The true source of joy

While living in the present moment, the true source of experiencing joy lies in one act: discovering and following what excites us the most in any given moment each day, all day. Doing the things that excite us is the only way that we will ever experience ourselves overflowing with joy and love.

The way to be your most creative is following your joy. If you follow your joy and excitement and do what comes naturalto you, not necessarily easy, but joyfully, you will be the most beneficial to yourself, others around you and to the world at large.

Unfortunately, Dr Robert Anthony observes, for many of us, we spend much of our days following and doing what we have come to believe we need to do, rather than what truly excites us and what would, for that very reason, end up bringing us the joy we seek.

Can we truly expect to experience enormous joy and happiness in our lives if the first concern we have in the morning upon wakening is to be on time to a job that does not bring us joy and excitement?

If 70 per centof our days are filled with activities that do not bring us joy, excitement and love, then the remaining 30 per centcannot compensate for that. All the seminars, books, meditation, and affirmations are not going to help.

Yet the more time we spend doing things that do not truly bring us joy and excitement, the more money we will spend on other things trying to compensate for our growing unhappiness. So the end result is that we are tied even more into working at what we dislike to pay our debts. It is a self-defeating cycle.

What we fail to understand is when we have billions of people doing things that they do not want to do, it creates unhappiness. That unhappiness creates a collective energy that goes into the environment and causes more damage to the planet than everything else combined. It is like anger causing an ulcer. The anger created the ulcer, just as people’s sadness creates the negative result in the environment.

There are many people concerned about the environment of the planet. They want to save the rivers, oceans and the forest. While that may be commendable, Dr Anthony believes that, the energy from so many unhappy people on this planet is what is poisoning the environment morethan everything else combined.

“We will not solve our environmental problems until we solve the sad energy problem. What we do not realise is that our physical environmental problems are created from the negative energy that comes from billions of unhappy people. Instead of trying to clean up the environment, we need to clean up the thinking and unhappiness of the people who are cause of our environmental problems.”

Others may not like it

All change comes from the inside. Trying to change things using the outside-in approach is always doomed to failure. On the surface this looks selfish, but you know by now that we can only change the planet oneperson at a time.

As you begin to search for and follow your joy and excitement you may feel this process appears a bit selfish. There may be other people around you that feel you are being selfish, but that is only because they cannot understand that by allowing you the freedom to find your joy and excitement that this will in turn make it easier for them to find and follow their joy also.

In the beginning having a family around you can at times make following your joy and excitement more challenging. Sometimes following your joy may feel like you are not being practical or looking after your responsibilities. You could subconsciously be afraid that you will end up playing away your time, or indulging yourself rather than looking after your family. In the beginning it can be a delicate balance, but as time goes on you will be much happier and the quality of time you spend with your family will improve considerably. Also, other things that need to be done will seem more enjoyable when you allow yourself to do them when it feels right rather than when you thought you should be doing them.

As you follow your joy and excitement people will automatically see how much happier you are and how much more you are enjoying your life. This gets their attention and will slowly rub off on them as well. So in the beginning you could possibly receive some resistance from those close to you. This will pass as you become happier and more excited to live each day. Joy is very addictive and draws people towards you. As people see that it is okay to follow your joy and excitement and that it is creative rather than destructive, they will very quickly attempt to bring this process into their own lives.

What brings joy

Finding what brings you joy and excitement is not that difficult. Essentially, all is takes is to think about the things that you dream about, the things you think about that you feel would bring you pleasure. After you have your list, the next step is to remove the things from this list that are anescape from what you are doing. There are a lot of things that we do to escape some of the unhappy situations in our lives, these are not thethings that will truly bring us the joy and excitement we seek.

Sometimes we do things that have ulterior motives attached to them and we think we do it because it brings us joy, but if it is really the ulterior motive that we are after, then it is not really following our joy.

That is sort of like working at a job that you hate to get something that you want. Although it can work to some extent, in the end, those eight hours of unhappiness are going to be very hard to compensate for. Remember that if you are working at something that does not bring you joy, you will spend twice as much money trying to buy some happiness and in so doing you will need to work even more at what you do not like.

A step at a time

There is a big difference between following the things that truly excite us and doing things to escape from a life that does not bring us joy.

The trick is to find, in the present moment, the things that would bring us the most excitement, and then do whatever we can to follow that excitement, even in the smallest way. This causes a chain reaction that brings us more opportunities to do what we love to do.

Dr Anthony thinks that the hardest time people have with following their joy is trying to make a living, and at the same time, trying to follow their joy. “One of the very first things we fear is our financial concerns. That is why we should start off slowly, following the path little by little, and letting things build slowly.”

When you follow your true joy, wherever that leads you, and even if it changes from time to time, then the details will work themselves out on their own. If you try to work out all the details and debate them to death, you will go insane before you find the right answer. But if you just follow your joy and what brings you excitement then you will end up doing what is best for you and everyone else.

So follow your joy, whatever it may be; in whatever form it may come; let it come forth as it may; to be as it may. Let your joy, excitement and uncensored creativity carve you into the image of the Creator. For the crevasses and lines on our faces show not our age, but how much we have dared to be true to ourselves.