Living joyfully is a state of mind that can be achieved by anyone, regardless of their circumstances. In my post, Activating Your Glow 101, I talk about how focusing on joy is the number one way to re-ignite your inner glow and how it sets you on the path of living a healthier and happier life. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here. In this post, I will talk about a few simple ways to bring more joy into your life and why it is important.
Practice Gratitude
Focusing on what you are grateful for can help shift your mindset to a more positive and joyful one. Making a habit of writing down three things you are grateful for each day is a great way to either start and/or end your day. This practice should be done without judgement, since we can express gratitude for even the smallest of things. Some of the things that I am grateful for are sunny days, clean drinking water, my healthy children, and the love and support of my two best friends. Check out my free digital Gratitude Journal on my Resources page. Affirmations are another easy and effective way to shift your mindset to being more joyful. In a previous post, I listed 24 daily affirmations that help bring more joy into your life. Check out the post here.
Connect with Others
Building meaningful relationships with other people can bring a lot of joy and into your life. Making an effort to connect with others, especially into today’s post-pandemic and digital heavy world, is a healthy and meaningful way to bring more joy to yourself and to others. Whether it’s through volunteering, joining a club or organization, or simply reaching out to friends and family, finding simple ways to connect with others can add a lot of value to your life. JustServe.org is a great resource for finding local volunteer opportunities and organizations if you are interested in connecting with others in a service capacity.
Engage in Activities You Enjoy
Doing things you love can help you feel more fulfilled and joyful. For many years, I felt totally out of balance in this area. After long, stressful days at work, I felt that the remainder of my day needed to be focused on cooking, cleaning, and taking care of others. And yes, those are all necessary things that must be done if you have a family, but I was literally leaving myself no time for anything that I actually enjoyed doing.
Once I realized that perfectionism was one of the narratives in my head that wasn’t really serving me in a healthy way, I relaxed a bit about the level of cleanliness in my house, or how gourmet of a meal I needed to make for my family. I then freed up time for more baths, solo walks, going out for ice cream with the family just for fun, random bouts of dancing in my bedroom, creating art and writing a children’s book, and other fun, yet simple things, that brought more joy into my life.
I also observed that once I loosened control over the things I thought needed to be perfect in my life, including myself, I was not only more joyful, but my kids and husband were happier too because I was not so stressed and when I did spend time with them, it was more quality and fun.
Taking the time to identify what activities bring you the most joy and making time for them in your life is time well spent. If you haven’t already, make sure to download the Activate Your Glow Workbook, a resource that is all about helping you focus more on joy and is packed full of guides, trackers, worksheets, and more.
Take Care of Your Physical Health
Taking care of your body can have a positive impact on your mental and emotional well-being. Make sure to eat a healthy diet, get enough sleep, and engage in regular exercise. The key thing here is to make sure that when you are taking care of your physical health, that you are doing it from a place of love and compassion for yourself, not from a place of self-loathing and hatred.
Eating healthy does not mean starving yourself of things you love or bring you joy; it just means finding a healthy balance between the foods that you love and those that truly nourish your body and helps it to thrive.
Getting regular exercise does not necessarily mean you need to spend hours and hours at the gym, breaking your body down because you hate the way it looks and want to change it.
When you are stressed out about how your body looks and undergo high intensity workouts in an effort to change it, this can actually lead to higher levels of cortisol in your body, creating more inflammation and swelling, and can also lead to higher incidents of injury.
Exercising with the mindset of love and exercising in a way that brings you joy will encourage you to do it more often, because it is something you look forward to because of how it makes you feel. This can include more gentle forms of exercise, such as pilates, yoga, walking, hiking, and swimming.
Mindful, loving exercise, paired with healthy, balanced eating will help you achieve your mind and body goals much quicker than fad diets and grueling workouts.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness involves being present in the moment and fully engaging with your surroundings. By practicing mindfulness, you can become more aware of the joy that surrounds you in everyday life.
A simple way to practice mindfulness is to appreciate the little things about your daily routine. For example, every morning I make coffee in my Chemex or French Press. These are both manual coffee making processes, but for me, the ritual forces me to slow down and be present. I also pay special attention to the sound of the water boiling in the kettle, then listen to the sound of the coffee grounds as they release their gases after the hot water has slowly been poured over them. Finally, I slowly savor my first sip of coffee after it is done and take note of how it makes me feel.
Another way I perform this mindfulness ritual when performing daily tasks that I don’t look forward to as much, such as washing the dishes. By tuning into how the warm water feels on my hands, and the popping bubbles from the dish soap in the sink, I can still be mindful and present in that moment, and find enjoyable sensations and feelings that make the task not so bad.
To learn more about the health benefits of a mindfulness practice and other ways to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life, check out my post, The Benefits of a Mindfulness Practice.
Conclusion
By focusing on how you can bring more joy into your life, you can start living more joyfully and find happiness in even the smallest moments. Taking baby steps in the direction of joy every day will build upon itself and lead you to a more positive state of mind, a more grateful outlook on your life’s circumstances, and bring you closer to the dream life that you have always imagined.
Related
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Jessica Sweet has always had a passion for helping others. Her nurturing nature, fascination with the human body and love for problem solving inspired her to open her own holistic wellness practice, combining her skills as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Hatha and Prenatal Yoga Teacher, and Reiki Practitioner to provide a beautifully balanced holistic path of wellbeing for her clients. Jessica’s practice is deeply rooted in the philosophy that everyone is unique and has their own personal path to wellbeing, which allows her to provide a truly personalized wellness program to each person she works with, considering their biological individuality and personality, as well as their personal goals and dreams.
Get to know
Jessica!
What is
Nutritional Therapy?
Nutritional Therapy is an integrative and holistic approach to nutrition that operates under the philosophy that each and every person is a biologically unique individual and that optimal health and balance within the body can be achieved by addressing each person’s individual needs. According to the Nutritional Therapy Association, ” …the myriad of health problems plaguing modern society result from weaknesses in the body’s physiological foundations brought on by poor nutrition.” Within the body, there is an underlying innate intelligence, that when “asked” the right questions, can provide insight and answers into what the body needs to be able to heal itself. As a nutritional therapy practitioner, the assessment techniques that Jessica uses when working with clients provides her with the tools she needs to ask the right questions, see beyond the symptoms, and to get to the root of the problem. Using the unique information that she gathers from each person about any nutritional deficiencies they may have or systems that are performing less than optimally, she then develops a nutritional program that is tailored to each individual’s biological needs as well as their own personal health goals. When balance and harmony is restored within the body, it has the ability to obtain what it needs to achieve and maintain optimal health simply by using food in its pure, natural state. Because every person is a bioindividual, nutritional therapy can be beneficial to all women, of all ages, and regardless of their issues or their ideals for optimal health, including:
Fatigue
Weight Loss & Weight Gain
Fertility
Healthy Pregnancy
Postpartum Recovery
PMS
Menopausal Symptoms
Hormone Imbalances
Mood & Behavioral Issues
Skin Issues
Cravings
Digestive Discomfort & Dysfunction
Click the photos to learn about my daily must-haves.
My essentials
I start my day with a glass of warm water to help my digestive system get fired up, as well as hydrate the cells in my body after a long night's sleep. I then, no matter what, eat a protein packed breakfast, such as eggs cooked any way, or, a smoothie with protein and collagen. Starting my day with super foods helps ensure a lasting GLOW!
Breakfast
Even if it is just a round or two of cat cow, or some gentle spinal twists, some sort of yoga & stretching is a daily must for me! The benefits of yoga go far beyond the physical, but I truly do feel like this daily practices helps ignite my GLOW!
Yoga
I spend 4 minutes a day visualizing my dreams and 15 to 20 in meditation. No matter what time of day I do it, I always feel present and re-energized afterward (almost like taking a power nap!) This daily practice also helps me proactively combat stress & anxiety, and ensures that neither of these things can dim my GlOW.
Meditation & Visualization
Spending a few moments at the start of each day writing down what I am grateful for sets me up to have a positive mindset for the rest of the day and helps me stay present in each moment. This, along with visualization and meditation, help mitigate the effects of stress & anxiety and ensure that I continue to look and feel my best!
Gratitude Journal
My morning coffee has turned into a legit ritual since I got my Chemex. The slow, pour-over method not only produces AMAZINGLY delicious coffee, but also helps me not feel so rushed and chaotic in the morning. My daily coffee ritual reminds me to enjoy the little things. Tip: I also add a scoop or two of grass-fed hydrolyzed collagen peptides to further boost my inner & outer GLOW!