Joy of Childhood Wallpaper
Day 10 – A – Z Challenge
Choose Joy.
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”― Rumi
Sometimes choosing joy is a mighty challenge.
This is especially true when the shit’s hitting the fan, and everything that can go wrong, does. How can we find joy, even in that landscape of loss?
It’s difficult, for sure. However, we can be deliberate in looking what we still have to be grateful for; we can focus on the small graces that allow us to still feel alive.
Via Five Years We Are Together Quotes
Take a Joy Break.
If everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket, take a break.
Take a down day. Take time to sit a spell and gather your thoughts.
Maybe for you, you want to binge-watch movies or television shows (or Battlestar Galactica, if you’re like me). Maybe you want to bake an apple crisp or juice some oranges and grapefruit. Maybe you need to clean out a closet and bag up all the unwanted items you find, in order to give them away.
Maybe you could write thank you letters or send out get well wishes.
Maybe doing the backstroke on your bed is just what you need to experience an attitude adjustment.
Maybe you need to journal and write the equivalent of primal scream therapy in order to get the guck out.
Maybe you need to let Miss (or Mister) Perfectionism, off the hook.
Whatever drains you needs to take a vacation from your daily life.
So, even if someone is your best friend, if you feel fried after being with them for an hour, perhaps it is time to let them go their own way for a bit. Not forever. Just for a bit. Is life better with or without them?
If you have a job that sucks your marrow, start making plans to find something that is more your cup of tea. Daydream about what you’d do if money were no object. What sort of work makes you feel most like yourself? How can you create a path that leads to that field of endeavor?
If your relationships don’t nurture you, perhaps you need to spend more time nurturing yourself. Radical self-care is one of the major life lessons we come here to learn. We’re not worth much to anyone else if we treat ourselves like crap.
Revisit (in your mind) a day of perfect joy.
What happened? What did you feel, sense, know?
How can you integrate more of that into your current life?
Life may not always be happy, but we can find snippets of joy, every day.
Just Do It.
I hate to say it, but happiness is (generally) a choice, not a given.
What can you do today to change your life for the better?
What steps can you take to flood your life with joy?
© 2015 Shavawn M. Berry All rights reserved
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