Celebrational Awareness

16 days ago I committed to recording on facebook at least 3 moments of joy each day for 30 days.  By "moments of joy", I mean those times when you feel that tingly surge of happy neurotransmitters bubble up.  Noticing, remembering and really savoring moments of joy is a practice that I learned years ago in a therapy group.  Like most practices, I followed it daily for a while.  Eventually I missed a day and from there my faithfulness slowly dwindled until one day I'm struggling and thinking, "What was that thing I used to do? It really helped."  That is were I found myself a couple of weeks ago.  Hard, sad things were happening all around me.  Many people whom I love were really struggling, and I was recovering from a fairly major surgery.  I desperately needed some balance, and what better way to get it than to seek out and savor joy. 

I'm a little more than halfway through.  So, what have I learned?  What things and experiences really give me that little shot of joy and help me get through the day in better balance?  I've noticed a few patterns:

1)The number of joy moments I experience is often inversely proportionate to how tightly scheduled I am.  When I feel busy and frantic, I just don't notice the joy that may be there for me to experience.  I don't always have a choice about tight my schedule is, but there are ways that I can make my busy days feel less frantic.

2)People.  Better than 75% of the joy moments that I've reported have been while connecting with people.  Sure, some of them have been huge moments of love and intimate connection, but most are a simple as a smile, or moving beyond chit chat with a new acquaintance.  When I am stressed and sad, my instinct says to withdraw to my room like a hermit to the desert, and I usually give in.  I'm going to reconsider that in the light of this observation.

3)I get a lot of joy from my hilariously large collection of dresses and jewelry.  I've spent a fair amount of time feeling guilty or just shallow about my passion for fripperies, but putting together beautiful outfits really does increase my joy.  To expand beyond things sartorial, beauty brings me joy.  From the color and scent of my bathwater to the grandeur of nature, I am happier when I experience beauty.

It feels important to say that the quality of events in my life has not changed.  The quality of my experience of life, on the other hand, has changed dramatically. There is still a lot of really hard stuff.   There is a lot of amazing stuff too.  There always was.  I was just forgetting to notice.