stress

Keep a Joy Journal
Loretta LaRoche
Stress Expert and Author

A very useful technique for finding your core, and being able to understand stress in your life, is to keep a Joy Journal.

Joy is not about guilt, anger, bitterness, or resentment. It comes from inner peace, the power to give and receive, and the ability to appreciate. It’s a feeling of gratitude for the gift of life. Keeping a Joy Journal will help you maintain a feeling of elation, the sense that you’re soaring with the eagles instead of scratching in the dirt with the turkeys. Starting out your day by journaling seems to reduce stress considerably.

It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Most of us start our morning by reviewing all the things we need to do that day-an endless list of tasks and duties. And we think of all the ways in which every single one of them might go wrong. So we start off by compressing, in advance, all the horrors that could conceivable befall us in the next 15 hours, and suffer all that pain and worry before we’ve had our morning coffee.
I don’t know why it is that we all seem to love to torture ourselves, but we do, don’t we? I actually suggest to my workshop attendees that they might want to go out and buy a small whip to self-flagellate at appropriate moments. The visual image can create an inner “ah-ha”-a moment of recognition that helps them see the absurdity of their inner beatings.
Instead of beginning your day in bondage, why not start out with a daily dose of joy? Focus for a few minutes on the good things, the things that make you feel wonderful and beautiful instead of tedious and out of control.

If you have a hard time getting started, try some of these ideas to move you in the right direction:

1. Think of people who have really made a positive difference in your life.

2. List three or four things that you do well.

3. Write down at least five things that you like about yourself.

4. Think of a time in which you had so much lone in your heart that you thought it would burst.

5. Think of some of the favorite physical activities you enjoyed as a child (swimming, jumping rope, roller skating…) List them, and think about ways you might do them again.

6. Think of five qualities you adore in your partner or spouse. Write them down, and tell him or her about them.

7. Think back to a time when you felt supported while going through a challenge. How did this feel, in detail?

8. Remember three times when you felt inner peace and serenity. Can you capture that feeling? Where were you? Why were you feeling so good?

9. Think of someone you might forgive, and how doing so might change your life.

10. Whom do you laugh with the most? Remember a time when you laughed so hard you thought you’d fall over.

There are hundreds of things that give us joy. Start your day with a few of them and begin to honor your life…instead of your anxiety.