Cultivating Joy - How To

[Medusa]

At least once a day, I wiggle my toes and give thanks that I can feel my feet and am not in a wheelchair as a paraplegic.

Sometimes more than once a day, I am thankful that my body works mostly the way I want it to.

Many times a day, I am thankful for having a job, for feeling safe, for having people who love me.

Often, I am thankful to know who I am as a woman and what my heart is about.

Giving thanks for very small things gives me an inner joy that reverberates loudly when I am having pity parties with myself.

There is a little story that I sometimes retell myself to help me remember my joy:

When I was 16, I worked at a dairy bar and we always had a bunch of strays dogs and cats around the back door.
One day, a very pregnant beagle came up by the back door and was obviously hungry and homeless. She was covered with fleas and was dirty as hell and stunk to high heaven.
I have her a hot dog and watched her trot off happily in the rain toward the open field behind the restaurant.

The image of that dog with biggo floppy ears trotting happily in the rain with a hot dog hanging from her snout reminded me that nothing I have ever been through is the same as a homeless pregnant dog in the rain scrounging for food. Even that dog was in survival mode.
Sometimes survival mode is all we've got.

[Novelafemme]

Originally Posted by Medusa

At least once a day, I wiggle my toes and give thanks that I can feel my feet and am not in a wheelchair as a paraplegic.

Sometimes more than once a day, I am thankful that my body works mostly the way I want it to.

Many times a day, I am thankful for having a job, for feeling safe, for having people who love me.

Often, I am thankful to know who I am as a woman and what my heart is about.

Giving thanks for very small things gives me an inner joy that reverberates loudly when I am having pity parties with myself.

There is a little story that I sometimes retell myself to help me remember my joy:

When I was 16, I worked at a dairy bar and we always had a bunch of strays dogs and cats around the back door.
One day, a very pregnant beagle came up by the back door and was obviously hungry and homeless. She was covered with fleas and was dirty as hell and stunk to high heaven.
I have her a hot dog and watched her trot off happily in the rain toward the open field behind the restaurant.

The image of that dog with biggo floppy ears trotting happily in the rain with a hot dog hanging from her snout reminded me that nothing I have ever been through is the same as a homeless pregnant dog in the rain scrounging for food. Even that dog was in survival mode.
Sometimes survival mode is all we've got.

Thank you for every inch of this <3 Especially that last sentence!

[aishah]

i've been meaning to post in this thread for weeks and i keep forgetting nat...thank you so much for starting this thread. and thank you to everyone who's posted.

one of my favorite devotional writers says that gratitude is the basis of joy...so i've been trying to make a more conscious effort to write out what i'm grateful for. i made the "gratitude" thread my bookmark for bfp so i can remember to write in there more often

i've found brene brown's books extremely helpful for facilitating deeper connections with people in my life...and with myself. for me that's a big part of cultivating joy. her books i thought it was just me and the gifts of imperfection go into the roots of shame and how shame can create disconnection between people, and how to build resilience against shame and build connection with one another. she writes a lot about empathy and how to practice/develop our empathy skills. she also has two awesome ted talks

http://www.ted.com/speakers/brene_brown.html

[Metro]

I like to include comedy in my day... Molly Shannon, in particular, cracks me up -- I love it!


http://www.hulu.com/watch/282504/sat...-pretty-living

[Nat]

Something I heard today as a side-note on a podcast today:

Dwell on the good things.

Rumination is one of the things that I tend to do which kills my crop of joy (going with the cultivation theme here).

Consulting the oft-maligned and even-more-oft reference tool Wilipedia:

Rumination is a way of responding to distress that involves repetitively focusing on the symptoms of distress, and on its possible causes and consequences.[1] Rumination is more common in people who are pessimistic, neurotic, and who have negative attributional styles. The tendency to ruminate is a stable constant over time and serves as a significant risk factor for clinical depression. Not only are habitual ruminators more likely to become depressed, but experimental studies have demonstrated that people who are induced to ruminate experience greater depressed mood.[2] There is also evidence that rumination is linked to general anxiety, post traumatic stress, binge drinking, eating disorders, and self-injurious behavior.[1]

Rumination was originally believed to predict the duration of depressive symptoms. In other words, ruminating about problems was presumed to be a form of memory rehearsal which was believed to actually lengthen the experience of depression. The evidence now suggests that although rumination contributes to depression, it is not necessarily correlated with the duration of symptoms.[1]

Rumination is similar to worry except rumination focuses on bad feelings and experiences from the past, whereas worry is concerned over potential bad events in the future. Both rumination and worry are associated with anxiety and other negative emotional states.

It may not be so simple to just decide to dwell on the good things, but knowing this is either a cause or symptom of not-joy makes me think it's worth a try.

I used to think that pop-psych dogma of focusing on the positive or trying to *not think* about bad stuff was basically asking people to delude themselves and dwell in a sort of forced ignorance and disengenuity (sp?). But recognizing rumination as a crop-killer of joy gives me a better handle on the reasoning behind trying to change one's thoughts. I am believing more and more that thoughts are a type of behavior or action or habit - even if they seem relatively inconsequential if they remain unspoken.

My grandmother and her sister both have maintained a lifelong determination to be cheerful and positive and encouraging after having grown up in the depression and losing their brother when he was a young adult. I have to think its a survival skill.

[Nat]

"The intention in the beginning is to give enough attention and care to get to know our suffering. Just that movement itself is very powerful if the usual tendency is to avoid it or attack it or get angry or put your head in the sand: in a very adult and mature way, to sit up right, to stand up on your own two feet in a sense, and turn around and look at your suffering in an honest way. And to learn to do that without succumbing to despair, upset, anger, blame, self-pity - all the things that can get in the way.

Really looking at it - here, I am suffering, this is what's going on, let me look at it. Then the idea is not so you can just suffer better...This is only the entry point. If we look at it long enough, we can actually see the action, the thing that we're doing that's bringing about the suffering. What the Buddha said was that the action is attachment or clinging."

- Gil Fronsdale, Audio Dharma podcast

[Kelt]

Originally Posted by aishah

i've found brene brown's books extremely helpful for facilitating deeper connections with people in my life...and with myself. for me that's a big part of cultivating joy. her books i thought it was just me and the gifts of imperfection go into the roots of shame and how shame can create disconnection between people, and how to build resilience against shame and build connection with one another. she writes a lot about empathy and how to practice/develop our empathy skills. she also has two awesome ted talks

http://www.ted.com/speakers/brene_brown.html

I've just recently discovered this author as well. Currently reading her latest; "Daring Greatly" and finding it very helpful in defining specifics around feelings that can derail joy in order to build resilience against them, reclaiming happiness.

[Kätzchen]

My grand daughter awakens the joy in me: she’s spontaneously exploring the ‘world’ with curious eyes on everything and anything her eyes see. She’s so danged cute 🥰

Thanks for your thread ((( Nat ))) I hope you’re safe and well!

Here’s an article I found today that I think expresses important insights into how we can develop joy in our lives.

LINK: https://livehappy.com/mindset/how-to...llenging-world



Enjoy,

— K. ☺️

[easygoingfemme]

I got my first foster dog yesterday I had just started opening my mind to the idea and twice this week we had situations at work where we thought we were going to need to have a foster for a dog in our domestic violence shelter. The first one was worked out but the second was not so... last night I picked up a 3 year old Shih Tzu.

He is coming from a REALLY bad situation and I hope his mom is able to turn some things around soon so they can be reunited. He was very traumatized for his first 24 hours. Would just stand still, not making a sound, or sleeping in his crate. I was able to walk him a little. But he was hardly eating and hadn't had a drink in 24 hours. Stayed quiet in his crate all night. Today after work I soaked some of his dry food in chicken broth and was able to hand feed him some. Then... I never do grocery delivery but I was desperate for this boy and had some wet dog food delivered (and threw in other groceries to justify) and omg he inhaled it. Then he got the zoomies and brought me one of his toys and we played fetch until he tired out. Then we took a walk and he drank a bunch of water. It's a joy seeing him be able to relax and play.

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Originally Posted by easygoingfemme

I got my first foster dog yesterday . . .

Good for you for fostering a dog! Dogs are such an important part of people's families. I don't know what I'd do if I were in a situation where I became unhoused (Goddess forbid) and none of my friends or family could take me and/or Brittany.

There's an unhoused family living in our small town and they have a service dog who got away from them one day. They posted on our town's Facebook group. I never did find out what happened, but I'm worried about them.