Living with More Joy

Our lives are a treasure hunt and we are surrounded by treasures that will bring us joy if only we would recognize them. I live everyday grateful for the many blessings I have in my life: a family I love and who love me, friends who hug me, and a home in the middle of nowhere with nature all around me. My life has had its challenges, but I have been able to find the blessings in those challenges.

So why am I here, and why are you here? Well, I am here because I want you to be able to find the treasures of joy in your life that are waiting to be recognized by you. I want you to see the blessings in your challenges, and I want you to actively create More Joy for your life. 

Welcome to Living with More Joy, where I hope to learn as much from you as you do from me. In order for that to happen you are going to have to participate by commenting on my posts, providing examples of how you have enacted what I talk about in that week’s post. Together, all of us can give each other ideas for additional ways to live our lives with More Joy. “Our blog” will only be as valuable as we make it together!

There was a time in my life when I was in a severe depression. I felt numb, beyond feeling. I was a young mom with a wonderful husband, a job, a 3 year old and a 2 year old..and I was miserable. I did not recognize and was not grateful the blessings in my life. I remember seeing a guest on Oprah one day, Sarah Ban Breathnach, who encouraged viewers to keep a gratitude journal. I decided to do it. Early in those days I remember driving around the city I lived in one day and seeing a banner across a bridge that said, “When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters.” In my mind I thought, “I suppose I am grateful I can breathe.” It was an interesting start to what has been a life-changing, joy-filled journey.

My challenge to you as you begin your journey to Living with More Joy, is to start a gratitude journal. Your journal can be a small notebook from a dollar store which you decorate, or a few blank pieces of paper folded in half and sewn between a piece of beautiful scrapbook paper. Your journal cover can then be decorated with more scrapbook paper, a title, an uplifting quote, and a few of the many scrapbook stickers you may have bought (as I have) for the as yet unstarted scrapbooks you intended to make your family. Use a ribbon to attach a pen you love to your journal. Place your journal on your night table if you have one, or under your pillow if you do not.

Every morning before you get up, or if you have to, every night before you go to bed, make a list of 3 things you are grateful for. They can be big or small events that happened the day before, people in your life, any aspect of your health that is going well, or anything else you can think of – the purple weed/flower you saw on the side of the road and picked on the way home from work yesterday for instance – almost anything purple brings me joy! Even if you don’t believe keeping a gratitude journal will make a difference in your life, do it, eventually you will recognize how this one simple daily act changes the way you think, and changes your perspective on the day ahead and on your life. 

Make today a great day!

Velvet