find yourself often in conflict with others or perhaps feeling inadequate, then maybe you should examine the story you tell yourself and become open to different ways of being.
Wellness coach Lisa Lieberman-Wang suggested, "If your life is held back by a fear of not being good enough, it’s time to make peace with 'now' and learn how to be more confident and love yourself. Reaching the future — let alone feeling satisfied with it — is impossible when you haven’t made peace with where you currently are and have been."
10. Do the inner work to release past trauma
Are you triggered to anger or victimhood by envy, self-doubt, and inadequacy?
Maybe you were raised by parents who used criticism and sarcasm to belittle you. Or maybe you were traumatized by an event or tragedy. Perhaps you had teachers, bosses, and friends who belittled and humiliated you.
We've all endured difficulties and difficult people. Our defense mechanisms may have served us to limit the damage. But if we carry those into our future relationships, we can be stuck in an emotional cycle that inhibits us from engaging joyfully with others.
Life coach María Tomás-Keegan explained, "You can go down a deep rabbit hole when you let your negative thoughts and the words you say to yourself overtake you. The fact is, something bad happened. There is no getting around that. You do have a choice, though — get mired in the horrible circumstances or balance what you think, say, and do with more positive thoughts, words, and actions."
11. Actively recall golden moments of happiness
Mine those golden moments in your life when you felt joy, contentment, and as though you were fully alive. Try to recall when, with whom, and what circumstances brought these feelings.
Record those times and see what recurring aspects are. I bet you'll see a repeating pattern that you can recognize on different occasions.
These are your guideposts to recreating circumstances for your joy and happiness.
Can you permit yourself to bring joy every day, as your intention? Build into your daily calendar the ways that are uniquely yours to create the space for conscious joy and spontaneous delight.
While adversity and suffering are part of the human condition and seem to be more prevalent in this time, we need not be defined by it.
Joy can come naturally, but we can also prepare ourselves to experience it more frequently, so we can become more content and happy.
Jeff Saperstein is an ICF-certified career coach and memoirist who works with business professionals who feel stuck and want a career transition.