Keep Choosing Joy

“Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act how you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind” – Anonymous

I read that quote for the first time in, I believe, January or February. It is the perfect introduction that sets you off on a journey of changing your mind set in the book 'Power Thoughts' by Joyce Meyer.  I had listened to messages and read book where they touched on the topic, and I also have had my own thoughts on the topic challenged and changed as I have grown and learned; the idea that we choose our thoughts, and those thoughts can change our life, is a pretty huge thing to wrap your head around.

In my journey so far, I have found I tend to focus on ‘Love’ as an overall theme for everything I do. While it perhaps doesn’t always come across that way (yay for learning and growing!), it is the way I strive to act and conduct myself. I am aware that sometimes tough love is required, and loving people doesn’t always mean giving them answers they want to hear, but love is an incredible thing and truly needs to be expressed as the sole motive behind every single thing we do or say.

While choosing love can sometimes be difficult, choosing joy can sometimes be harder. I am the classic case of ‘I’m tired and hungry which means I’m grumpy and I don’t want to be around people or do anything and I just want to nap and play with a kitten and eat sweets and watch something cheesy’. Anyone else share these same oh-so lovely character traits? Choosing joy means, in the midst of whatever is happening, you are choosing to be positive—looking on the bright side of things when every thing and perhaps every one around you is encouraging the more negative side to take centre stage.

Kittens and cupcakes-- instant joy.

Why do we do this? Why do we allow negativity at the forefront of our minds? I think it’s probably because it’s easy. It’s a lot easier to be down in the dumps when your paycheque isn’t as big as you want it to be, when you can’t afford the new clothes, new house, or vacation you want. When you can’t see friends as often as you would like, when there’s no one physically around when you want someone there, when your dreams aren’t becoming reality. A lesson which needs to be learned is being negative about these things isn’t going to make them any better. Being negative isn’t going to improve the situation—it’s going to do the opposite. You are going to focus so much on the negative that any situation or circumstance that is less than ideal in your life is going to go from the size of a rain drop to the size of a tidal wave.

I’m not devaluing the importance of feeling emotions, or saying when the worst things happen you have to pretend to be happy and like nothing bothers you. I’m actually kind of saying the opposite….

While bad things happen and situations may not be what you hoped, there are always so many reasons to choose joy. When I’m feeling down in the dumps (and don’t have any kittens or candy around) I start to make a mental list of things I am thankful for. Sometimes this list starts as simple as acknowledging the every day things I take for granted which sustain life as I know it:

‘I am thankful my body works in amazing ways I don’t even understand.

I am thankful I have hands that allow me to create things.

I am thankful I have legs and feet that work so I can bike and run.

I am thankful I have food in the fridge and a roof over my head.

I am thankful I have clothing to wear that I got to pick out because I liked it.

I am thankful I breathe.

I am thankful I have a bed.

I am thankful for safety and protection.’

As soon as I start focusing on the things I am thankful for, I automatically start to feel a jump in my heart that spreads through my veins and leaves a smile on my face. I can’t help but be blown away by the sheer magnitude of greatness of the daily things I take for granted. This gratefulness almost always turns into joy. If I am not feeling joyful yet, I continue my thankful list:

‘I am thankful for friends who I can reach out when I need them.

I am thankful for a husband who encourages me, challenges me and supports me.

I am thankful for Love.

I am thankful for God who loves me and has more thoughts toward me they outnumber the grains of sand!

I am thankful for my workplace.

I am thankful for passions.

I am thankful for joy.’

I am thankful for joy.

I become so in awe of the fact I can choose to be happy in the midst of life, I can do a few things:

1. I can acknowledge how remaining negative and dwelling on things does nothing to improve the situation but actually makes it worse. Had I continued to be negative, the littlest things would have seemed catastrophic and I would have left no room for joy to begin to grow again.
2. I can assess the situations with a clearer headspace. I am no longer feeding the negativity. I am focusing on joy and being positive. This achieves a lovely balance for productive problem solving.
3. I can be positive. In the midst of what is happening around me, I know that being positive is good for my mental, physical and spiritual health. I will make better choices in all areas of life, I will surround myself with positive influences, I will continue on a path of positivity.

I used to be confused when people would talk about choosing joy. It seemed to me people were devaluing the things we, as human beings, feel and experience. It seemed so fake—like when we are having the worst day we are supposed to just smile and say cheesy things like “Everything happens for a reason!” (not true!) or “It’s in God’s hands!” (yes, God takes care of situations but we need to actively pursue the life His word tells us we should strive to live!).  This, to me, is crazy. If I feel bad, I feel bad. But the bottom line is I don’t want to feel that way so I’m going to change it—from the inside, not just the face I’m putting to the outside. Too many approaches, like those previously mentioned, also remove from us our ability and responsibility to change how we feel and think to ensure we live a happier life—they leave us thinking we need to learn to live in the midst of negativity. The truth is, we need to learn to leave negativity behind and focus on positivity.

Power Thoughts by Joyce Meyer was an awesome book that challenged you every single week with a new power thought. From things like ‘I love people and I enjoy helping them’ to ‘I am difficult to offend’, ‘I live in the present and enjoy each moment’, to ‘I put God first in my life’. There are 12 power thoughts and I plan to put them all on my wall to remind me that life doesn’t have to be spent wondering how in the world you can make things right, be happy, and overcome the negativity in your life. You can actively choose how you think to ensure you are continually choosing joy in the midst of what comes your way in life.

Images in body of blog courtesy of Pinterest

A New Take on Giving Thanks

Good ol’ Thanksgiving.

Over the past few years I have come to recognize and appreciate the Thanksgiving holiday. Growing up it was just another reason the family came together to eat a delicious meal. We would spend one day on the weekend with my grand parents and my half brother who would join us at my parents house for a meal similar to that we would indulge in on Christmas. One other day on the weekend we would head into the big city to join in the festive feast with my mom’s side of the family—the whole family, being many cousins, aunts, uncles and my grandparents. Both gatherings included someone saying grace before the meal expressing more gratitude than any other time of the year, munching down on mashed potatoes, perogies (yum!), cabbage rolls and other generic celebratory meal food, topped off with the classic pumpkin pie with larger-than-needed dollops of freshly whipped cream.

Family, food and fun… what more do you need? Thanksgiving was just getting together with family, eating food and hanging out. The random extra thankfulness during grace I never gave much thought to. This was how we did thanksgiving. That’s it, that’s all.

As I get older I come to learn more about how the “Thanksgiving Sprit” needs to be included in our every breathe, every action, every moment and how we need to get real about this fact when it comes to the holiday.

We rarely come together on Thanksgiving because we are full to the brim with thankfulness and we want to bless those closest to us with delicious meals literally made with love. These things happen throughout the year in expected moments that truly make us feel thankful for our many blessings in life.  The holiday is a nice, slightly forced way, to get together and make us be thankful. I guess every now and then we need a kick in the butt to get us into gear! That should be the real reason for Thanksgiving—a reminder of how we are to act every day of every year. We shouldn’t base our lives around one day but allow the day to infiltrate our every day lives.

Last year I had the opportunity to celebrate American Thanksgiving. To form a generic statement—Americans tend to take their Thanksgiving very seriously. 

*Example: I was living in a house with five others and one gentleman in particular had a strict “no Christmas music before Thanksgiving” rule that he was quite dedicated to (hooray for Canadian Thanksgiving in October! Bring on the Christmas music!). 

I drove down the California coast to spend Thanksgiving with a co-worker and her family. We had incredible appetizers, a traditional meal (sweet potato casserole, and other generic American things I’ve never had as part of the Thanksgiving meal before) and played games everyone took part in after the last bits of food were stuffed into our already overfull bellies. The biggest part of this for me was, before grace was said and we devoured in minutes the meal that took hours to prepare, we all went around and said something we were thankful for—generic ‘friends and family’ aside. It was wonderful to hear the assorted sentiments expressed from the varied crowd. My pick for what to be thankful for was transportation. I clearly remember being thankful that a friend was home for the weekend and allowed me to borrow his car to make the drive out. I was thankful for the car, for being able to drive, for flying all the place I had the opportunity to go, thankful for my bicycle back home and even walking as a mode of transportation. Taking the time to think ‘outside the box’ of the generic relationship sentiments encouraged me to be thankful for things I otherwise forget to be thankful for.

We need to let the ‘outside the box’ thinking of what we are thankful for infiltrate our minds to become part of our daily thinking. Could you imagine if you took time in your exact state—right now—to be thankful for what is around you? I am thankful for carpenters who build sturdy chairs, I am thankful for farmers who dedicate their lives to growing and harvesting tea that is able to be transported all the way to Canada for me to sip. I am thankful for technological advances and that God has given people the talents and passions to be developing the technology that allows me to sit on a computer and type words people will be able to see over the Internet! I can see, I can type, I can smell, taste, function to the best of my ability to do things to glorify God in every moment of my life!

When it comes to the injustice surrounding us in the world we can be thankful that God is just and that He has put the passion in people’s hearts around the world to seek justice. A favourite quote goes as follows:

 “Yes, God calls us to relieve suffering and bring about justice-- absolutely. But God and His glory must be the driving force for this mission, not the plight of humanity." From Godspeed by Britt Merrick. 

With God and His glory behind our passion for justice how can we forget to be thankful for a God who loves love and justice and restoration? I am thankful that love, justice and restoration occur and will continue to occur until all the captives are set free!

It is impossible to not be thankful. Literally, Impossible.

As someone with a new take on Thanksgiving, I hope you too have found the ability to have the Thanksgiving spirit overflow into every aspect of your every day life. Give thanks constantly and you will see how much in your life you truly have to be thankful for.

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