Ep53: Redefining Joy: Finding Happiness in the Everyday Moments

What if joy could be found in the seemingly mundane, everyday moments of our lives? What if we could shift our perspective and redefine joy, not as an emotion reserved for extraordinary events, but as an intrinsic part of our day-to-day lives? As a licensed psychologist and a professor at Indiana University East, I've had countless conversations about finding happiness and satisfaction in our lives. The consensus? We often overlook the joy in our everyday moments when we are preoccupied with the hustle and bustle of life.

During this episode, I delve into the cognitive appraisal process and how it influences our perception of joy. The way we assign adjectives to moments in our day – be it a car ride to the store or breakfast with the kids – has a significant impact on our overall experience of joy. The power to label our experiences lies within us, and adjusting our focus can change our perspective. In this episode, I challenge you to take a moment and identify the things that bring you true satisfaction and joy in your everyday life. And remember, I would love to hear about your journey to finding joy in the seemingly ordinary moments.

Next week, we'll be discussing the unhelpful things we often say to one another, so be sure to tune in. As always, stay safe and remember to make words matter for good.

This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast

Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello listener, welcome back. Thanks for tuning in. Today as we talk about joy in everyday moments, i'm your host, dr Beth Tramal. I'm a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University East. I'm also the director of the Master's in Mental Health Counseling program And I have, if I'm being honest, y'all I have been kind of putting this episode off a little bit because this one is hard for me And it's not because I don't want to be joyful, but because sometimes it feels like there are so many things happening that I'm like too busy to experience joy And I am a little bit sad to say that out loud And hopefully some folks out there will resonate with this idea.

Speaker 1: 1:04

So as I think about joy, right, i kind of looked up the definition of what joy actually is right, because I kind of like know what joy is, but to have some definition around it I think is good And I, you know, went to the trustee web and said dictionarycom says joy is the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying. Okay, so when I originally talked about doing this episode joy in everyday moments it really sort of came as I was just thinking about summer and busyness and just really trying to focus on how can I do this? well, and I talked to a lot of parents, a lot of teachers, who are kind of in the mud with kids and in the mud with you know all sorts of things that they have going on. And I think we do forget about joy or we can't find joy somewhere. And as I read this definition, i actually found myself saying like, well, that's why I can't find joy. You know, how am I supposed to find something exceptionally good or satisfying every day? So it made me begin to think, right, like, how do I assign good or bad to a day, to a moment, to an event, to a car ride to the store? How do I assign good or bad, what makes a car ride to the grocery store, what makes a trip to the grocery store good or bad? And I started to pause and realize that it is my, what we call cognitive appraisal, right. So how am I appraising this situation in my mind?

Speaker 1: 2:59

What adjectives am I using to describe this moment in time? And the reality is, oh, this one's hard for me to say y'all. The reality is I get to choose the adjective, i What. I get to choose the adjective. So I can say that was a bad trip to the store. Or I can say that was a good trip to the store And it's all about where I put my focus. So let's say I'm going to the store and they're out of green beans And I need green beans, but maybe they had other things. Do I look at that trip and say that was a good trip or a bad trip?

Speaker 1: 3:40

Now, the reason I start here is because this is the place where I think we get stuck And then moving on to that emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying, right? So I can't get to the emotion of joy. Hmm, ok, maybe I can. All right, i'm going to finish this thought and then I'm going to come back. So is it possible that maybe I can't get to the emotion of joy if I don't, for a start with the cognitive appraisal, of creating that internal narrative that, hey, this was good, i'm happy, i feel happy, i feel satisfied, i feel good. Now there are theorists who study emotion and they say the emotion can come first and then the cognitive appraisal, right? Some folks believe that it goes the other way around, and so, if I allow myself the space to feel good or satisfied first. Then can I say I feel joy. What if you said that out loud? Right, like, what if you said that out loud, i feel joy.

Speaker 1: 4:58

I sometimes ask folks in therapy you know, what is it that brings you joy? And it is often one of the hardest questions for people to answer. It's right up there with who are you? Twithly the responses that I've gotten from clients, it is as difficult an answer or a question to answer when we say what is it that we experience joy in doing. I recently recorded a podcast that's actually going to come out this fall, where the guest was sort of challenging us to think about what brings us pleasure, what brings us pleasure, what satisfies us. I think a big part of it is that we don't slow down long enough to think about these things. And so, as I think about how do I find joy in everyday moments For me, my challenge for myself is I'm going to try to pay attention to how I am assigning those adjectives to the everyday moments, right, like I said, to the trip to the store, to having breakfast with the kids, to drinking my morning coffee. Are there things that I know bring me satisfaction that then I can say this was something exceptionally good. Why do I have to wait for something that is so far above and beyond? What if joy is available in every one of those tiny moments? I think it is. I think it is And I think, as we pause and can create some other ways to describe those things, i wonder if we will feel a different sense of emotion, the emotion of great delight or happiness, even if it's in a tiny moment.

Speaker 1: 6:48

I would love to hear from you How do you experience joy? I'd love for you to reach out, beth, at MakeWordsMatterForGoodcom. You can reach out on my website. I'm going to share a little bit about my new website here coming up. I got a new website, bethtremelcom. I would love for you to share any thoughts you have about how you experience joy, and next week we are going to talk about unhelpful things that we say to one another. On Monday, the episode around kids will be unhelpful things that we say to kids, and then on Friday, here on Things You Learned at Therapy, we're going to talk about unhelpful things that we say to one another. So I hope you'll tune in there, and this episode was brief, mostly because I really want to pause to allow myself to experience this joy, and I hope you will too. As always, stay safe and stay well and reach out if you have any thoughts, bye-oh.