Choosing Joy

Hello there!

I hope everyone had a safe & fun Halloween. I just wanted to take a moment to share something that I just received in my email inbox from Close To My Heart. It comes from their "Weekly Wisdom", and the title is "Did You Choose Joy?" This particular article really "spoke" to me, and I think it will be especially important and worthwhile to think about now that the chaos of the holiday season is upon us. So let's all make a pact to "choose joy" today - and who knows - it may even carry over to tomorrow! Enjoy!


"Positive Results from Your Choice
“Did you remember to choose joy today? You know, after you picked up the kids from practice and stopped at the grocery store, did you choose joy? … Susan Iida-Pederson…says that, “When you feel good about yourself, you take action and when you act from a place of excitement and joy, your results are positive.” The key word in the phrase, “Did you choose joy?” is choose. Joy isn’t something that happens to us, it’s a choice. We can wake up every morning and be angry that we ran out of coffee, or that we were stopped by every red light on our way to our daily tasks. Or we can choose joy. We can choose joy at having another day to wake up to. Joy that we have a car with working brakes to stop at the stoplights. …With the latter attitude, …others will feel your joy. It’s infectious. …

Put it in Practice
Sit down right now and write down ten things that give you joy. Your children, your pets, your spouse, whatever. Then write down ten things that frustrate you. Look at that list and then make one last list changing those ten frustrating things into ten things that could be joyful – and then throw away the list of the frustrations. Spend a minute every morning for a week reading out loud the list of things that give you joy. When we make joy a conscious effort rather than sitting around waiting for the joy to come, we see the joy more prevalent in our lives – and so will others."