You know these little insights we get in moments of struggle? Usually something clicks inside of us and we say, “Dang! I wish I had known that before and, if I did, I bet this whole mess could have been avoided.”
Maybe you’ve said something similar to yourself before. But, here’s where it can get really crazy and messy for us. We likely don’t stop at the period. We keep going. It goes something like this, “…could have been avoided. [insert a little pause here] Oh my goodness, look at how I made that terrible thing happen, I suck, I wonder if people see my suckiness the way I see it, oh no… my life is…I better get busy doing more…”
Sound familiar? I had one of those moments when I went through my divorce with my former husband (who is my older son’s dad). It hit me a like a flash of God-given insight that I’ve never experienced before. I didn’t read about this stuff, y’all. I’ve always rolled my eyes at those arm-chair philosophers out there. I experienced it. It was as if God pulled up a chair right next to me and delivered the news. No BS. No silver tray. Straight up gut talk.
This was not a spiritual awakening-throw-my-arms-up-in-the-air-gleeful-moment-coffee-date with God. It was excruciatingly painful. I failed at my previous marriage. My former husband moved out, the divorce papers were almost final, and I was on my journey to find relief and joy. My thought was that if I didn’t have relief and joy in my marriage, then it must be out in the world somewhere and I hadn’t found it yet.
I was WRONG. I had joy all along. All the smiles. All the hugs in between the arguments. All the “I’m sorry…” type of communication. All our family adventures. The gut-wrenching cries together. That was it. That was joy! Then, I had one of the most gut-wrenching cries I’ve ever experienced in my life. If that was joy, then what is this mess I found myself in and how did I get here? And, the biggest question of all…
What do I do now?
Certainly, I wasn’t the only one that experienced this flash of God-given insight. Well, my friends, that’s when I began my journey into personal growth and self-development. That’s when I began picking up books and reading everything I could get my hands on. That’s when I dove deep into studying and practicing yoga and mindfulness and personal development. Fast forward all those years until now, I discovered a framework for understanding that ethereal flash of insight and have been teaching it almost non-stop.
Why am I telling you this? Because I know you struggle with finding joy and relief in your life. I get it, I was there. And, I want to help you see how to get out of the cycle of what I call joy hunting.
A joy hunt is being in action to find the treasure trove of life – joy – getting close, closer, but never really getting anywhere. The only place you get in the joy hunt is another chance to discover that there is really no such thing as a joy hunt.
There is no joy hunting. It’s already here. There’s nothing to hunt! What’s getting in the way of you and joy and relief is you. It’s hard to hear, I know. I mean, it’s not really you, it’s that stuff that we say to ourselves in our mind. There’s a way to stop that. There’s a way to let go of the soul-sucking joy hunt. There’s a way to really live your joy even in the hard stuff.
It’s not ok to just be ok, though. Life isn’t meant to be lived that way. Joy is not the same thing as pretty good. Joy is sparkle. Joy is stardust. Joy is wonder.
So, if you are failing at something right now or you are scared to take a step into something for fear of failure, I want you to know that that is ok. Failure, in a weird way, is the gateway to personal growth. And, despite the hard stuff, even the hard stuff of failing, joy is right there with you along the way.
I’ll be talking more about this on my live broadcast tomorrow on Facebook and Instagram at 9:00 a.m. Come on in and join me. You can always watch later, too.
In the meantime, know that you are not alone. Failure isn’t a bad thing. It’s simply a thing. It happens. It sucks. And, it holds great power into helping you discover and experience one of the great things of being human – joy with extra sparkles on the side.
XO ~
