What Melissa McCarthy Can Teach Us About Cultivating Joy

I’ll never forget the moment I learned – and truly understood — that all events are neutral and it’s your story about them that creates happiness or suffering.

I was reading Hamlet in high school, and there on the page was a simple statement made by a man who was most likely mentally ill. But it made perfect sense: “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Yes, we may still deem our experiences as positive or negative, happy or tragic, but I hope we can also acknowledge that we must do our best to make the best of them.

So if we are, in fact, perpetually crafting a story about our lives, let’s make things easier on ourselves, shall we?

Let’s make sure that we are telling a better-feeling story.

Let’s make sure that we are choosing the number one key to happiness: Be happy.

And how do you do that? We cultivate joy.

We focus as much as possible on the things that are pleasing to us. And guess what?

When you focus on what is pleasing to you, more pleasing things will come into your view. This is the Law of Attraction at its finest.

So this should be easy, right?

The problem is people think they should enjoy certain things, when they actually don’t.

There are many “fun” things that I don’t enjoy, like watching sports (I’d rather play them), or going to hear live music (too loud) or shopping (don’t get me started).

And I love to do many things that other people wouldn’t even think about doing – like running long distances (with 5 marathons under my belt so far), reading 900+ page novels (did Dickens really think he was going to attract many readers with the title Bleak House?) and de-cluttering (I’m the bane of my husband and son’s life).

So I want you to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do you actually do with your free time that you truly enjoy?

2. As a child, what did you do for fun? (The most important years are from 9-11 – think 4th – 6th grade.

3.When was the last time you laughed really hard? What were you doing? What was so funny?

I find a lot that is humorous in daily life and I laugh quite a bit, but I really remember those big belly-cramping laughs because they are pretty rare and so delightful.

One of my favorite memories centers on one of those times: I was in the third grade and sitting with my three best friends, Charlie, Brooks and Catherine, at a table in the cafeteria eating lunch.

Someone said something funny and we were all laughing hard, but Brooks leaned forward, clutching his stomach, and his head came down into the bowl of chocolate pudding on his lunch tray.

When his head came up and I saw he had pudding stuck to his forehead and bangs I convulsed so hard with laughter that milk sprayed out of my nose.

It was a classic Three Stooges moment, and it always makes me laugh just thinking about it. And guess what I love to this day? The same slapstick humor that you find in Melissa McCarthy movies.

McCarthy is the perfect role model for cultivating joy – she’s happy, hilarious and 100% authentically herself. “I’ll do almost anything for a laugh. I’m completely delighted by people who think, ‘I don’t care what anybody else thinks.’ It’s such a delightful sort of confidence.”

If you’re having trouble coming up with things that bring you joy, tap into your inner Melissa.

When do you feel light, filled with joy, laughing, in the “flow”? (Or as my husband says, “What do you enjoy so much that it makes you forget to eat?”)

Those are the clues you follow when you are following your bliss. If you still come up blank, pay attention over the next couple of days. After all, the best way to find something is to look for it.

When I was between 9 and 11, I was always on my bike. I loved the feeling of freedom it gave me.

When I was thirteen I was in a bike accident that caused a serious brain injury, and I didn’t ride again for years.

But then in my late thirties, I bought my first bike since the 3-speed of my childhood. Now (with proper safety equipment) I enjoy riding immensely. I feel like that happy kid again.

The better you understand who you are and what you really love, the better able you are to make decisions – in work and leisure – that will make you happy.

Your “emotional guidance system” is an internal GPS that will help you find your way. It’s designed to help you “course-correct” and get where you want to go – to a better-feeling place – if you let it.

The key to understanding emotions is to accept them as they are. Contrary to what most of us have been taught, they are not to be suppressed or denied.

Your emotional guidance system can also guide you to think different thoughts and take different actions in order to find and cultivate joy.

There really are only three emotions – feeling good, feeling bad or feeling neutral (acceptance) – although we give them a lot of other names. An emotion is always preceded by a thought. The thought is what triggers the emotion.

Of course, it often doesn’t feel like a thought caused the feeling. It almost always feels like a circumstance triggered the feeling – but that’s only because we haven’t trained ourselves to be aware of our thoughts.

The good news is that you can learn to be more aware of your thoughts by tuning into your emotions.

Learning to “read” and trust this emotional guidance system will allow you to “reach” for better-feeling thoughts than the ones you’re currently thinking (and causing distress).

Getting better at this can start today, simply by paying attention to your emotions as you go throughout your day. I recommend that you set a timer on your phone to go off every hour – or more or less (whatever feels good to you).

When the alarm goes off, check in with how you feel. If you don’t feel good, ask yourself what thought is underlying the feeling.

It may be something like, “I haven’t gotten anything done today.” Or “I shouldn’t have eaten all those chips.” Or “I can’t believe she said that!” (Those are just a few of the thoughts that caused me to feel bad earlier today!)

Then choose better-feeling thoughts like, “I may not have done the things at the top of my to-do list, but I taped the voice over for the fundraising video and it feels great to have that done.”

Or “Yeah, I did go a little overboard with the chips, but I enjoyed them at the time.” Or “She’s stressed right now. I’m not going to take what she said personally.”

Once you’ve found a better-feeling thought – you’ll know because you’ll feel some relief – take some action that will move you even further “up” the scale along to feeling good.

Here’s what I did: I knocked off the item at the top of my list right then and there. I took a walk that helped settle my stomach. I made a breakfast date with a good friend.

(Whenever a friend disappoints me I try to remember that everyone has bad days, and it’s time to reconnect with a different friend, one who only triggers good feelings.)

It’s important to understand that it’s not be realistic to go quickly from feeling bad to feeling good. At the same time, it’s important to understand that at any moment you have the ability to feel some measure of relief and feel better.

Create a list of actions right now that you can usually count on to fill you with joy. Is it going outside, taking a walk, meditating, watching a funny YouTube video, connecting with a friend, etc.?

Having a list handy will give you quick go-to options the next time you feel stuck in negative emotion.

You are creating a Joy List. Steadily add to it. You are now cultivating joy.