Episode 32 – Joy in life

• If you have been listening to this podcast for some time, you are aware that I challenge you with you a ton of things,
• More presence, a stricter routine, pursing your dreams, being nice to others, not worrying, and so on
• It may seem like a lot, especially if you are really motivated and want to improve in all areas of your life
• Maybe you even feel a little pressured
• I hope its not the case
• The desire to find purpose and meaning is a good quest – it comes from the heart
• Its not meant to bog you down, or burden you, or make you feel inadequate
• Its meant to bring you joy
• The more you learn and discover about yourself, the richer life will become for you
• This is the topic of today’s episode – the question that you need to ask yourself every day:
• Am I enjoying my life?
• Am I having fun?
• You may have heard from other people, maybe even your parents or grandparents, that life is a struggle, hard work, and fun is only for a selected few
• The rest must eke out a living and too much fun is not good
• I can see how circumstances 50 years ago where different. Freedom was limited and people lived under much tighter social and societal constraints
• Inequality was making life more difficult for many people
• And in certain parts of the world this is still true today
• But the world is changing. Everywhere.
• People have more access to the world, through the internet, more opportunities to leave a constrained life behind, and more physical and personal freedom
• And with this it becomes easier to feel joy
• While I cant take suffering away from people’s lifes, even though I wish I could, I firmly believe that this is not what we came her to do
• I believe that this life here is for us to enjoy – with our entire being
• But often we mistakenly believe that this joy has to come from the outside
• Often it will – just by the environments you choose
• Your friends, your travels and adventures, your hobbies, all of these can give you an immense joy
• When we feel joy, we feel great about ourselves. We feel confident, powerful, capable, lovable and fulfilled.
• But when joy is absent, we often get sad and depressed

• Do you feel joy in the morning when you get up?
• Or are you barely making through the day?
• Are you waiting for the weekend and when Friday’s roll around you are in the best mood all week? Just because the weekend is about to start?
• It would not be surprising if you are nodding right now

• A 2013 Gallup study found that Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work, In other words, about one in eight workers — roughly 180 million employees in the countries studied — are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations.
• This means that the bulk of employees worldwide — 63% — are “not engaged,” meaning they lack motivation and are less likely to invest effort in organizational goals or outcomes.
• And 24% are “actively disengaged,” indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers. In rough numbers, this translates into 900 million not engaged and 340 million actively disengaged workers around the globe.

• I think this is wild
• I mean really? That would mean that the majority of people I pass on the freeway every morning on my way to work are miserable?
• I can’t question a huge study like this
• But I can question our beliefs
• And I just want to ask this:
• Is it possible people hate their job because they don’t know how to enjoy it?
• Is it the simple fact that it’s a duty – called work – that they get paid for – but that at the same time must be misery?
• Why can we not enjoy our work, our school, all our duties?
• I would like to take a guess and say that many people had over the responsibility for their personal joy to someone else – their workplace, their family, their boss and co-workers, the weather, the long commute, and so on
• People hate their jobs because they don’t want to take responsibility for their joy
• Experiencing joy means to bring meaning, passion and fun to everything you do
• Not just the weekend, or the vacation, or the night out
• Joy is an every day thing
• Realize where it started – you chose the job. Maybe not the high school but the college. And definitely your job.
• You acknowledged that you wanted to work. So I ask – why hate something that you picked in the first place?
• Why not bring joy and passion to it and make the best of it?
• “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
  ― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect
• so we have the answer right here:
• living a joyful life starts with you
• it starts with taking responsibility for your life
• if you don’t feel joy every day, then ask yourself why?
• And the next step is to start thinking about the things YOU can do daily to add joy to your life
• If you have to work to make a living, why be miserable at it?
• Why not look for way to enjoy your work, or at least part of it?
• We often don’t realize how much is actually within our control
• Instead we give it up so freely
• We let others determine how our day will go
• That makes no sense
• Start taking control of your day
• YOU decide how much stress enters your day
• Easy said, I know
• But you have to start
• Life is not meant to be a struggle
• And people that have fewer things and opportunities than us are often happier
• In fact, think about all the people that recently were laid off, or have been looking for work for some time, living off their hard-earned savings, maxing out credit cards – they would give anything to have your job
• Put things into perspective before you hate and wallow in misery
• And once you do that, set your life up so that you can enjoy it
• Take responsibility
• If you hate your boss, the look for another job instead of waiting for him to quit
• If you hate the commute, then find a job closer to home or do something during the commute that you enjoy, such as listening to audio books or podcasts
• There are answers out there right now to every obstacle that prevents you from having a joyful life
• So right now, write down – 1 thing, or 2 or more – what is holding you back
• And then dig deeper
• After you wrote it down, then ask yourself – what can I do about this?
• The 3 famous options:
  • Change the situation
  • Accept it , or
  • Leave it

This moment is every moment

What is your next action to bring more joy into your life?