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The Joy List Revisited

May 1st, 2010 Posted in The Joy List

When I began Living Happiness a year ago, it was my sincerest wish to create a space where joy could be honored regularly. I had had enough of griping and whinging and wanted, instead, to “accentuate the positive.” So The Joy List was born.

Truth be told, the Joy List hasn’t received much of my attention this year. In fact, it’s pretty much been left off by itself wondering when the party was going to migrate its direction. Well, now the party finally is.

This past week I published a post entitled La Bella Vita in which I shared about the joys to be found in an ordinary day. I then asked you readers to share your joys and continued the conversation in our Facebook community where I received several beautiful responses, too.

All of which has led to this: moving forward, I am going to feature these ordinary instances of extraordinary joy in a weekly Sunday post. Every Sunday, I will update the Joy List with both mine and your contributions, adding (I hope) more joy to your life, as well. You will also have the chance to respond to the post with more additions of your own, either here or on Facebook.

As Sarah Ban Breathnach says:

“Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart.”

Here are this week’s new additions to the Joy List, true instances of extraordinary joy in ordinary places, all made with the most grateful of hearts:

1. Watching my daughter sleep. ~Shelley Doolittle Bowers

2. Watching my doggies as they bask in the sun. ~Molly Wagner

3. Listening to my son’s uncontrollable laughing as I tickle him. ~Colette Porter Malone

4. My hubby brings me my first cup of coffee as I watch my hour of morning news show. Looking out my window and watching the birds early in the morning. Watching the turtle doves take a bath in the bird bath and the mocking bird chasing them away. My trip to the YMCA. ~Carolyn Cummins

5. Before my husband and I retired, our schedules were very different. He left the house much earlier than I but not before picking a rose and leaving it on the kitchen counter by the coffee that was waiting for me. I enjoy watching the critters that I feed in my back yard, watching the bluebirds raise their young in the nesting box I put up – simple things. Finishing my workout on the treadmill … watching my granddaughters grow. … ~Linda Estes

6. There’s just something about eating in dappled sunlight … or drinking wine in a breeze scented by jasmine or orange blossom … that makes everything taste better and the world feel right. ~Janice Hunter, Sharing the Journey

7. Often I find myself sitting at my desk, gazing out the window, watching the birds at the feeder and feeling blessed with all that surrounds me. It’s those little things that have come to mean so much to me. And the sun … I love the sun. It has a way of casting a glow that makes all the difference in a day. ~Barbara Swafford, Blogging Without a Blog

My additions:

8. Planting new flowers in the garden (gerberas! my favorite!) with my beautiful husband.

9. The rooster across the street that crows happily on sunny mornings.

10. My morning walk to and from the gym each day. It’s my forty minutes of thinking time.

11. The opportunity to create something of value here that touches the lives of others.

What would you add to this list?

What has brought you joy this past week?

Please share your joys and gratitudes in the comments … or join the conversation on Facebook.

Peace and blessings to all of you,

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Photo Credit by *Claudio88

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The Joy List

April 6th, 2009 Posted in The Joy List

Photo credit: Katherine Gruender "Kat"

A few weeks ago, I was one of the many people filling out Facebook’s 25 Things. Who doesn’t like to write down things about herself? We are all our own biggest fans … most of the time. In fact, I got so excited about it that after my first 25 Things posting, I wrote an addendum! What my friends must have thought!

Anyway, it was during this 25 Things craze that I was able to come across a lot of other people’s lists and, along with that, a lot of other people’s posted notes … the other little surveys they’d filled out and wanted to share with the world. Well … the Facebook world, anyway.

One of these notes I came across was entitled, Things That Annoy Me The Most, and this person had gone to a great deal of trouble to write a fairly detailed list, including lengthy explanations of these annoyances. I can’t deny that I chuckled at a couple of them. But mostly I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I’d walked in on a spat, on an argument maybe I shouldn’t be privy to. It is hard to say why.

The incident got me thinking, though, and to no one’s knowledge but my own, I decided to start the opposite kind of list: Things That Bring Me Joy. And off to Word I went to start jotting down the things in my life that put a smile on my face or joy in my heart. I saved it in a little file just for me.

Apparently I was not the only one with this inclination, however. A few days later I spotted on Facebook a new list posted on a friend’s page. It was called: All The Things That Make Me Happy. This definitely brought a smile to my face – at least someone out there knows that what we think about, what we focus on, is what we draw to us. If we consistently center on the negative and give our energy to negative events and circumstances in our life, then guess what? That’s what we’re going to draw to us. If, on the other hand, we choose to focus on the positive, to find the joy in our lives (even if in the most mundane of places) we will draw this into our world. I don’t know about you, but I would take this latter scenario any day.

I am not trying to put down the person who wrote this note (Things That Annoy Me Most). Nor do I think that we should ignore or repress the emotions we feel sometimes of anger, annoyance, jealousy, guilt, depression, what have you. Lord knows, I feel my fair share of them a lot of the time. (In fact, I really struggle with anger). But I think it’s important to understand the power that these more negative emotions can hold over our lives if we consistently focus on them and give into them. On their own, I believe they (these emotions) can be valuable keys towards letting us know what’s wrong or unbalanced or unjust in our lives. They can tell us a lot about ourselves, our expectations and how we feel about the world and our place in it. And when we acknowledge these things, we can begin to make changes — in our lives, in our selves.

But I think that, a lot of the time, it is much easier for us to not see these emotions for what they are. And it is very easy to give into their impulses and to become lost in how they make us feel without ever reaching any kind of revelation, let alone any kind of transformation. And before we know it, we are angry, bitter people, writing out long lists of our grievances and looking for others who can commiserate with us. Is this really what we want?

With all of this in mind, it was important to me when I started this blog (all of three days ago) to create an area in it that celebrates the life-giving energy that joy brings. So in tribute to that, I have posted: The Joy List. I will try to add to this from time to time the things that continue to light up my little corner of the world. But I would love to hear from you, too.

What are the things in your life that bring you joy?

What puts a smile on your face?

Thank you for sharing.

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