When we wait for our joy to come to us from outside – perhaps from something or someone – we open ourselves to disappointment or worse.

We find our joy within.

It is already there, waiting to be found, like a deep artesian well.  When we open up this joy, there is no need for some external or artificial pressure to make it flow.

Who you deeply are, what you deeply have, and how you want to act, are already there, deep within you.

When we discover or identify this, we’re able respond to both the good and the bad around us in a way which doesn’t threaten our core:

‘As you become happier and more satisfied with your life and the things in it, you will have more to give to others.’*

Peter Senge** writes of the ways we explain reality, which I think can be related to our personal lives.  At the surface level we react to things happening around us.  As we go deeper, we begin to see patterns and trends, and begin to see how we’re anticipating things to happen to us (usually more of what’s already happened).  Beneath this level of explanation, we see the systems we or others have designed (including habits and practices) which carry the patterns and trends.  Further down, if we keep drilling, we find our ways of thinking about things, and also how, if we change our way of thinking, we can be transformed, our world too.

Here we can identify a different story.  This new story alters our “systems for living”; our behaviours begin to change; and, we become shapers of events, perhaps small but some larger.

‘Issues of love and esteem and social connection are almost 100% about how we see the relationship taking place, not what is actually taking place.’^

(*From Martin Seligman’s Flourish.)
(**Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)
(^From Seth Godin’s Placebos.)