What It Really Means to Follow Your Joy
When someone tells you to follow your joy, it can sound like an empty platitude. What does it even mean to “follow your joy”? Life is hard, we have responsibilities, we can’t all just quit our jobs and play all day.
At least what we’ve all been trained to think.
And it’s true that we all have parts of our lives that can’t always be joyful. But following your joy doesn’t mean giving up on your daily life. It means steering your life and your choices toward the things that light you up inside.
For better or worse, most of us build our lives around what we don’t want, or what we fear, rather than what makes us feel most alive. We want to create a safer space for our children to make up for our own unsafe childhoods, or to create wealth to build a sense of financial safety we lacked growing up.
The problem arises when we achieve these goals and realize they were never for us. They were for the scared child within us.
A life built on fear isn’t authentic to you. We need lives that honor our true selves, that are centered around what give us the most joyful, engaging days (even with our various responsibilities).
When you realize that perhaps the life you’ve built isn’t exactly what brings you joy, it can feel like you’ve failed somehow. You can convince yourself that you should be grateful for what you have, even if there is an empty, searching feeling within.
Joy isn’t happiness. Happiness is a feeling that is fleeting. Joy is an experience that expands. For me, the parts of my life and the moments that bring me joy make me feel like my soul and my choices are aligned; like my deepest self is being honored. Those moments make me feel alive; they remind me what really living feels like. They are more valuable to me than all the logic and “safety” in the world.
Sometimes the things that bring us joy are scary. Sometimes they don’t fit into the rules by which we’ve always lived. Sometimes reaching for that joy means risking the safety net we’ve built around ourselves.
The question you must ask yourself is this: what kind of days do you want to have? What do you want to feel when you wake up in the morning? Are you feeling that now?
If not, think about the last time you felt deeply yourself; the last time you laughed openly; the last time you felt full of passion for what was right in front of you.
Everything in life is a choice. You get to decide what kind of life you want to work toward. You will know by listening to your gut if the life you’re living is right for you. If you’re questioning it, allow yourself the space to explore something different.
There is always one step you can take toward joy. What would it look like to take that one step tomorrow?
There will be moments and relationships and journeys in your life that will feel so beautiful to you, and yet no one else will see the beauty.
There will be choices that you make that others may never understand.
Here’s the thing: your life wasn’t designed for the approval of those around you. It was designed to be lived. And you only get the one.
Even if the joy you find doesn’t fit in with the plan you set at the outset; even if what feels aligned with your soul doesn’t necessarily align with your sense of logic, listen to your gut. Follow your intuition. Make choices that bring you closer to that sense of rightness.
At the end of the day, you are the only one who has to exist within your life and your choices, so make the ones that bring you the very best days, and the purest joys. You, like everyone else, deserve it.
