#86: Can You Create Joy From Within???? The Neuroscience of Joy

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Welcome back to Just Count Me In.
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This is Sari Stone, and I'm your host today.
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We've got an episode about something that has been coming up for me a lot lately with people and in my life circumstances.
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And I think that this episode, if you've ever wondered why you can be going through something really hard and still be able to laugh or wished that you could laugh while you were going through something mucky, if you've ever felt guilty for experiencing joy when there's hurt around you or hurt in the world, if you've ever found yourself waiting, thinking that your life has to get better before you allow yourself to feel joy, or maybe you know that you're grateful for your life but you just haven't felt very connected to it.
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If any of this sounds familiar, or if you know somebody who's experiencing this, this is for you because today we're going to rethink what joy actually is.
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It's not anything to do with forcing happiness or toxic positivity.
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Joy is actually the core function of joy is to make us want to be alive.
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Joy is actually a survival instinct and it's a normal part of our survival as humans.
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It's not selfish, it's a way that we support ourselves and we have all the tools within us to create and access joy regardless of what our circumstances are.
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Not to act like we're not, like those circumstances don't exist, but just to give us those little sparks.
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Like even though this is all going on, you still are alive and there is a reason.
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After you listen to this episode, you should be able to recognize the difference between happiness and joy and understand a little bit more that you don't have to wait for your circumstances to change before you allow yourself to feel joy.
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You're going to learn about your own personal doorways into joy, the people, the memories, places, music, whatever your connection is to joy, so that you can practice it.
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And the most important point that I want you to get from this is I want you to leave knowing that joy is not something you have to manufacture or earn.
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It's actually something already inside of you.
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You may not be able to feel it every moment.
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You may not even be able to access it when you're completely overwhelmed or when you shut down.
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We're also going to go into that, but you can learn where the door is.
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You can learn what station to tune to.
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And sometimes, in the middle of the hardest circumstances, opening that door for just a moment can remind you Joy's purpose.
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I'm still here.
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I want to be here.
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There is still beauty, there's a reason, there's still love.
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And that is what Joy is here to remind us to do.
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So please, please subscribe and download this episode right now.
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If you can think of somebody you want to share it with, share it with, and let's dive in.
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Um, part of this episode, I want to give credit where it's due, did come from listening to portions of a book by Dr.
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Kelly McGonigal.
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Uh, she's a Stanford psychologist because you know me, I geek out on the neuroscience, and she's a professor whose work really influenced the way I think about the difference between joy and happiness.
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And I got off the phone with my cousin last week, and he is one of the most, my most favorite people in the whole world.
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I mean, we're just been like peas and carrots since we were growing up together.
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And I realized that no matter what, honest to God, no matter what, no matter what kind of rough things we've gone through together in our lives, in our parents' lives, in family members' lives, we've experienced like death and cancer and heart attacks and loss and just like yucky, painful emotional relationship things.
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And we realize that that no matter what, we always find a reason to laugh.
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Sometimes it's a memory that we call up, sometimes it's something just ridiculous that we're doing that we didn't realize until we talk to each other.
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Sometimes it's just the absurdity of being human together.
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Um, and we can be talking about something incredibly serious, and in the next minute we are laughing, and so and sometimes I think like, oh, maybe we shouldn't be laughing, we should be sad.
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No, the laughter actually just comes, and I think that's what's so important because joy doesn't mean that you aren't grieving, it doesn't mean that you aren't upset, it does not mean that you don't care.
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Joy just means that there's a moment in life that just a spark comes through, and that's when I started thinking about what joy actually does for us.
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You know, I'm a person that has a sticker on my computer that chews happiness, and I'm not saying that I don't try to choose thoughts that make me feel better because I definitely do, but joy can exist in the presence of everything else, and it can just kind of pop up every once in a while.
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Um, I know a few weeks ago, if you've been following the podcast, our neighborhood experienced a tragedy involving a little five-year-old girl.
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I and this is still definitely with me and heavy, a heavy emotional situation, but I brought lightness to it because I realized that I'm organizing an attempt to raise some supplies and just some presents for her siblings because they're not in the care of their parents, obviously, right now.
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And I'm trying to choose life in the situation and choose what brings me joy, and that's giving things to kids.
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And I realized that in this strange way, it doesn't mean that the tragedy is joyful at all.
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There was no joy in this tragedy, trust me.
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And it's not because the grief isn't real, it is, but even her memorial in our neighborhood, kids have been bringing really cute stuffies and flowers, and it just gets bigger and bigger.
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And when I look at that, I feel the love and I feel joy.
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Joy can exist with grief in the same room.
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Joy does not require that you're having a good life, and I think that's one of the biggest mind shifts.
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It's like I've lost my joy, I've really we always have it.
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We just have to figure out the ways that we can use our body, our minds, our emotions, the people around us, and then what triggers joy for us and make it a habit, and we've got this.
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So, why do we have joy?
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We spend a lot of time talking about negativity bias because we all know by now that our brains are designed because of survival, to know what's wrong and what's threatening, what's uncertain, and that makes sense.
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But I started wondering what about joy?
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Why do we have this capacity to feel wonder, to laugh?
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I get absolutely beside myself when my daughter sends pictures of my grandbabies just making funny sounds or eating something or just something beautiful, something funny, and I get so much joy from that.
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And my other grandkids will send me pictures, pictures of what they're doing, maybe a video of music my granddaughter's playing, or my grandson will send me a picture of like these incredibly beautiful, beautiful flowers, and I feel so much joy in my life no matter what is going on.
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So I was thinking, wow, we have this capacity to feel wonder.
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We have this capacity to laugh and to be delighted and to just love something.
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So why does a memory of somebody we love sometimes make our whole body feel different?
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Maybe one of the core functions of joy is simpler than we realize.
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And she mentions it in her book.
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Joy reminds us that we want to be alive.
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It reminds us, hey, I want to be here.
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There's something about this life that I love.
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Even if the rest of my life is hell right now, there is something about this life that I love.
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There's something worth experiencing, there's something worth connecting to.
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Joy is not a frivolous luxury that we give ourselves.
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And we never, when I hear the word guilty mixed with pleasure, like it's my guilty pleasure, I just want to delete that.
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Because we should never feel guilty, even if other people around us are suffering, if we can look and extract a moment of joy, because that reminds us it's our purpose that we're there.
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Joy may actually be a part of what sustains us the most.
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So one of the doorways of joy is our body.
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Your body's not just there to carry your head around.
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They used to think that muscles were just there to hold your skeleton together, and actually that's not so.
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When we move our bodies, our muscles actually are communicating, yes, this is true, with the rest of our body and brain through little molecules called myokines, and exercise can influence your brain function and your emotional well-being.
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And you can look that up, it's research.
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So you don't have to run a marathon or even get your endorphins up for a long period of time.
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It's the doorway can simply be stand up, stretch, walk around the block, walk out the door and walk in the door, put on music and move, take a couple deep breaths and twist, just like get outside.
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Because sometimes we're trying to think ourselves into feeling better when our body actually needs to move first.
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And I've got to hand it to guys on this one.
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I know that a lot of times, even when I'm first coaching men and young males, they need to be moving and doing something while we're talking, and that's totally okay.
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They just take me on the screen wherever they're going, and sometimes we go for a walk together, and that's how we sort things out.
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This can also be part of your self-care, not as some kind of indulgent thing, but as a way of supporting your body that's carrying us through this life, it's your vehicle, right?
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Self-care.
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Then we've got another doorway, and that's your brain.
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When you're experiencing something that you would not be choosing if you were consciously choosing, you can try to go to a memory that triggers a joyful feeling.
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I remember when somebody, my aunt actually was dying, and this cousin and my other cousin were talking, and we were just wishing that we could just pick her up and take her out of the hospital and just plant her on the beach because she loved sunset.
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I mean, and for that moment, we weren't in the hospital.
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For that moment, we were on the beach with my Aunt Charlotte, looking at sunset, feeling the gratitude she felt, and we could feel what that place meant to her.
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And in that tiny moment, in the midst of a very hard situation, there was actually joy.
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Nothing changed, but our experience at that moment changed, and that's something that we can practice.
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So when you're not feeling the way you would like to be feeling, think about a memory that makes you smile.
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I'm not saying don't deal with situations in front of you when you need to, definitely be present.
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But if it's something that's ongoing or it's something where you're just stuck and you're spinning and spinning and spinning, you know what I'm talking about.
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Think about a memory that just makes you smile.
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It could be anything.
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Think about the doorways for you.
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Think about music.
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Maybe it's food, maybe it's a flower, maybe it's birds.
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It's different things for different people.
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But there is beauty all around us, and that also brings me to flowers.
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So why?
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I don't know why people send flowers when somebody dies.
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I'm sure we could look that up and find out, but I wanted to record this and I didn't want to research that at this time.
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Um, there are probably cultural traditions and a lot of meanings behind the flowers, but one of the things flowers represent to me is beauty in the middle of grief.
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And they, I think, for a lot of people, give us that calm, connected, loving, uplifting feeling of joy, of sweetness.
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And I know in when somebody dies in our family, we follow actually a Jewish tradition where people bring food to a grieving family so that they don't have to cook.
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I always make sure that there's something sweet.
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Because that sweetness is to remind them of the sweetness of life.
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Not saying that they can't be sad and grieving at the same time.
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You can be in the middle of all this and still feel joy.
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And I love that because even in grief, we're not saying life was only terrible.
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We're saying there was some sweetness, there's some sweetness in this grief, there is some beauty here.
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And maybe that might be actually another thing that joy does, and that's help us remember the whole picture.
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Sometimes joy just shows up, and we had a member of our family who was dying, and she was in hospice, and we were staying there overnight, actually with my sister-in-law, it was her mom, and sleeping on the floor.
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We were exhausted.
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I think we were getting a little delirious, and at some point we started playing cards, which my mother-in-law absolutely loved to do.
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And we were so tired and so delirious that we were making silly mistakes with the cards, and we started laughing.
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I know, in a hospice, like not cool.
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But on the other hand, I think we really needed to just release all that tension that we'd been going through.
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And I remember thinking, oh man, if mom had been conscious in that moment, she totally would have loved it.
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She would have said, Good that you're playing cards, good that you're laughing.
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These are things that she loved, and she would have loved knowing that we were together.
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And I think that even though when people are in comas, I do think they're aware of things.
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Um, and it did upset some people that we were laughing, like, how could you laugh in the middle of this?
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But to be honest with you, it felt good, and I don't think she would have begrudged it.
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That said, we did have to kind of stifle ourselves because maybe not everybody around us wanted to hear that.
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But joy doesn't always have to be invited, sometimes it just pops right through the door.
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Another thing that you can do is another doorway for joy is your attention, and that's where I think we've actually got a lot more agency than we realize.
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We've got a negativity bias, but we also have attention, and attention can move.
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Mind moves all over the place.
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You can notice the problem and notice the flower.
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You can acknowledge the tragedy and notice the person standing right next to you.
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You can be disappointed by what didn't happen and still hear a song playing in the background.
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There just was a song playing in the background.
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I'm doing this outside, so you might hear some noise.
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You can have a really hard day and notice that the sunset is beautiful.
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There's a gift in that.
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It does not mean that you're walking around pretending everything is okay.
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It means you're allowing yourself to experience more than one truth at a time.
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So I want you to think about this.
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Part of getting access to this more often is knowing your joy.
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I ask people all the time, what gives you joy?
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I just asked a student that I was uh tutoring this morning.
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So she's in a math class and it's not stimulating for her, and she doesn't really vibe with the teacher.
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She honestly doesn't belong in this math class, just to be honest about it.
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Um, and so we're doing challenge math to keep her engaged and keep her excited about it.
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So I asked her, what gives you joy?
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Definitely her dog came first in soccer.
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She couldn't do that while she was in the class.
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She loves chewing gum.
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So I texted her mom, and I bet you that kid is gonna have the best variety of gum that anybody's ever seen because she's gonna pop a piece into her mouth and feel happy.
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Not what should make her happy.
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Yeah, definitely the class should make her happy, but it's not, okay, and she can't get out of it.
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So chew a piece of gum while you're in the class.
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So, what makes you happy?
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Like, I pet dogs every day when I'm on my walk.
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It's definitely animals.
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My husband really grounds down when he cooks or when he plays music.
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My grandson loves gardening.
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My granddaughter creates films.
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I mean, it's like maybe it's being near the water.
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My daughter bakes, she bakes, she could literally have a bakery.
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She bakes such beautiful cakes and cookies, and her bread is you wouldn't even believe that it was not just manufactured by AI.
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The pictures are just incredible and it tastes even better.
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So these are things that they found that are joyful.
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So, whatever it is, maybe it's talking to your cousin and laughing about things that probably are not even funny to anybody else.
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Or maybe it's looking at a picture, a family picture.
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Oh my gosh, like over the top, instant joy if I get a picture of my grandkids or I hear my husband play guitar.
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And I don't think that we should underestimate these things.
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Know what gives you that feeling.
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Because when you know, you know your triggers for other things, right?
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Let's pay attention to the triggers for joy.
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You can use them.
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If I'm feeling like I'm drowning in a sea of junk, oh, I don't have to sit there and argue with the junk.
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I can go look at a picture, I can call somebody, I can go outside, I can pull up a good memory.
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I got a great memory bank of things that make me feel really good.
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And then I can go back and have a fresher outlook for what's in front of me.
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Now I do want to mention that shutting down happens also, and shut down is different.
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It's important because this is not another version of just think positive.
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I don't believe that.
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I've had to learn that when I'm shut down or when someone else is shut down, I can't just tell myself, choose a different thought because I want to punch myself.
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That does not work.
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Sometimes shut down, check this out, is actually a coping strategy.
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So have a little respect.
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Sometimes your body and brain are saying, This is too much.
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I need to protect you.
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We don't need to shame ourselves for shutting down.
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Here's the thing: we can train before we need the training, right?
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Like you're my son-in-law trains for these marathons, and he doesn't just get out there and run the 26 miles.
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He trains, and then he can run the 26 miles.
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You don't train for a marathon as you're running the marathon, you train beforehand, and that's what we can do with joy.
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We can create those neural pathways, we can practice remembering and identify our people.
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Who's our people?
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We can notice beauty, we can build a little scrapbook in our heads of memories that we want to think about.
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We can learn what restores us so that when something really hard happens, we're not starting from zero.
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We have somewhere to go.
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Maybe the most important doorway of all is who you are.
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Because I want to tell you whoever you are out there, who you are is a really, really, really good thing, or you wouldn't be here.
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You're here for a reason.
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You've got something to contribute, you've got people you affect just by being in their lives, even if you don't know it.
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And sometimes when we're in the muck of it, we forget that.
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We become like the problem, we become the diagnosis, we start to become the tragedy or the loss or the failure.
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We become the thing that happened to us.
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But if you're still you and reconnecting with who you are is your strongest doorway back to joy.
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And this is where I think this conversation's be conversation becomes really interesting for workplaces too.
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I used to have pictures of my family when I had an office.
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Now I work from home, so it's different.
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I had pictures and little notes that my students had given me.
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I drank out of coffee cups that they gave me because I wanted to remember that love.
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I wanted to remember that joy and that connection.
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I didn't have those things around me because I needed decoration.
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I had them around me because they Gave me joy, and I can promise you there is nothing in my house that has not been mindfully put here either because it brings beauty and joy or because we absolutely have to have it.
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Okay, so I want you to think about that and scale your environment too.
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Take a look and think, are those things feeding me?
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I think we have an episode about that.
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I have those things in my environment because they actually gave me joy at one time and they reminded me why I was there.
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They reminded me who I was, and I think we should ask ourselves, what have you put around you that reminds you your life is bigger than today's problem?
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What do you see?
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If you have an office or a workplace, or maybe you drive a lot in your car to go from one location to another, is there something that makes you smile?
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Is there something that reminds you of your family?
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Someone that you've helped, some that maybe they gave you something, maybe there's a plant, maybe there's a picture, maybe there's a little tiny object.
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I'm looking at a seashell right now that my daughter colored for me when she was five years old for Mother's Day.
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Like the energy that we bring into a room affects the whole room.
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Are we creating workplaces where people have permission to be human and have things that connect them to their joy in their lives because it spreads?
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Another thing you can know about joy is that joy is contagious.
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You smile at somebody, they give back.
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You laugh, someone else starts laughing.
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You tell somebody a story that makes you happy, and they're experiencing just a little bit of that happiness with you.
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And I'm a firm believer, I like to share when things are going really well and share beauty with people.
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And I just I get as much comfort and joy out of doing that as I do reaching out if I need help, because you're showing up fully for the person in front of you, like we talked about in the last podcast episode, and suddenly that person feels seen.
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That is joy too.
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One of my favorite things to say in coaching is at this moment, you are literally the most important person to me in the whole world.
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Because at that moment they are.
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Presence is a gift.
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Imagine what happens when that person in front of you feels that.
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Imagine if your child felt that.
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Sometimes it feels like somebody else's joy can hurt.
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Sometimes somebody might get a job and you're unemployed, somebody might have a baby when you've just lost yours, somebody, somebody's business might go into seven figures and yours is really stuck.
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Somebody's relationship might look wonderful and yours is stagnant, and you think, I'm happy for you, but honestly, this really hurts.
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And then we feel guilty for being envious.
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And what if instead of judging the envy?
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This is just bear with me for a minute, we listen for it.
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We just learn to it.
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Envy is actually information.
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Envy tells me I want something.
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So what is this showing me that I value?
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Maybe you know, maybe you already know obviously what it's showing you that you value.
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And then don't make yourself wrong for this.
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Take a moment and tune into the relationship you have with the person who's having that thing or living that life that is more of what you want that you're not having, and just for a second, just think, wow, I am honestly happy for them.
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And it doesn't mean that you feel happy.
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It just means you can pull yourself out just long enough to look at it, or admit, honor the relationship, honor that things are going great for them, and sit with your envy and know, wow, this is really important to me, or I wouldn't be jealous of it.
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That's all.
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So no guilt trip here, just a little bit more awareness, expansion.
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Joy is not selfish.
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This is the most important thing.
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Joy is not selfish.
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Sometimes we think if someone else is suffering, we shouldn't be joyful.
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But if your joy, your joy does not diminish somebody else's pain, your laughter doesn't erase someone else's grief.
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Your beautiful sunset doesn't mean you don't care about a tragedy that happened.
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And your good day doesn't mean you're insensitive to somebody having a bad day.
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Here's the thing, you can hold both.
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You can say this hurts and this is beautiful.
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You can say, I'm grieving and I'm grateful.
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You can say, I'm really scared, and hey, a part of me is still here that appreciates something.
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You can say life is really, really hard right now, and there is still something I love, even if it's just looking out my window, seeing this hibiscus flower, about being alive.
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And that is not denial, that is wholeness.
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So maybe we don't need to choose joy.
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Maybe we need to know our joy.
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Know what makes you laugh, know what makes you feel connected, know what makes your heart expand.
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Know the people who bring out the best in you, know the memories that take you home.
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Know what places to go to that restore you, know the beauty that you actually notice.
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Notice what makes you feel alive inside because that's what the world needs.
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You don't have to ever manufacture or fake joy, ever.
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You don't have to dance in the street and pretend everything is wonderful.
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Although you can.
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Sometimes it's a split second, it's a memory, it's a flower, it's a sunset, it's a baby space, it's a phone call with your cousin, it's a ridiculous laugh in the middle of a hospice, it's a handwritten note from a little kid, it's helping somebody in the world who might not ever even meet you.
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And it's a moment when you realize, oh my gosh, I'm still here.
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I'm so grateful to be here.
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And maybe that's the gift.
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Because I don't think joy is proof that life is easy.
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I think joy is one of the ways that life reminds us, stay, be here.
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There's still beauty, there's still love, there's still something to experience.
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You are not waiting for joy to arrive.
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You are actually full of joy.
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You're a wellspring of joy, and even in the middle of the hardest circumstances, you may only need to open that door for just one moment.
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Trigger your joy, let yourself feel it, and can you even maybe share it with somebody else?
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Even better.
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Because joy doesn't just help us survive life, joy helps us love being alive.
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Until next time, I want you to remember you are here, you matter, and there is more available to you than you may be able to see in this moment.
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Your life is able to get better and better and better in ways that you've never even imagined.
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And I'd love to go on that journey with you.
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Thank you so much.
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Remember, just count me in.
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I will see you next week.