It's All About Joy – Finding Joy in the Moment, in Your Experience, and in Your Life
Chifuyu Casaclang is a therapeutic counsellor and a Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT) practitioner. She combines her knowledge of how the body and mind work with RTT skills and the gift of intuition. Through her counselling, she helps you recognize longstanding false beliefs and overcome who you learned to be.
When was the last time you felt joy? Would you say you can feel joy all the time? Or is it something rare for you? Do you need a joyful experience to feel joy? Or is it easy for you to feel joy at any given moment? People talk about happiness all the time. But I don’t think we talk about joy enough. Joy is a vital essence in life, don’t you agree?
Now, let me ask you this question. What do you know about joy? What is your definition of joy? When you hear the word joy, what is the first thing that pops into your mind? Joy is felt throughout your body. It is something that makes you giggle. It is something that makes you want to fly. Now, let’s find what your joy is.
Joy for everyone
Joy is for everyone. But what gives each person joy is very different. Just as the great organizer Marie Kondo asks, what sparks joy? The definition on Google is “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” I believe you create great joy in yourself when you follow your heart’s guidance. Your heart is telling you every moment what brings you joy: things you like, what you are curious about, and what you love. Your heart wants to feel joy all the time.
Remember when you were just a little child? Didn’t you go from one curiosity to another all day long? Didn’t you hate being told to do what you didn’t enjoy? Sure, you obviously can’t get up in the middle of work and head off to the beach as an adult. There’s a reality that you need to deal with. I get it. But your heart is always trying to tell you how to have fun and how to have joy in every moment, just like when you were a kid. Remember how you got so excited about finishing your homework, all for the reward of ice cream?
Not interested in ice cream now? You say you are not at all about rewards? Too busy to think about joy? There it is. This is exactly how you’re killing your inner joy. I call it an “artificial intelligence (AI) recording” in your mind. It is made up of all kinds of negative opinions that you have accumulated over time. These are the voices of other people and society. “You need to do really well at school.” “This is not the time to have fun.” “You need to take life more seriously.” I’ve mentioned in the passion article that these are also crushing your passion.
Anything that prevents you from having fun is your AI recording from life. Joy exists in everyone. Just because you have a killjoy program in your mind doesn’t mean that you’ve lost it. Joy is a birthright. Deepak Chopra believes that if you do not experience deep, abiding joy, regardless of wealth, titles, or fame, you are missing the true purpose of life. What?
Joy killing and the AI recordings in our heads
If Deepak Chopra is right, why did we record all those negative opinions from others in our brains? Why did we have to believe that we shouldn’t be joyful every second of our lives? Fascinating, isn’t it? There might be some conspiracy, someone making our lives miserable. Possibly. Wherever it came from, or whoever it came from, we believed it ever so blindly, and it shows right in our education.
First of all, we take our education pretty seriously. So seriously that many kids feel inadequate if they don’t achieve high grades in school. If you feel ridiculous being graded on your work and pitted against your coworkers in a competition, why would you want to put your kids through that? All kids are very talented. Each has a unique talent and more. It is important to assess their progress through exams and assignments, sure. Teachers, students, and parents probably want to know if they have improved since the last semester. But they should not be lined up against each other, because comparing students is like comparing all sorts of different things in life, you see?
Take a look at a banana. No matter how much a banana wants to run 120 kilometers per hour because it’s envious of a car, it just cannot do it. As for a car, it’s impossible for it to become sweet and edible like a banana. Yes, I’m telling you that each of us is different. Costumes (our appearances) may look somewhat similar, but boy, are we each completely one of a kind and incomparable to one another. This whole competition against each other thing is definitely one of the top killjoys, except maybe for Ross and Monica in Friends.
Joy to the world?
I got a bit sidetracked about competition. Don’t even get me started on educational systems. Back to joy. Yes, joy. Have you heard a little kid’s laugh lately? Their giggles and outbursts of laughter are such a joy to hear. Once something hits the spot for them, it is endless joy for all to see.
I remember flying back to Japan to bring my firstborn there for the first time. I bought several toys and some books. I was so nervous about flying with a child who was 20 months old. I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t be crying much, or would only cry a little. Okay, I wanted to make sure she wouldn’t cry at all.
Thirty minutes into the flight, she became fascinated by a water bottle. With a big smile, she threw the empty water bottle around. There was pure joy in her expression, sometimes accompanied by a delightful chuckle. She was watching it so closely, as if she were trying to figure out some complicated physics calculation about how this empty water bottle moves through the air and plummets to the floor.
Well, she’s no physicist. But seeing my daughter joyfully playing with an empty water bottle that I bought at the airport was a lot of fun. Imagining her brain computing some complicated physics math brought me a lot of giggles and joy. (Parents, eh?)
She taught me that I don’t need any special experience to feel the joy in my heart. It is about your focus, your attention, and the intention you bring to the experience. Playfulness. Lots of it. When was the last time you felt sheer joy? If you are not feeling joyful, how would you help others feel joy?
Stop. Don’t think. Stop analyzing. Listen to your heart and follow your next exciting inspiration or fun idea. Joy is all about that. It does not have to be productive. It does not have to be efficient. It does not even have to be a step toward greatness. But following the steps of joy often leads to the path to greatness. Even competition gets fun if you bring joy and giggles to it. Hang on, let me get a water bottle.
Joy of feeling joy
In what other situations can you feel joy? You heard the news that your favourite author just wrote a new book. Joy. You just figured out some complicated math. Joy. You invited a friend to go see your favourite movie together, and she said yes. Joy! You decided to cook your favourite dish for dinner tonight. You coordinated a perfect outfit for a date tomorrow. You and your partner talked about your favourite musician for hours. You just found out your sister is having a baby. The seed you planted in the pot just sprouted. You realized you have an endless love for gardening.
Actually, you don’t even need experience to feel joy. Imagine how joyful you would feel skydiving. Or sailing, if you are scared of heights. Imagine what it would be like to feel the wind on your face and body. The warm sun is hitting your face. Your friend is right next to you, looking absolutely terrified. Funny. Well, my bad, not so funny. But sharing an experience with someone you love is so joyful. Did you just feel it? Hey, you haven’t even experienced it yet, and look how joyful you’ve already become!
I want you to remember this. We are machines that create emotions. We have hundreds of ways to create emotions. We create emotions by using our senses, imagining, thinking, listening, acting, and experiencing life. This is what life is all about.
Spiritual gurus can apparently create joy in any experience. If they can do it, so can you. Eckhart Tolle’s chuckle is itself such a joy to see. He quietly smiles, not because he has never had any pain or suffering, but because he realized that he had all the joy within himself already. It was his choice to feel what he wanted to feel. His presence captures our hearts. Why? Because we feel his joy. Joy to be alive. Joy to exist. Joy to be.
Babies innately know this. They look around this brand new world with the joy and curiosity they carry within them. All they want to do is see, hear, feel, and discover themselves and the world. That is what joy is: finding wonder and miracles in everything you experience.
Rediscover joy in you
We create emotions every moment. How about joy? How do we create joy? How many people have killjoy AI recordings in their heads? I bet most people do. Because if you have too much joy for no reason, people call you crazy. If you look out the window during school or work and smile, they frown at you. If you don’t find joy in what your parents want, they get disappointed. We get programmed very early on, just like that. This is how you start accumulating all the killjoy AI recordings in your brain.
Wim Hof, also known as the Iceman, doesn’t just do fun and easy stuff. Yet, when he speaks, he has so much joy oozing out of him. He swims in icy water. He holds the record for a barefoot half marathon on ice and snow. What in the world? How does he do it? Why? I doubt that his experiences generate a whole lot of joy in many people. Joy probably isn’t what he’s feeling during these experiences, either. But doing what he does helps him find joy everywhere. He found his method of feeling alive and feeling joy in life.
Have you noticed that people with joy are not necessarily the ones without any AI recordings? Some may be. But others are the ones who decided not to believe in them and pursued their own joy instead of others’. As I said at the beginning, everyone’s joy is different. But everyone has joy inside themselves. All you need is to find what that is.
Because if you don’t have joy in life, what are you always feeling in life? Of course, you can feel gratitude and love. I would put those down as essential emotions for sure. But joy? As Deepak Chopra says, if you don’t have deep, lasting joy, you are missing what you are here for! You, yes, you with the road rage over there. Please, go find some joy. You desperately need some.
What the heck happened to us?
If you have taken care of animals before, you can see how easily they feel joy. Well, except maybe cats. You need to know them well. They might look the same to you whether they are happy or even a little annoyed with you. But they melt your heart when they come to you at random times. They know exactly how to steal our hearts.
When your pet dog comes to you with his tail wagging, his joy is so visible. You instantly feel it, too. Their joy is so easy to find when they sniff around during their walk, when you give them treats, or when they run around off-leash. They are so happy, full of joy. Now, tell me, how many adults do you know whose joy is that visible? Not too many, I would imagine.
I realize that it would be tough to find joy if you worked at a job you hated or among coworkers you hated. (No offence, coworkers.) If you are aware of this and preparing to change your job, you’re actually three steps ahead. A lot of people stay with a job they don’t love, feeling stressed. It’s not that everyone should have a job they love. It’s not even that employers should fire all the unpleasant people and hire a bunch of carefree new workers, either. Because if you are regularly feeling stressed, chances are you find all kinds of things wrong in your everyday life. That’s just how humans are made.
What you want to change is what you focus on. First, be conscious of where your focus is. Finding the good gives you positive thoughts. Positive thoughts create positive emotions. You don’t need to love your job. But find what sparks your joy. Give yourself a treat every Friday to praise yourself. Find what you like about the office or your coworkers. Maybe you like the part of your job that involves talking to customers. Focus on that.
Perhaps you like creating solutions to problems. You might like your work shift. You get to work early and have lots of time in the evening. Or start looking at other jobs and start getting excited. Find something, anything, that helps you feel joy or excitement. You see, it’s not always your job, your coworkers, or your experience. It is your consciousness focusing on what you don’t like.
When you find what you don’t like, you feel stressed. When you feel stressed, your mind will focus more on what you don’t like. Negative emotions create negative thoughts. Negative thoughts create negative emotions. It is just how your mind works. It creates a habit through your repetitive actions. If you don’t realize you’ve gotten into a habit of focusing on what you hate, this will go on and on.
But guess what? The opposite absolutely happens as well. If you start finding the good in your life and keep doing it, this becomes a habit. So, what the heck happened to us? So many people got into a habit of focusing on what they don’t like and kept creating stress. They have gotten so good at it. It’s time for you to become aware of your focus.
Get your joy back
In case you are wondering, “What the heck happened to me?” do not despair. As I explained earlier, joy is within you. All you need to do is change your focus or change the commentary in your mind. Everything is still inside you: all the love, happiness, joy, and fun. Can you find one moment to close your eyes and think about one person who helped you in the past?
I remember going to the emergency room one week after giving birth to my baby. I was a new mom. It was so terrifying. I was worried about what would happen to me, or worse. The nurse asked me about my symptoms, and I just blurted out, “I’m scared,” and started bawling my eyes out. Her name was Victoria. She comforted me, assured me they’d take good care of me, and helped me through the fear and what seemed like the longest night of my life.
I still remember her after all these years. I should have brought her up in my gratitude article as well. I was so grateful that night. I was grateful for everything and everyone, but especially Victoria. Now, when I remember her, I feel joy. Why? Knowing someone like Victoria exists in this world makes me smile and feel so much joy. As much as we cry and feel pain about all the wrongs, there is still as much, or even more, “good” in this world. Victoria is proof of that.
As I said, our emotions are created by what we focus on, consciously or unconsciously. I’ve also told you that joy is always within you. So I challenge all of you. Can we focus on what’s good in our lives and our world? Can we feel joy, gratitude, and happiness? Giggle? Have fun? Even in the midst of stressful times, one moment or a few minutes of joy can warm your heart. This world isn’t as bad as it seems. You just need to know where to look and what to feel. Let’s see the good and feel joy!
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Chifuyu Casaclang, Therapeutic Counsellor & RTT Practitioner
Chifuyu is a therapeutic counsellor and RTT practitioner. She uses a unique approach to counselling, combining her knowledge of how the body and mind work, RTT skills, and the gift of intuition to help you recognize longstanding false beliefs and overcome who you learned to be. She has this absolute “knowing” that everyone is more than capable of becoming “extraordinary.” Believing in yourself is the key to transforming yourself. You are what you believe. Chifuyu guides you on your journey of discovering and mastering yourself by overwriting your false beliefs. Above all, she shows you how to have fun in the process, on your way to becoming your “ideal” self.
