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Finding Joy: Part Three – Feeling in Flow
I have noticed that if you can experience joy regardless of circumstances, you probably possess an extraordinary capacity for gratitude. Finding things you are grateful for will unlock the possibility of joy in your life.
Joy as Delusion?
But is joy, regardless of the circumstances, merely a personal delusion? Is it a form of self-denial? Is it simply an extended pretence that the world isn’t as it truly is?
I don’t believe that to be true. Instead, I believe we live in a world where you can focus too much on what goes wrong. When you spend too much time listening to bad news, you often overlook opportunities to feel the warmth of the sun on your face, the wind in your hair, the smile of a child, the joy of birdsong, or the gaze of someone who loves you.
Until we learn to live more in the moment and appreciate the good things we have, we may never fully experience joy, regardless of the circumstances.
In my early twenties, after regaining consciousness from the anaesthetic in the ICU following open-heart surgery and a punctured lung, I was blinded and had a splitting headache.
Something terrible had happened.
Unsurprisingly, my parents were driven by a desire to understand what had gone wrong. However, my entire focus was on planning how I could still be an expert coder despite my blindness, how soon I could leave the hospital, and how to ensure I still had my job. My joy lay in my miraculous survival and the future I could envision in my imagination, despite being blind.
Was my joy delusional?
I don’t think so. It truly was a miracle that the UK’s top heart transplant surgeon was visiting the hospital just as I was wheeled in from the ambulance. Swiftly plunging his finger through the hole in my heart, he staunched the blood until I reached the operating theatre and then stitched up the hole himself.
Could I code while blind? Yes, as a touch typist and with a reader alongside me, software programming would be entirely feasible.
Struggling without Joy
In my work, I often meet people struggling with challenging situations. You may be trying to overcome illness, job loss, or a loss of hope. You may be facing difficulties in your family or key relationships. You may feel like joy is out of reach. However, I’m continually amazed how often, with a little encouragement, you can still find things that offer joy. There are always elements for which you can express gratitude; through these small acts of thankfulness, you can discover glimmers of joy.
A Foundation of Joy
From those glimmers of joy, you can build a foundation of happiness that sustains you through difficult circumstances. Interestingly, as you foster more joy, the situations around you start to change.
This is not self-delusion; it stems from the power of your human spirit interacting with the gratitude you already possess, resulting in the release of greater joy in your environment.
So, as you assess your circumstances and strive to find joy, I encourage you to start with the joy you’ve already discovered, no matter how small. That may be an unexpected act of kindness you’ve received, the warmth of a stranger, or the pleasure you find in the small things: life’s little pleasures.
Trauma and Grief versus Joy
For some of you, the trauma and grief you have experienced have squeezed out the possibility of joy. How could I possibly understand the depth of trauma or the cataclysm of grief in your life? How dare I suggest that joy is available in your circumstances?
Despair and mourning may dominate your every waking moment and prevent too many sleeping moments. But still, a touch of kindness, an act of generosity, or the beauty of a moment can reconnect you with the possibility of joy. Now your choice is to accept this glimmer of joy and acknowledge it with gratitude, or reject it and stay in despair, whatever the circumstances.
When you are experiencing trauma and grief, it is easy to find somebody or something to blame. It might be a perpetrator, it might be an organisation, it might be yourself, or perhaps you see it as an act of god. However, if blame turns into unforgiveness, you risk the bitterness denying you access to joy. Holding onto unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer.
Conclusion
Joy can be as fragile as fleeting happiness, or you can build a habit of gratitude that enables you to find joy in every situation. Joy, whatever the circumstances, is not a cruel delusion but rather a mental and spiritual discipline that faces the painful truth and holds to a joy from within and above.
Charles McLachlan is the founder of FuturePerfect and on a mission to transform the future of work and business. The Portfolio Executive programme is a new initiative to help executives build a sustainable and impactful second-half-career. Creating an alternative future takes imagination, design, organisation and many other thinking skills. Charles is happy to lend them to you.