Joy Heard 'Round The World

I was in no mood for joy this morning when I started working on this newsletter. I'd just spent twenty minutes in telephone hell, listening to one recording after another, trying to find an actual customer service representative at one of the long distance phone companies. By the time I hung up, I was convinced I was experiencing the final decline of western civilization. Gradually, as the smoke stopped coming out of my ears, I remembered a certain page on my web site -- a discussion thread on the Joy Boards called Finding Fifteen Things a Day to Be Joyful About. I went there and just read for a few minutes, and as I did the smoke cleared, my mood shifted, and life was good again. It really was as simple as that.

On this thread, people list fifteen things that bring them joy -- and some of them stop by to list them every single day. Some of my favorites: "A walk in the rain on this lazy Sunday." "Sitting in my pajamas on the kitchen floor with my three year old grandson, eating spoonfuls of peanut butter before breakfast.""The moss on a tree outside my window." "The energy I received walking around the strip in Vegas on a Sunday morning." "Being in bed, getting ready to fall asleep, and having my cat curl up on my belly and purr like a diesel engine." "The dancing smiles of friends.""That my neighbor is an 88 year old woman who grows a garden all year long, and does her own yard work."

There is something almost hypnotic about reading what makes others joyful, yet listing them for yourself is even more powerful. It's remarkably soothing. No matter how sophisticated we think our brains may be, they don't seem capable of holding both tormented, anxious thoughts and happy thoughts at the same time. So by stopping for a moment, and forcing yourself to think about what makes you happy in life, you get a profound perspective shift. Suddenly, the telephone desert you wandered in only a few minutes earlier is gone, and you're back making brownies in the kitchen with a child, each of you licking a beater. I can't emphasize enough what a powerful tonic this is for healing the furious, fed up, frustrated, or just plain downtrodden soul.

In terms of pursuing your dreams, this is also a useful tool. In just a few moments, it can snap you out of your 'beleaguered victim at the end of a long,hard work day' mode into one that's far more productive. I urge you to stop in at our website and list fifteen of your own personal joy triggers on the Joy Boards.

I'll close with my own personal list of things that bring me joy today:

1. Seeing water (not ice) on Lake Champlain

2. The sound of little running feet as my son follows clues in a scavenger hunt his sister made for him

3. The smell of baking chicken

4. Skiing in soft, spring snow

5. Cleaning the house with my family (and watching our kids mop floors, clean bathrooms, and empty trash cans)

6. Knowing that my future really is up to me -- which is both daunting and joyful)

7. Seeing my book's sales rank on Amazon get better and better (the 1770'th best-selling book yesterday!)

8. Being a writer

9. The photo I saw of a 99-year-old Parisian woman decked out for the Paris fashion shows in black Issaye Miyake plus a lavender ostrich feather hat

10. My friend Laurie's seed incubator, which is roughly the size of a coffee table, and is hatching seeds for about 5000 flowers right now

11. The tenacity of wild strawberry leaves, the only green thing in our yard as the last foot of snow finally melts

12. My friends Bev, Karin, Susan, A, and Lorelei, fellow creative adventurers

13. Skiing in my husband's graceful tracks

14. The words that come as God tells me what to write, as usual, in this Joy Letter

15. The sanctity of doing what I am meant to do in life