“Are you always this freakin’ happy Stacey?”
It’s a question I get asked a lot….A LOT!
“Don’t you ever have a bad day, Stacey?”
Another question I get asked a lot….A LOT!
So what’s the answer?
Am I always this happy? No, I am not ALWAYS this happy. But I AM definitely this happy a huge freakin’ percentage of my days….way more than most people imagine is possible!
And a bad DAY? No, I don’t have bad days. I can honestly say that with 100% accuracy. I do not. I have bad MOMENTS, definitely! But I don’t stay stuck there for a whole freakin’ day! I have trained myself to have a negative moment, bring my state back up to a higher level, find the gift in the situation and learn from it, adjust and take more massive action In-Joy!
It’s a SKILL! And it can be learned!
Joy doesn’t happen to you, you DO joy!
I believe this is the number one misunderstanding keeping people stuck OUT of joy so often.
Actually, we have a JOY-LESS epidemic going on these days! People are NOT joyful. People are NOT fun. People are NOT happy. People are NOT playful….not most of the time!
So if what you are experiencing most often is NOT joy….then stay with me for a minute. I’m going to flip this on its head and show you this dynamic from an alternative perspective.
If you are like most people, at times you have thoughts like… “Will XYZ will make me happy?” or you may think “that wasn’t enJOYable” or “this isn’t fun”
You are waiting for LIFE or your ENVIRONMENT to make you feel JOY, Happy, Fun or playfulness.
And you have probably found yourself WAITING a hell of a freakin’ long time already huh?
Yeah babe, that’s because life doesn’t work that way. You are waiting around for “accidental JOY”. What’s “accidental JOY” you ask?
Accidental Joy is what you have wrongly believed JOY is in your life up until this moment.
Accidental Joy is when something or someone interacts with you in a way that evokes a joyful feeling from you. It’s where something else or someone else causes you to have a joyful response.
Accidental Joy is random, occasional, outside your control and not consistent!
Darling, you can’t live your life counting on enough Accidental Joy to be HAPPY! Unless you live in the board game Candy Land® and you are the mayor, life is way too complicated to feel satiated with the sporadic and random occurrences of Accidental Joy!
What’s the alternative?
DO JOY!
Yes, you DO Joy! It doesn’t happen TO you, you create it! It comes from within you. And every time you generate JOY from within you, you get to feel it and enJOY it!
Every moment of your life is a choice. And how you cultivate your self-mastery and train yourself to be in each moment and the decisions that you make result in how much JOY you experience in your day.
Let’s take an example.
Ok, I’m going to be very vulnerable to use a real-life example from my own experience so I can demonstrate this.
One evening my kids (ages 6 and 10 at the time) and I were hanging out in the family room. We were joking around they were trying to tickle me, we were throwing pillows, playing and laughing. At one point I had picked up Gracie (our 6 year old) and Jake was coming at me with a pillow. In a flash moment, I realized that between weight of Gracie in my arms and the angle I was in…I was going to go down. I decided to quickly step over to the ottoman and plop down with her in my lap instead of falling on the floor with both of us.
CRACK!
As I plopped down on the ottoman, we all stopped in silence as a huge CRACK erupted! The ottoman BROKE and I went right through it with Gracie in my lap!
The kids were stunned, looking at me wide-eyed. I could tell they were a little afraid and thinking “uh-oh, now we are in trouble”.
MY response in this moment demonstrates that JOY is a choice….in every moment, you have a choice.
What did I do?
I laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants!
“Holy Crap on a Cracker we broke the ottoman!” LAUGHING…….
And what did the kids do?
LAUGHING………
To this day, the kids still tell this story as one of the funniest moments they love to remember!
You DO joy. It’s a choice you make moment to moment.
Most of us operate unconsciously through these moments, reacting to life and waiting for accidental joy. But you can make a different choice today.
Get conscious about seeing these dynamics in your life. It’s YOUR life….create it the way you want it to be…not the way it ended up!
Cultivate your levels of self-mastery to master your state moment to moment regardless of your environment. Choose to DO joy and create joyful moments.
By the way, the same exact dynamic applies to Happiness, Fun and Playfulness.
Stop waiting for Accidental Joy to happen to you and start creating more joy in your life.
The beauty of this dynamic is that it’s empowering for YOU! You don’t have to wait for something or someone else to “make you joyful”, that’s disempowering.
Cultivate your ability to master yourself, master your state and train yourself to choose joy, happy, fun and playful moment to moment!
Then you will find that a lot of people come up to you and say “Are you always this HAPPY?” and you can say “Pretty Much Yeah! You should try it…it doesn’t suck!” 😉
