Joy: Learning Life’s Lessons with a Light Heart
‘The Simple Abundance journey takes us to undiscovered territory. We learn each day how cultivating gratitude tills the soil of our soul and then how the seeds of simplicity and order send their roots down deep into the earth of our everyday existence. As we progress, harmony inspires us with quiet courage to create an authentic life for ourselves and those we love. With patience, beauty blossoms and our hearts experience not only happiness, which is often fleeting, but a wellspring of joy that refreshed and renews. We have found our true place in the world. “With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy,” William Wordsworth wrote, “we see into the life of things.”
Seeing into the life of things is what engages us at this point in the transformative process. From deep within there comes a longing to give up the path of struggle as a way to learn life’s lessons. Finally we are ready to embrace the path of joy.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path. But this requires a profound inner shift in our reality. Many of us unconsciously create dramas in our minds, expecting the worst from a situation only to have our expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Inadvertently, we become authors of our own misfortune. And so we struggle from day to day, from crisis to crisis, bruised and battered by circumstances without realizing that we always have a choice.
But what if you learned how to stop the dramas and started to trust the flow of life and the goodness of the Spirit? What if you began to expect the best from any situation? Isn’t it possible that you could write new chapters in your life with happy endings? For many of us this is such a radical departure from the way we have been behaving that it seems unbelievable. Yet it is possible. Suspend your disbelief. Take a leap of faith. After all, what have you got to lose but misery and lack?
Begin today. Declare out loud to the Universe that you are willing to let go of struggle and eager to learn through joy. It just may take you at your word. What’s more, you’ll discover, much to your amazement and delight, that such blessings have been waiting patiently for you to claim them all along.’ – Sarah BanBreathnach, Simple Abundance A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Guilty… yes, I am.
Lenny, or someone, says something to set me off and I rehearse everything in my mind that I am going to say to him. Get myself all worked up. Mentally and emotionally exhausted about the topic before a word even comes out of my mouth.
You’ve done it too.
Haven’t you?
Please do not tell me I am the only one.
Apparently joy is simple- even very obtainable.
Hum…
Expect the best from a situation, up front. Are you sure about that?
You mean everyone is not out to get me afterall?
This is me leaping…. she’s right. What do we have to lose?
What are you grateful for today? Are you listing five things in your Gratitude Journal?
Maybe you started a gratitude blog?
How does it make you feel after a seemingly bad day, and then you list five things you are grateful for?
The smell of fresh flowers in the dining room, a deliciously easy crockpot dinner, 70 degree days in the middle of January, the smell of freshly bathed children, my list could go on and on.
And I thought I was having a bad day. What is wrong with me?
It’s a new look on life isn’t is?
‘I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering: surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy. ‘- Louise Bogan