Hi everyone, it’s David on the Dóchas blog, and today we’re talking about JOY! Last week on the blog, Melanie explored the four pillars of happiness, and today, I’d like to dive further into the benefits of joy and little ways to pursue it in your life.
As a positive emotion, joy is experienced alongside amusement, happiness, elation, and gladness. The hallmarks of joy are feelings of ease, safety, and freedom. You feel joy as a positive affective response to an objective, external good, bringing pleasant feelings in situations that feel easy, familiar, and safe.
Joy is an integral part of your day-to-day life. Unlike emotions such as sudden fear, which help keep you safe from immediate harm, the benefits of joy tend to develop gradually over time rather than being felt right away. While being joyful benefits you right away with feelings of lightness and safety, the long-term outcomes of joy matter even more. Joy fosters interest in engaging with new opportunities for learning and connecting with others. That interest encourages development of behavioural, cognitive, and social skills, as well as the ever-important forging of social connections. These gains offer long-term benefits and promote resilience—an insurance policy for tough experiences you may face in the future. You can read more about building resilience in my past blog post.
Watch my video to find out what brings my fellow Dóchas team members joy!
What Are the Benefits of Joy?
When you are joyous, you move more easily, tasks take less effort, colours appear more vivid, your perspective shifts, your thinking broadens, and your attention sharpens. As you experience joy, you feel energized; the world feels within reach. You learn new tasks and skills more quickly and easily, views seem more beautiful, and your problems feel smaller. You also become more playful, and your willingness to try new, different, or uncomfortable things increases as fear is reduced.
With more happiness, life feels richer and easier, and you experience more gratitude. Interestingly, there is a connection between joy and gratitude that creates an upward spiral of both. When there is more joy, there is more gratitude, and when you feel more gratitude, you experience more joy!
I’m Not Feeling Joy – What’s Getting in the Way?
Various factors can contribute to limited feelings of happiness. Some people experience it more easily than others. These individuals tend to have a lower threshold for joy and often feel it more easily, from a wider range of experiences, and more frequently. Various aspects of your mental health can interfere with your experience of joy, including anxiety, depression, insomnia, stress, and many others.
Cultural influences and expectations from others can also create barriers to experiencing joy, as can living inauthentically or out of alignment with your personal goals and values. Spending time in negative relationships or environments can be particularly stiffing, especially those that promote comparison, or are marked by rivalry or envy.
Finally, patterns of emotional suppression – where negative emotions are bottled up – can significantly affect your ability to experience happiness. While suppressing negative emotions may feel helpful in the moment, doing so also reduces your capacity to experience positive emotions.
Pursuing Joy: Where to Start and How to Find More
Don’t despair. Even when life feels joyless, there are many actions you can take to create more joy for yourself.
Happiness is contagious. Strengthening social connections and spending time with others who are joyful has been shown to increase it. In fact, research suggests that one joyous person can initiate a chain reaction, spreading joy to others through several degrees of separation.
You can learn about happiness – how to experience it and how to express it to others, in our blogs or through work with a therapist, to increase your capacity to recognize and experience both positive and negative emotions. Additionally, sharing good news and positive experiences with others brings positivity to everyone involved, and talking about joyful moments can help you get more “bang for your buck” from each experience.
Seeking out joy-promoting activities that are self-directed, rather than forced by others, can also create opportunities for joy. One particularly powerful source of joy is nature. Again and again, research has shown spending time in nature offers a wide range of benefits, and one of them is joy. Time in nature also helps you absorb the benefits of joy by providing opportunities for introspection and restoration.
Here’s a fun resource that could be fun for you to try: NPR’s Joy Generator! It’s an interactive website that curates calming content to help you combat stress and find small daily doses of joy.
Joy can be found all around you.
The research is clear – joy makes life richer and easier, and it builds resilience for difficult times.
Not Sure Where to Start with Therapy?
Take the Dóchas Compass (1–2 minute quiz) and we’ll guide you toward the best fit therapist for you.
If you already know what you’re looking for, you can book an appointment online (in-person in Spruce Grove or virtual across Alberta) or call us at 780-446-0300.
About Dóchas Psychological
Dóchas Psychological Services is a well-established and trusted therapy clinic located in Spruce Grove, Alberta. At Dóchas we value the idea that everyone deserves a safe space. Through connection and education, our team works hard to build a trustworthy relationship with each of our clients. It is our goal to create a community for our clients to feel like they belong.
Disclaimer
Information provided through Dóchas Psychological Services blogs or vlogs is meant for educational purposes only. They are NOT medical or mental health advice. You can read more about our disclaimer here.
