Do what brings you joy, bring joy to what you do
I decided to make this my motto in August last year. In the first half of 2022, I was focused on organizing and hosting an online summit and it required a lot of learning, discipline, responsibility, and effort so I felt I need to reclaim my energy by doing something completely opposite. For a long time suppressed Inner Child wanted to play and have fun, just do what brings me joy.
I intended to take a break and enjoy my vacation, do things I love to do, and have fun. Only, it didn´t go as expected. The health issues of our youngest child required a lot of my attention and energy, so instead of applying the first part of my motto, I had to rely on the second one.
And in the beginning, I did and it worked well. I was able to change my perspective on each difficult situation and always look at the bright side of everything. Life handed me a lemon so I made lemonade out of that. It was fun, at least in the moments I wasn´t involved in one of many, many emotional turbulence.
Until it didn´t work so well anymore…
After a few months, I wasn´t so creative in inventing fun stories about sad situations. It took me much more effort to refocus on the bright side, or even to find some bright side at all. I felt emotionally drained, and I lost most of my joy in dealing with suffering child day by day. Fortunately, my husband realized what was going on with me and threw me a lifeline in the form of a week-long vacation in Rome.
And suddenly, I experienced joy and fun without any effort, “just because”! I realized that I forgot it could be easy, it could come naturally! I forgot that something can BRING JOY TO ME instead of the need to put a lot of intentional effort into finding joy in a taught situation! This experience helped me to understand that you can´t constantly bring joy to what you do without experiencing joyful situations at least from time to time.
Today, I understood the opposite part of this motto! Initially, my intention for this year was just to do what brings me joy without any attempt to make money or do something “reasonable”. No goals, just to go with the flow and have fun. Now I realized that it doesn´t work for me to focus on experiencing joy and do things just with the intention to experience joy.
I need to have a vision, a project I can head toward, or a goal I can try to achieve so I can see my progress and have fun on the journey to the destination! Avoiding projects and goals is not the point. It is the detachment to the result that makes all the difference! Because joy is not the destination but only accompaniment 🙂
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