The Joy Habit

If you know me, you’ll probably be aware that whenever I can’t sleep I listen to the online radio spiritual talkshows I’ve downloaded to my iPod – it doesn’t require getting out of bed, doesn’t overstimulate the brain and generally you learn something new. That seems like a good deal to me – maximum gain for minimum effort! I love the inspiration I get from those programmes and every now and then something will set off a train of thought that ends up on the pages of I Am Fabulous. This time it was a single sentence about manifestation by Doreen Virtue, saying that in order to attract a particular circumstance, the caller would have to be “on the frequency of joy”.

If there’s one space that very few of us manage to hang out in on a regular basis, it’s got to be the frequency of joy. It’s almost sacrilege to answer ‘fabulous’ if someone asks you how you are or to wander around looking too perky, lest someone may attempt to wipe the smile off your face toute de suite. We’re not a culture that does joy particularly well.

However, that’s a habit that needs to be broken. If we want to draw opportunities to us, rather than struggle to make them happen, creating a new emotional habit of joy is what’s needed. Now, you’re probably not going to go from a mediocre level of enthusiasm for life to a high-octane one in a single leap, but here are a few clues on how to up the ante on your emotional level and make that stretch towards joy – and ultimately towards attracting what you most desire into your life. The universe has a way of mirroring your own attitude, so it’s a pretty safe bet that feeling good about yourself and life is going to bring you more of the same.

Do What Appeals To You

You’d think it would be a no-brainer, but we tie ourselves up in knots trying to fulfil other people’s expectations or do what we think is the right thing, rather than doing what we intrinsically feel is right for us. Alan Cohen, author of Joy Is My Compass, tells a great story about inviting his 8 year-old god-daughter to his ordination in Hawaii. When he explained what the ceremony would entail, she responded with disarming honesty “I don’t think I’ll be there. I’ll be bored.” OK, so you don’t have to be that blunt, but admit it – I’ll bet that’s something you’ve been dying to say on many an occasion. Next time you feel like that, turn down the invitation. Turning up and being miserable won’t do anyone any favours.

Don’t Speak For Your Limitations

How often do we put more energy into talking ourselves out of something we want to do than talking ourselves into it? Next time you feel really drawn to something and keep coming up with reasons why you can’t do it, put more energy into finding the reasons why you can do it. It’s amazing what you’ll be able to make happen when you stop filling your head with self-imposed limitations and start having some faith in yourself and your own creativity.

Make Everything A Choice

No word is more depressing than ‘should’. There’s absolutely no joy in feeling that you ‘should’ do something and there’s nothing uplifting in feeling that you ‘have to’ do it. Try this trick to shift you out of burden and responsibility and into more joy – no matter what it is, if you genuinely need to go through with it more from obligation than inspiration, then at least decide to choose it. If you’re stuck in a dead-end job, stop focusing on everything you hate about it and remind yourself that you’re choosing this because it pays the bills until your creative work begins to pay for itself or because it’s teaching you a new quality or refining a skill. Get the Pollyanna vibe going and choose what you’re faced with – it’ll make you feel more empowered and when you feel that way you’ll be more likely to take the steps that will get you out of there.

Live Your Passion

Again, a no-brainer. Unless, of course, you’re so divorced from your own joy that you don’t even remember what your passion is. Luckily, there’s a little more wisdom from Alan Cohen on the subject, in response to the question ‘What do you do if you have no passion for anything in particular?’. He replied, “You have just been trained from a young age to live in ways that are socially appropriate, to the extent that you forgot who you were when you were in touch with your passion. A good way to get back in the flow is to notice how everything you do feels. Does it light you up or shut you down. You have to be impeccably honest about this, especially with yourself. Then begin to engage more in the activities that make you feel warm and fulfilled, and let go of activities that leave you feeling cold or empty … As you build your skill of staying in touch with your true desires and living from then, you will start to feel more and more alive and also sense where your life force guides you at any moment. When you are honest and real about the little day-to-day decisions (which are really not so little) you get connected to your overall sense of passion about life and your purpose here.”

Follow Your Intuition

No matter how odd it may seem to be. Really. You have no idea where you might end up. I have plenty of stories to uphold that one – paying attention to inner promptings has brought me many serendipitous encounters, leading to new friends, work opportunities and fresh inspiration. I’ve learned that if there’s a strong pull to do something – even if I can’t work out why – the smart move is to just do it, knowing that the purpose will eventually reveal itself. It’s less of a leap of faith these days, rather than a sense of trust that acting on strong intuitive impulses is always well-rewarded.

Take Pleasure In Small Things

The more you put your attention into appreciating the small joys that make themselves known to you every day, the more likely you are to attract the bigger joys to you. It’s the attitude of gratitude that does it. If joy is a frequency, then keeping your attention on the joys in your life – however small – will attract more of the same, as you’re already resonating to that quality. Keep your focus on appreciation for what you have. That will lead you to the next step, which is …

Have A Positive Expectation

When you appreciate what’s already shown up, you’re more likely to hold a positive expectation for what you’d like to draw into your life. Focusing on lack is not a joyful attitude. Creatively focusing on how good it would feel to have what you desire is a vibrational match for the frequency of joy.

You can use any and all of these techniques to build the habit of joy. Drop the habit of collecting evidence as to why things won’t work out and start creating a life where they will. As Alan Cohen says, “To grow, you must be willing to let your present and future be totally unlike your past. Your history is not your destiny.”

For the Coach Fabulous archives, go to www.coachfabulous.blogspot.com and for the I Am Fabulous archives, go to www.fabcentral.blogspot.com. You can email me at coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 24 Mar 08)

Gold In The Darkness

Talking a problem through with a friend this morning, she had one of those big, fat, ‘a-ha’ moments that don’t come too often – the kind where you know you’ve finally made a huge step in unravelling an issue that’s plagued you all your life. What she’s currently going through is something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. It’s terribly unfair, demoralising and devastating, yet she’s chosen to step away from the easy road of playing victim and blaming everyone else, to open up to an understanding of the deeper purpose behind the situation and what this might mean for her personally. From the outside it may have looked as though the conversation was the trigger for this flash of enlightenment, but this was a moment she’d been working towards for many years. It’s a bit like those bands that tour for years in clubs all over the country and then suddenly become ‘overnight successes’ with a single song. No-one ever gives you credit for all the work that went before.

There is nothing that will pay more dividends than a willingness to see the deeper meaning behind the events in your life. It gives you an ability to navigate the tough times with a sense of purpose, even if there’s no immediate understanding of why a particular thing has occurred. If you can hold an open mind about disappointment, disillusionment and even tragedy, your willingness to navigate in the dark will be richly rewarded. We’ve all had experiences where what we thought was going to be the worst thing that ever happened actually turned out to be the best thing – relationships that go sour, opening you up to far greater happiness or jobs that are lost, freeing you to pursue a lifelong dream. This isn’t just wishful thinking, but a statistical truth. A US Gallup Poll asked people what was the worst thing that ever happened to them and then asked what was the best thing that ever happened to them. Unsurprisingly, 84% of people surveyed gave the same answer to both questions – the worst thing had become the best thing.

If you’re looking for gold in the dark, you need to be patient and to trust. The answers won’t always be immediately obvious, you can’t always see where an event might be leading you and there’s no guarantee that you’re ever going to understand it all anyway. If you’re thinking that’s hardly a good deal for all the effort you’re putting in, just remember that staying stuck in hurt and blame is a lot more painful. And you can’t have it both ways – either you’re leading a meaningful life or you’re not. Period.

A purposeful life isn’t for sissies. As the transpersonal psychologist, Roberto Assagioli, says “Spiritual development is a long and arduous journey, an adventure through strange lands full of surprises, joy, beauty, difficulties and even dangers.” With a sense of meaning and purpose, even difficulties and dangers can reveal their beauty.

For Helen Keller, who – as we know – endured far more difficulties than most of us will ever have to face in a single lifetime, happiness sprang from her willingness to overcome those challenges with grace. As she noted, “A happy life consists not in the absence but in the mastery of hardships”.

This week, take a look at the persistent problems or big events shaping your life at the moment. If you were willing to believe they held meaning for you, what might that be? If you could gather the strength to let go of something, could you summon the trust to believe that something better lies before you? Where can you see patterns in the difficulties that arise in your life? How could you change the way you’ve been viewing those challenges? If you were an outside observer, what would you notice about yourself in those circumstances? What’s the common thread in all those situations? How do they make you feel?

Be willing to just sit with whatever’s bothering you and let it be OK. Slowly let it reveal its insights to you. Trust that the purpose of your life is to reveal your authentic self and that struggle and pain are often the only ways in which we’ll be willing to relinquish the familiar. Know that holding on won’t work when the tide is against you, so you might as well let go and open to a different kind of flow.

I’ll leave you with some wonderful wisdom stories from Alan Cohen, author of Joy Is My Compass, about how to deal with difficult people and circumstances. He wrote, “You can look upon someone who annoys you as your best friend, for they help you to grow. There is a story about a man in ancient Greece who paid someone fifty drachma a day to walk around and insult him, so he would become strong in the face of criticism. And you may remember Kato, the Chinese houseboy of Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther. Kato would jump out of the closet at random moments and assault him with expert karate moves. Clouseau hired Kato to keep him on his toes.” If you can learn to think of those who bother you as a tribe of Katos, you’re on your way to banking some gold from the shadows of your life.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 5 Nov 07)