The Power of Joy
Written by Steven Urban and Kat Cox
“Joy is a powerful emotion and harnessing it can be a remedy for stress-related burnout. Contentment and joy can positively improve physical and mental health and overall well-being.” Mayo Clinic Health System: Tips for Embracing Joy in Daily Life (March 23, 2023)
In our current times, going to therapy for mental health has become almost commonplace. We’re often taught to look out for our triggers – situations, emotions, or even words that can set off negative thoughts or reactions in our daily lives without us being conscious of why. But there’s an opposite of a trigger that we may hear less about: a glimmer.
Glimmers are moments when our bodies and minds are connected or regulated in a way that cues our nervous system to feel safe or calm. They tend to be simple, brief instances that we may overlook, such as enjoying watching a pet play, hearing your favorite song, or laughing with friends. Recognizing glimmers is as important tp our psychological makeup as knowing and seeing our triggers, so that we can train ourselves to find what sets off joy in our lives as much as we find what upsets us.
Often when we are trying to improve our relationships, both at home and at work, we can tend to focus on what we do wrong and what makes us unhappy. It’s just as important to focus on what brings you joy, stokes your passion, or makes you feel fulfilled in order to find pathways towards those moments as well.
At Build Your Alliance, we are committed to what brings us joy. Joy is something we embrace in order to help our employees and clients cultivate their lives both professionally and personally. Find out more about the power of joy and how you can harness it to navigate your goals.
What is Joy?
Joy is an internal feeling of fulfillment that comes at a specific moment in time. According to Compassion International, joy is a purposeful choice that we make based on our perspective. Unlike happiness, which is based on external factors, joy comes from our interpretation of circumstances based on our values.
Joy comes from cultivating your life to match your values and needs. In a personal sense, this can mean enjoying warm moments with loved ones or enjoying simple pleasures. At work, this can mean working on projects that bring you fulfillment or helping colleagues grow.
The Benefits of Joy in Work and Daily Life
There are many benefits of harnessing joy in your work and daily life.
- Health benefits: Finding joy is a proven way to reduce stress, which can improve both your mental and physical health. People who find daily joy can reduce their chances of heart disease, stroke, high cholesterol, and diabetes, as well as reduce issues caused by depression or anxiety.
- More resilience: When we learn how to focus on what brings us joy, including glimmers, we develop resilience that can help us better navigate the highs and lows of daily life. By focusing on joy, we can turn setbacks into learning opportunities and be thankful for what we have.
- Relationship benefits: Joy is contagious. By finding and harnessing joy in your own life, you can spread it to others, which can increase your bond with them. It can also improve the quality of life for those around you, both at work and home. Joy is powerful enough to change team dynamics and even influence the culture or an entire company.
- Benefits at work: When team members can find and pursue joy at work, they’ll enjoy their time at work more. They’ll be more likely to volunteer their creativity and time to improve the business for their colleagues as well. This can be beneficial both for the organization, which gets more creative and better-quality work out of their employees, and the employees, who may open themselves up to promotions or increased responsibilities.
How to Find and Harness Joy
There are many ways that you can find joy in your daily life, both professionally and personally. Professional coaching, like we provide at Build Your Alliance, can help you learn to find and harness joy in a number of ways:
1. Identify your values.
Values act as an internal compass, guiding us through life as we interact with the world. Our values are individually unique and developed over time based on our lived experiences. When you are deeply connected to your values, you can clearly articulate when they are being honored (a source of joy) and when they are being stepped on. It then becomes much easier to connect to your glimmers and triggers and use them to navigate life.
2. Understand the choices you make.
When you accept that you are making choices every day – to see the good or bad in situations, on how to react to triggers or glimmers – you can better determine which choices you want to make. This gives you more agency and power in your day-to-day existence. For instance, choosing to put your mental and physical health first is a powerful declaration. It’s also a choice you may have more control over than you think.
3. Set and maintain healthy boundaries.
While stretching our boundaries can sometimes be a good way to grow, committing to finding joy can keep us from overcommitting or accepting misery instead of purpose. Setting and maintaining helpful boundaries in our personal and professional lives is easier once we know what brings us joy and what saps it away from us.
4. Create time for things that bring you joy.
Identifying what brings you joy also gives you the opportunity to make more space for those things in your life. This can include finding projects that make you feel fulfilled at work, or charity work that helps you feel a sense of purpose. It may also help you determine who you spend your time with or how you may limit your time with people who drain you. This doesn’t mean avoiding hard work or difficult people; it means understanding your limits and enforcing those boundaries you’ve set for yourself.
5. Find someone to hold you accountable to your commitment to joy.
Joy can be a team effort. It’s easy in our society to fall into counting our miseries or anxieties or to praise others for enduring misery like working too much. When we enlist others in our pursuit of joy, they can help keep us accountable to that commitment. You may find a friend or coworker who can help you plan ways to insert joy throughout your day or offer gentle reminders when you veer off your path.
6. Be honest and authentic.
By knowing your true values and what brings you joy, you can be more honest and authentic in your daily life. Being truthful about who you are, what you are capable of doing, and what you are incapable of doing relieves unnecessary stress at work and increases opportunities that cultivate trust and joy.
7. Honor others when they are being vulnerable.
Taking the time to honor others when they are vulnerable helps build trust-based relationships. Trusting relationships are shown to be sources of joy and ways to help the sentiment thrive. Our coaching helps individuals learn how to build trust with their teammates and others and how to cultivate trust in others.
8. Think better of others and improve relationships.
Better awareness of self and others eliminates unnecessary assumptions of ill will. If you think negatively of others and assume they are thinking negatively of you, you can minimize your ability to feel joy and increase the power of stress.
Find and Follow Your Joy with Build Your Alliance
By signing on to the professional coaching at Build Your Alliance, you can learn how to identify what brings you joy and how to bring more of it to your life. Our certified coaches can determine the right psychometric assessment, if necessary, to help determine your strengths and opportunities as well as your most powerful values. Unlock the power of self-awareness and joy for yourself – or your team – by exploring our available services today.