The Power of Joy

When I was growing up, joy tended to be in short supply in my family. Existential despair was considered a more appropriate reaction to the challenges of living in this world.

Several years ago I became very ill, struggling on all levels - physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. In order to recover, one of the most helpful healing tools was learning to consciously cultivate positive emotions, especially joy.

Now I am passionate about the power of joy. From what I have learned about neuroscience and my own experience healing from chronic illness, it’s clear that our brains and our bodies thrive on positive emotions such as love, gratitude, and appreciation. And we especially thrive on joy.

The ancient parts of our brain that are focused on survival are biased toward the negative, which makes sense - through the millennia of human evolution it was more important to pay attention to things that could be harmful rather than focusing on the good.

This negativity bias served our ancestors well. But now, with our modern world of constant stress, the 24/7 news cycle focusing on scary things happening around the world, and all the other pressures of modern life, for many of us our survival brains are triggered most, if not all of the time.

One of the most effective ways to calm the survival brain and balance the negativity bias is to consciously cultivate joy.

Here are some questions I and others have had about joy:

Is it okay to feel joy when there is so much suffering in the world?

Yes! You feeling depressed won’t stop anyone else’s suffering. The best way to help the world is to be happy and healthy in your own life. That gives you the energy to get out into the world and make the unique contribution that only you can make.

Is it okay to feel joy when people I love are suffering?

Yes! You stopping yourself from feeling joy won’t help them. Many of us are kind, sensitive people who feel deeply the suffering of those around us. If we let ourselves be pulled down, it doesn’t help our loved ones who are suffering. It is the opposite. If we hold firm for joy, we create the opportunity for the people around us to rise up and feel joy as well.

What about all the big problems in this world?

Yes, there are big problems in the world, that require our strength, our creativity, our energy, our commitment, our passion. If we are weighed down by fear and grief, we won’t have much capacity to contribute to solving the world’s problems.

Focusing on joy doesn’t mean we pretend there aren’t serious challenges facing our world. It just means that we protect and enhance our energy by focusing on joy rather than fear, love rather than hate, connection rather than alienation, gratitude and generosity rather than scarcity, optimism rather than cynicism.

Joy is the best fuel for our bodies and our brains. When we are in a state of joy, our bodies are flooded with more than a thousand different neurotransmitters that create optimal health, energy, creativity, and an abundance of other good things.

How can we bring more joy into our lives?

Great that you asked! My next blog post will be all about that.

I’d love to hear from you!

Please send your comments, questions, and suggestions to liz@happybrainlife.com.