What is joy vs. happiness? Joy is happiness, but happiness isn’t always lasting and isn’t internal joy.
The feeling of joy is something you learn in life.
If you go on an experiential retreat, it will only be life-changing for you with your active participation. Similarly, internal joy is deep and can only be fully captured with your own recorded real-life experience.
Words on paper just don’t give the meaning of joy, the richness in feeling that it is. Internal joy brings peace and purpose. No anxiety, worry, or fear.
Written simply on paper, joy is an internal feeling of peace and contentment.
Sometimes joy shows up as an action you take, as you leap For Joy! or you can’t help but smile With Joy.
Those are outward body expressions of the joy that’s already inside you. The happy endorphins can kick in giving you a feeling of being on Cloud 9, but that’s a more celebratory joy that’s fleeting.
Internal joy is different.
You can feel joy even when situations aren’t going in the direction you want. That’s where most people get unplugged from their joy. They can rely on their immediate pleasure (vs. painful feelings) based on circumstances and chasing the next best thing.
It will not give lasting happiness feelings (much beyond the temporary elation effect that wears off), any more than the value of a car appreciating as soon as you drive off the lot.
You know that famous quote passage (written by Alfred D. Souza) that captures the happiness truths in 30 lines long, and starts with:
“We convince ourselves that life will get better after we get married, when we have a baby…” and ends with… “work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching.”
I feel like there should be a recent song made from these wise words that don’t get old, but do get missed.
Where to begin to find joy vs. happiness…
Focusing on growing yourself and letting go where you can’t make changes or they don’t serve you, helps grow your contentment and joy.
No one gets a life instruction manual.
Life just shows you in the everyday process, repeating lessons that weren’t recognized the first time, and often end up in disguised self-sabotage setbacks.
Connecting the dots and getting in your awareness, can highlight and allow you to change your patterns with the same unlearned lesson revealed several steps ago. Gratefully, you get second, third, and fourth chances in life’s forgiveness. It’s never too late or too soon.
But getting set in your ways can put you on an emotional roller coaster, of ups and downs based on circumstances. And you can take the limiting ride as many times as you allow yourself. Until a pain or trial is maybe too much to bear, has reached a tipping point, or you’re forced to find another way.
Relying on those ahead of us, we see all these situations and hardships were designed to help set us up to find joy and a better way up.
I know this because that’s how I lived the first 30 years of my life. Scrambling and learning.
However you made it to an adult, at any age and tipping point, you can choose to grow into your joy and fully get the best from life when you realize it comes from inside you. It was there all along.
You’re fully equipped to embrace your power over your forever joy vs. happiness that’s fleeting.
My story may help you find your joy vs. happiness…
Many people don’t start off knowing how to be joyful or peaceful (different than cheerful on the outside or seemingly having it all on paper). Nature and nurture didn’t set up growing up that way. Those were the cards I started life with.
Continue reading “What Is Joy vs. Happiness? To Find Your Peace, Balance, and Purpose”