Forget Happiness, Go Straight To Joy!

This month’s theme at SWC is “Happiness and Joy.”

Today we are looking at whether to forget about attaining happiness and go straight to joy!

Ingrid Fetell Lee, author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness says:

“Happiness can sometimes be a little bit vague. You can go through these periods where you’re like, Am I happy? Am I not happy? Some things are good; some things are not so good. And we’re sort of processing all of that as a whole to come up with this determination of whether or not we’re happy.

Joy is much simpler and more immediate. Psychologists define joy as an intense momentary experience of positive emotion. It can be measured through direct physical expression. So the feeling of smiling, laughter, and wanting to jump up and down. We get that feeling when something gives us a spark of joy. So in sum, to make it simple, happiness is something that we measure over time. Joy is about feeling good in the moment, and it’s really about these small and simple moments.”

I highlighted the last part because it really ties into a mindfulness practice. As Fetell Lee says “Fundamentally, it is far easier to create more moments of joy, and design joy into our lives, than it is to go about thinking about how to make ourselves happier.”

Find out more here about why you may want to focus on joy over happiness—even Oprah thinks it’s a good idea!

https://goop.com/wellness/mindfulness/forget-happiness-pursue-joy/