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How to Choose Joy

28 Aug 2012, by michelle in personal development, self-care, Stress

What is joy to you?  Is it going about your day with more lightness and presence?  Is it having daily opportunities to experience belly-laughter?

 

Most of us tend to carry too much on our shoulders, which takes away from the potential of joy within us.  Yet the potential of joy is always there.  If you desire more joy in your life, this means you have to consciously make some choices to bring this potential within you forward.

 

One of the best ways is to get to the core of what exactly is weighing on you.  What are you carrying?  Go ahead and make a list.

 

Now ask yourself how does it feel to be carrying your load?  What emotions come up for you?

 

Underneath everything that you are feeling, my guess is that a part of you feels sad.  This part of you feels sad for carrying so much emotional weight.  But wait, there is more!

 

Your empowered self is using your sadness as an indicator that you are buying into false beliefs and thoughts.  You then take action based on those thoughts and beliefs, which ultimately don’t serve your highest good.  The result is you are robbed of some of your joyful potential.

 

Bingo!  This information revealed by your sadness is crucial to your joy.

 

Why?  Because knowing what is at the core of your sadness allows you to choose differently.  This is how you learn to choose joy over the lies your small self/ego tell you.  And this is why it is so important for you to listen to your sadness, (or any other feeling for that matter), because doing so actually empowers you.

 

Gone are the days when you try to free yourself from negative feelings, because you know as well as I do that what you resists persists.  No, your empowered self wants to get to the core of what it is that you need to create more joy.

 

Joy is an internal creation. 

 

Your actions, thoughts, and beliefs can either fan your internal spark of joy or dampen it.  Listening to your sadness from your empowered self grows your joy.  Listening to your sadness from your small self smothers your internal flame.

 

Here’s the incredible news – you knowing that empowerment and love exist in your negative feelings means you are already on the path to greater joy.  The reason is because even if you have a bad day, which we all do, your sadness will be a reminder of how crappy you feel when you choose those small self beliefs.

 

I am not saying that making that choice away from your small self belief system will always be easy.  Yet, it is exactly the potential of your joy within you telling you that those beliefs no longer serve you.  If you think of your sadness similar to the yin symbol(the dark side of the yin yang symbol), you’ll see that at the core of all the darkness is light.  It is the same with each of your negative feelings, at the core is love.

 

So even though a part of you is used to the weight on your shoulders, if you listen to your feelings, you will reconnect to your inner spark.  Your inner spark is trying to guide you back to joy by signaling to you through your negative emotions that this load doesn’t need to be carried in the same way, if even at all, anymore.

 

To choose joy, you listen to whispers of your inner spark.  To get to those whispers, you’ll have to consciously choose to hear past the racket of your small self saying things like you don’t matter or you aren’t good enough.  In that moment, choose to commit to whisper rather than the small self hullabaloo.

 

Regardless of what your small self is telling you about why your sad, what your empowered self is signaling to you is that you are ready to bring in more of your light into your life.  To get there, your sadness slows you down so you can reflect on: What do I really want out of life? What are  my inner self’s needs?  When you follow the responses to those questions, that is when you are recommitting to you and to living In-Joy.

 

We get used to how much light we allow into our lives.  Your sadness is indicating you are ready, willing and able to live with greater light, love and joy.  Thank your small self for making it so crystal clear what path feels better.  With this gratitude you open yourself to expand to greater joy within you!

 

In-Joy & Gratitude,

 

 

Want to learn the empowering message to each of your negative feelings?  Now you can with my new book F.E.E.L.: Feel Every Emotion as Love, Turn Your Negative Feelings Into Your Greatest Allies. 

Pre-Order your copy at www.feelthebook.info

 

 

2 COMMENTS
  • Maria

    Dear Michelle,
    thank you for this, it came at the perfect time today. I have been studying your method FEEL and today, I had a very sad’episode but I just let myself feel it.
    I just read your email now and am saying ot myself: oh yes, FEEL is what I should be practicing.
    thank you Michelle

  • Judy G

    Hi Michelle, I keep loving this as it unfolds. Thanks for JOY. It tells a lot for those who have time to bite, chew and digest”. I enjoyed reading how to step on the negative to achieve positive. Have a wonderful positive day.