Finding Moments of Joy
It was a Tuesday morning, and I had just returned to New York after spending five weeks with my dad in Cincinnati. Every Saturday had been filled with family, fun, and new restaurants. Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn, I found myself feeling a bit lonely, disappointed, and depressed. So I asked the universe, Bring me moments of joy.
I went for a walk that day, and as I was returning home I saw this beautiful hawk sitting in the middle of McCarren Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Now, mind you, I don’t live in a suburban place where big birds of prey regularly hang out in trees, so for me this was a huge and beautiful moment. And as I looked up into that tree, I noticed that there wasn’t just one hawk – there were actually two hawks. I sat on the picnic bench and watched.
One of the hawks ventured out on a tree branch that was super close to me and showed off his full body and all of the beautiful colors. I knew immediately this was my moment of joy.
Joy seems to be one of those emotions that we, as busy business owners, run after.
It’s hard to find joy when you’re in the middle of writing a newsletter article, shooting a video, or holding a sales conversation. It’s especially hard to find joy when it seems like you’re so busy with task after task after task that you hardly stop to catch your breath.
But what I’ve realized is that joy isn’t something that comes to you. Joy is something that you create, something that you notice in the present moment.
I like to think of joy and gratitude as present-moment awareness.
In order to find these two emotions, you have to be willing to stop – to stop, breathe, take stock, and notice the joy around you.
Sometimes it happens the other way around – where moments of joy give you permission to stop what you’re doing and watch the hawk in the park, bend down and pet your cat, inhale the smell of a beautiful dinner, appreciate the beauty of a dog walking across the street.
For me, this has been a practice. I think I used to believe that joy should be given to me, that it would somehow just come over me and then I would feel it. But the thing is – that never just happens on its own.
Instead, the way that I experience joy is by generating, creating, and noticing. When I stopped and asked my guides, my spiritual team on the other side, what they thought of joy, they gave me this image.
There is a girl standing on the beach, and all around her are shells and treasures, little gems glowing in the light. One by one she picks them up and throws them back into the ocean.
None them are good enough, none of them are big enough, none of them are what she wants right now. So she spends her day throwing her joys back into the ocean. She wants more, more, more.
If you make a practice of always wanting more – throwing your joy back into the ocean – then you’ll see less and less joy wash up on the beach, because you’re not noticing what is right in front of you.
I think we all must learn to look at the beach, to look at our day to day lives, to see the shells and treasures that have washed up from the shore, and hold them in our hands one by one as they come to us.
So my invitation to you this week is to stop and notice what has washed up upon your shore, be it a hawk in a tree, your child’s smile, or the smell of a bakery as you pass it on the street.
Notice it, because the more you begin to notice the joy in the present moment, the more joy will permeate your day.
I, too, will be practicing this alongside with you, because underneath it all – the desire for clients, money, security, and so on – what we really want is joy.
