Joyfulness is, to an extent, the ideal state of existence. When you’re joyful, you can be happy and comfortable regardless of your situation, which makes it fundamentally ideal to pursue. Here are our top tips for becoming joyful in your daily life.
What Does It Mean To Be Joyful?
Joyfulness is the anticipation or acquisition of good things in your life. Unlike happiness, which focuses on current events and activities, joyfulness is possible even during the tough times because the hope of good things to come can wash away the negative feelings of the present.
For example, some mothers say that childbirth is the greatest joy they’ve ever known. This isn’t because bearing a child is easy; quite the opposite, in fact, given all of the pressure and pain involved. However, staring down at a child and seeing all the possibilities of their future is joyous anticipation like no other.
Joyfulness As A Part Of Your Life
When it comes to joy as a lifestyle, everyone is different. However, there are a few principles you can work into your life to focus on joy.
The first and most important of these is the timing of events. As humans, we divide many things into the short-term, mid-term, and long-term. The sooner something is going to happen, the greater its emotional impact on us. Setting yourself up to be joyful means arranging for events in various timeframes that you can look forward to.
When you frequently have good things to look forward to, it’s much easier to be joyful because there’s always something close at hand.
Second, a joyful lifestyle requires actively looking for the good in things. If you focus on the negatives, you won’t experience joy in nearly the same way.
Finding Light In The Dark
I have aphantasia. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, it means that I don’t have a functioning mind’s eye – I am literally unable to imagine pictures in my head like ~97% of people can. For decades, I thought that I was normal, and phrases like “Picture this in your mind” were metaphorical. When I realized I wasn’t normal, I spent most of the rest of that day stunned.
The world, as I knew it, no longer existed. Most of the people around me, including my family, had this superpower where they could create things in their mind, and all I could do was imagine what it would be like to see things that way. I felt like a blind person learning about vision for the first time.
Since then, however, I’ve learned that my (literal) lack of imagination isn’t the limit I thought it was. Now that I understand why some instructions don’t work for me, I can look for alternatives that make sense for the way my mind functions. Instead of struggling, I can acknowledge the problem and move forward.
This is how to find joy in life. If you focus on solutions instead of problems, it’s far easier to be joyful because you’re not consumed with the issues of the moment.
Joy In Spite Of The Bad
When we’re young, we think that happiness comes from eliminating all of the bad things in life. However, according to some research, that’s not the case. Younger people try out new experiences, while older people often remain within their comfort zone and can seem boring, stodgy, or even aggressively against change.
The reason for this is simple. When we realize that our time is limited, focusing on things that bring joy becomes a conscious choice designed to take advantage of all the time that remains. We cannot get rid of every bad thing in life, but we can choose to do more of the good things. This is true, regardless of our situations.
As such, the main principle of becoming joyful is this: focus more on bringing good into your life. When you actively pursue joyfulness, it’s much easier to obtain. To put it another way, nobody becomes happy just by waiting for the bad things to end. You must become an active participant in creating your joy.
Strategies To Add Joy To Your Life
Here are some of my top strategies for adding joy to your life, as well as why they work.
#1: Use Self-Care Techniques
Self-care is one of the most important parts of becoming joyful. This includes addressing your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social needs. You cannot spend every single moment working for other people, no matter how tough life may seem at the moment.
Instead, focus on care techniques that address the main principle of becoming joyful and try to bring good things into your life. If you break your leg and can’t get out of bed for a while, you can still watch television or browse the internet on a laptop computer. Self-care is not limited to getting rid of the bad things.
Everyone is different, so there’s no single set of self-care techniques that always work. Instead, try spending some time on different experiences to see what works for you, then do more of those. You may be surprised by how easy it is to fit self-care into your schedule.
#2: Bring Positive People Into Your Life
Most people either give or take from you in your interactions with them. Positive people are the ones that make you feel better when they’re around. Going back to my earlier analogy about the joy of becoming a mother, a positive person is like the nanny who knows how to take care of newborns and has the answer to every question you have about raising a child.
Positive people are uplifting, encouraging, and helpful. There’s a lot of stuff in life that’s hard to do alone, but gets easier when you have someone to do it with. As a bonus, a large social circle means there’s a much higher chance of someone being free if you’re feeling spontaneous one day and want to do something with a friend.
#3: Develop Your Hobbies
The fact that “hobbies” is plural in this title isn’t an accident. I strongly believe that everyone should have at least three different hobbies, at least one of which should let you exercise your creativity. Here are the three main categories of hobbies.
The first hobby is something you can do socially. As humans, we need some level of social interaction. Meeting up in person is the best option, but just finding a group you can talk to online goes a long way towards meeting this need for interaction with other people.
The second hobby is something that makes you money. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money, but having an outright productive hobby gives you something to do when you want to better your life and your current situation.
The third hobby is something that you can do alone. While social interaction is essential, having quiet time to do something you enjoy can provide peace and contentment when you don’t need to work.
Tip: Self-Funding Your Hobbies
Self-funding is a way of separating your hobbies financially by allowing them to pay for themselves. For example, when you have a hobby that makes money, it can provide the cash to pay for the things you want to do socially.
This keeps your hobbies away from any other concerns about finances and, in many cases, can give you a small but steady stream of income that adds up over time. For example, I’ve made websites that make about a few dollars a day and require essentially no active management. $100 every 2-3 months is a lot of potential fun.
The main reason to try and self-fund your hobbies is because few things will kill your enthusiasm faster than fears about money. Hobbies should bring joy and positive feelings, and if you bring negativity into them from elsewhere, you’ll only end up sabotaging yourself.
Passive funding is particularly helpful. If you can get money from it anytime, and only have to actively engage every now and then, it’s much easier to enjoy it than when you have to sit down and do nothing else whenever you want to earn money from it.
#4: Get A Pet
Caring for pets is a great way to give your love and affection to something else and, usually, have them return it. People don’t own dogs just because they like forcing themselves to go on neighborhood walks, after all. There’s real joy in having an animal companion who can share in your life and bring so much joy to it.
What type of pet you should get depends on your lifestyle. Dogs and cats are perennial favorites based on the amount of time you want to spend together, but some people prefer to raise exotic pets instead.
If you don’t think you can afford a pet, try volunteering at a pet shelter instead. This provides lots of close contact with animals while also letting you experience the joy of other families as they find new pets of their own. Most shelters are grateful for any time you can spend helping with them, and you’ll also have the chance to meet plenty of other people.
Be sure to research shelters before you start volunteering there. Some of them are significantly better than others and working at a shelter whose policies and strategies you agree with is key to getting joy from the experience.
#5: Understand The Impact Of Money
The old saying goes that money can’t buy happiness – and that saying is wrong, up to a certain point. Money does impact happiness in authentic, tangible ways until you’ve met all of your basic needs and comforts. From there, its actual impact on you sharply declines.
I bring this up not to make you sad at the thought of not being rich enough to be happy, but so that you can realize your joyfulness isn’t as limited by your wealth as you think. Even without money, there are many ways to bring joy into your life. You can only change your wealth so much, regardless of how much you work, but you can always change how you spend your time.
#6: About Those Vacations
Experiences are better at providing joy than money. After all, money is largely an intangible asset, while a concert coming up on the weekend is immediate and impactful. Companies recognize this, and that’s part of why many organizations now offer perks like unlimited time off.
In the practical sense, policies like these mean you can take some days off without worrying that you’re going to run out for the year. That’s much better for employee morale than asking everyone to predict an entire year’s worth of activities and budget limited happiness accordingly.
Most so-called unlimited time off plans aren’t actually unlimited. After all, no company is going to keep you on the payroll if you never work at all. However, most better companies are willing to be flexible about vacations as long as you still get everything done that needs to be done.
#7: Travel
How far do you travel in your daily life? For most people, it’s not very far. Home, some time in a car, and eight hours at work with the occasional restaurant or two, isn’t a comprehensive worldview.
When it comes to joyfulness, travel doesn’t necessarily mean packing up for a three-month trip to Europe. Instead, travel means going somewhere new – even if it’s close to your neighborhood – and experiencing something different than usual.
Few things have more of an impact on your worldview than introducing something new and comparing it to what you’re used to. Like all aspects of joy, try to integrate travel in the short-term, the mid-term, and the long-term. While saving up for a big vacation, don’t forget to take local trips and visit new restaurants or destinations.
#8: Show Gratitude
This may sound odd at first, but don’t worry, I’ll explain it. Showing your gratitude is a way to make others smile. When you get the good feeling of seeing other people smiling at you, helping them becomes something to look forward to instead of a chore.
For example, when I finish a meal at a nice family restaurant, I take a few extra seconds to stack all of the plates and dishes together for the staff so they can easily retrieve them. Most people don’t do this, so I can see how much the staff appreciate it when I make their jobs easier. This is especially true when it’s a busy night, and they’re frazzled from rushing everywhere.
Once they know that I treat them better, they’re more likely to treat me better as well. This could include getting little extras with the meal, priority for seating, or other perks. We’re showing gratitude towards each other, and both of our lives are better as a result.
When somebody helps you, don’t apologize for the trouble they went through. Instead, thank them for helping you. The more gratitude you show, the more you’ll receive in turn.
#9: Visualize Good Things
I can’t do this one myself – as I mentioned at the start of this article, my mind’s eye is blind. I can’t see things in my head. However, for those who can visualize things, it’s a powerful tool for creating joy. The more you look at how you can do the positive things, the easier they become.
That room is not impossible to clean. Those meals are not impossible to make. Imagine the positivity you want in your life, and after basking in that view for a little while, take a few small steps to make it a reality. The more you visualize this, the easier it will become.
#10: Set Some Challenges
In this context, a challenge is something that you have to grow or change to accomplish. Setting challenging goals for yourself is useful for sparking joy because a regular feeling of success compared to your past is an outstanding motivator and a source of positive feelings.
Remember to set multiple goals along the way to a bigger challenge and make these goals as specific as possible. “I want to get better at cleaning” is too vague, but “I want to clean every item in this room properly” is specific enough to track. Once you have your big goal, break it down into steps so you can mark your progress.
You don’t have to face your challenges alone, either. If you have a large social circle, you can get other people involved and start doing things you can’t do alone. For example, you can challenge yourself to raise a set amount of food for your local food bank or to see every movie from a single actor you like.
#11: Minimalize
For most people, physical items do not bring joy. Their absence might, though. To minimalize your life, get rid of one thing every day for a month. Ask yourself a simple question when deciding what to get rid of: Is it helping your life, or not? If it isn’t, then it’s time to get rid of it.
One thing I realized as I was getting older was that I was hoarding things because I was afraid of needing them in the future. All of these things in my life were useful at one point and might be so again, but the truth is that I could go years without even thinking about them. They filled up my house, but they weren’t helping me the way I wanted them to.
Less clutter is always better when you’re pursuing joy. In most cases, what clutter really represents is a future problem you’re dreading, even if it has almost no chance of happening. By getting rid of the clutter, you’re choosing to no longer care about that problem.
Note that this doesn’t mean you should get rid of anything you have a clear and expected need for. If you’re raising a child, having some furniture in storage for when they grow up makes sense. Minimalizing is only about getting rid of the things you genuinely don’t need.
#12: Create A List Of Things To Do
There’s a lot of stuff I want to do, but when there are too many things, I sometimes end up doing nothing at all because I’m too indecisive about commiting to them. This is, clearly, not the best way to add joy to my life. Instead of imitating the wrong behaviors of my past, write down a list of things to do and complete them in the order you write them.
This takes the guesswork out of your experiences. Instead of trying to choose between different positive things, you have more to look forward to because you have a rough idea of what order they’re going to happen in. This list should focus on things that are easy to do spontaneously, rather than requiring more than a few days of planning.
#13: Learn A New Skill
Learning new skills is a great way to have new experiences and develop the abilities you need to succeed in other tasks. This isn’t as hard as most people think, either. In fact, you can learn most skills in about 20 hours of practice. Most people can do that in a month or two, so imagine how talented you’ll be in a few years!
Skills are especially great for promoting joy because they emphasize things you can accomplish. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. However, when you have an entire tool chest, you have dozens of potential ways to address any issue. As a bonus, constantly changing your focus keeps your experiences fresh and exciting.
Some people say that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, but that’s only true in the context of highly competitive tasks or sports. Most people can learn almost any normal skill in a tiny fraction of that time, and the more you learn, the easier it will be to feel like you can keep learning.
#14: Create A Relaxation Zone
A relaxation zone is a part of your house that you use exclusively for personal entertainment and fun. I have a single-seat couch with a lamp where I can read books whenever I want. The sizes of relaxation zones vary, but shouldn’t be larger than a single room.
Relaxation zones help bring peace and order to the rest of your life. They’re a place to calm down, shelve your burdens, and focus on making yourself happy for as long as you’re there.
Remember, only you can decide what helps you relax! I enjoy quiet areas where I can curl up with a warm blanket, but plenty of other people enjoy having sounds from television or music recordings. The important thing is that the environment you create helps you feel better.
Here are some ideas for improving a relaxation zone:
- Minimize distractions from outside areas by closing doors
- Have close, warm lighting
- Decorate it with art that makes you feel calm
- Keep some healthy snacks close by
- Set aside a specific time to enjoy it
#15: Exercise
I give this advice a lot, but that’s only because it’s true. Exercise isn’t just about staying physically fit and healthy. It also makes you feel better by releasing various chemicals and hormones that lead to a sense of contentment and satisfaction.
In other words, if you’re feeling down about something, it’s time to move your body. By the time you’re done, bad things probably won’t feel quite so bad and urgent anymore, and that means it’s easier to focus on the good and positive things instead.
You don’t need to do a complete workout several times a day, either. A high-intensity, short-duration activity that gets your blood pumping may be all the exercise you need to move on and focus on the things that bring you joy. All you need is a small amount of space to use and a simple exercise plan to follow.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, becoming joyful is an active process to engage in, rather than something that naturally occurs on its own. As much as I wish we could all sit back and let happiness come to us, that’s not how it works. However, the converse is arguably even better. If joy is a choice, then all we have to do is make that choice. It’s not as hard as it sounds at first.
If you don’t know where to start, begin by setting small goals for yourself and using the sense of accomplishment to promote joy. From there, you can start actively seeking it in other areas of your life. Once obtaining joy becomes a habit and a part of your lifestyle, you’ll find that it’s much easier to remain joyful no matter what else is going on in your life.
It’s never too late to start focusing on joy. Regardless of your situation, you can change your mindset, look inward, and start anticipating the future.