I’m posting this on Christmas Eve, and so I wanted to talk a bit more in this episode about a topic relevant to today, and that’s joy. Meghan Riordan Jarvis spoke so beautifully about the importance of joy in the interview with her earlier this week. She called joy the momentary, short, spontaneous manifestation of letting go. That moment when you get a little jolt of excitement and your heart leaps or when you laugh so hard that you lose control for just a second.
The thing about the holiday season is that it really puts the concept of joy in stark relief. We see evidence of joy all around us—in Christmas ads, music, in sparkling lights and in the signs on neighbors’ lawns. At the same time, the holidays can be really hard on a lot of us, especially this year. There is the pressure to perform, to make the holidays special for those around us. There is the loss we feel because we can’t celebrate the way we normally do. Christmas looks different this year and it’s hard not to compare it to years past and find it wanting. And then, for a lot of us, Christmas makes us ache for those we lost this year—the people we love, the people we miss so much.
I’m not going to tell you that joy is easy to find. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a time in my life where I lost it and how I found it again.
So, we had three kids within three years and my wife and I were both working and there was a little while there where all I could do was work as hard as I could to keep from everything falling apart. Getting dinner on the table, keeping up with the laundry and the doctors’ appointments and the homework, trying to do my job passably well—it took every ounce of energy that I had. The idea that I would find, in the middle of that, opportunities for spontaneous joy? I would have looked at you like you had asked me to build a rocketship. Not only was I not experiencing that, I honestly couldn’t even remember what it felt like.
It was my wife who brought to my attention that I had lost my joy—I was too serious, unable to laugh, and my temper was too short. I was living too close to the edge, trying to make every second productive because I thought if I didn’t, I’d never get everything done that I needed to get done.
The first step was just to ask the question. What made me happy? What did I actually want? To be honest, I was a little afraid to ask because I thought what I’d come up with would be impossible, like a three-week vacation. A full-time housekeeper. A nap, which at the time seemed equally implausible.
What I found, though, when I gave myself permission to ask the question, was that what made me happy were pretty small things. A fancy bar of soap. Listening to music on the way into work instead of listening to the news. A really good pen. It wasn’t some huge shift that was required. There were lots of opportunities for small joys all around me.
One of the other things I discovered in that time was that focusing on what made me happy was its own little joy. As I began looking for things that made me happy and found them all around me, I became more grateful for those things. I didn’t just mindlessly use the pen, I had a teeny moment where I thought, this is a really great pen. I’m so glad I have this pen.
I also became more present through this exercise of becoming curious about what made me happy. As I was cooking, for instance, instead of thinking through a work problem, I would focus on my surroundings. What would make me happy right now? An audiobook? A candle? Getting out of my work shoes and into a pair of slippers? Those questions would pull me into the present moment.
And then here is the other amazing thing that happened. I should be clear that my big hesitation to focus on things that made me happy was that I didn’t have time for that—basically, I thought, I don’t have time to stop and smell the roses, I’ve got to get dinner on the table. But here’s what happened.
Being more present actually saved me time. I found out that when I was absent from the moment—focused on what I needed to do next, ruminating on what had already happened–things actually took me longer.
As an example, in my morning shower I would be so focused on all of the things I had to do later in the day that I would wash my hair twice because I couldn’t remember if I’d already done it. I would take longer to finish projects because I was only paying attention to them with about 20% of my brain. I would make little small mistakes, like dropping a glass or editing the wrong version of a document, and then it would take time to correct them. Once I was so tired and unfocused that I lined my lips with black eyeliner. Another time I had made chicken stock—cooked it for hours one afternoon, and then poured it all down the sink because I forgot to put a bowl under the colander when I went to strain it. When I slowed down and focused on the thing I was doing, not only did it make me happier but I literally saved time. So my chief objection was totally off. I’m guessing that yours is, too, whatever that objection is. At least give it a shot. As you go through your day, think about whether there is something that could make you just a little happier in this moment. That is my Christmas wish for you, my friends. I wish you joy today, wherever you are.