Actively seek and integrate small moments of joy into your daily life, as they are non-negotiable for human thriving, helping to reset stress responses, increase productivity, enhance cognitive flexibility, and improve relationships.
Recognize that joy is not a luxury or something to be earned through productivity, but a fundamental signal of thriving that you are entitled to simply by being human, allowing yourself to integrate it into your life without guilt.
Instead of broadly asking “Am I happy?”, shift your focus to actively questioning “Am I experiencing joy?” and “How do I create more joy for myself and others?”, fostering a more active and agency-driven engagement with your emotional well-being.
Engage in “joy spotting,” a mindfulness practice focused on tuning your attention to the sensory qualities of your environment that bring joy, helping you discover and notice things that might spark happiness.
Actively notice and understand the forces, both external and internal (like perfectionism, fear of loss, or cultural judgment), that hold you back from experiencing joy, as this awareness is key to unwinding those patterns and allowing more joy into your life.
Reintroduce “aesthetics of joy” (like bright colors, round shapes, abundance, symmetry, and elevation) into your home and work environments, as your unconscious brain processes these elements and influences your mood, making you feel safer, more energized, and more productive.
Always remain open to the possibility of experiencing moments of joy, even on your worst days or during times of sorrow, understanding that joy comes in moments and waves and can coexist with other emotions, enriching your emotional life.
Actively engage with the sensory details of your surroundings (what you see, touch, smell, hear, feel) to deepen your experience of the moment and extract more joy from everyday interactions and memories.
Enjoy objects and experiences fully in the present moment, recognizing their impermanence without attachment, which allows for deeper appreciation and joy while they are still here.
Allow yourself to experience conflicting emotions simultaneously (e.g., joy and sadness, awe and darkness), as this state tells the brain something unusual is happening, stimulating creativity and priming you to look for novel solutions.
Incorporate simple actions like jumping (to “drop the mask”), bringing plants or nature sounds indoors, moving art around your space, letting a child decorate, wearing bright clothes on a tough day, and sitting in the sunshine to consistently spark joy.
Keep a list of joyful conversation starters (e.g., “What’s a simple pleasure you never grow tired of?”) to deepen bonds with others, shift conversations away from dire topics, and use them as journal prompts for self-reflection on joy.
Use a joy journal to reflect on questions that connect you to joy, understand where it went, and how to get it back, while also identifying your “killjoys” to understand what holds you back.
Tune your senses to notice invisible forces like wind, temperature, and magnetism (e.g., a pinwheel spinning or wind chimes), as these aesthetic traces of natural laws can be sources of wonder and joy in your midst.