Boxing Day Joy
E108: A moment to savour
One of the most satisfying aspects of my work is helping people rediscover joy.
Joy for the work they do.
Joy for the people around them.
Joy in the smallest moments.
Joy in life.
I was um-ing and ah-ing about whether to send out this edition 108 today.
Might I break 108 consecutive weeks of an unbroken rhythm of 'Thursday-press-send'?
To be honest, today I was struggling to write.
I was going to write about what is sparking me about the books I'm reading over breakfast. But I'm sharing a picture of the collection of books I'm reading whilst in Franschhoek, South Africa.
I was going to write about why joy is important.
Or how difficult it is to describe or define joy.
Or muse about why we can experience joy in moments of sadness, like the loss of someone or something from our lives, but happiness somehow seems elusive - even odd - in those moments.
And then I came across something from someone whose writing I really enjoy reading because it always provokes me to think.
Todd Kashdan shared in his Boxing Day newsletter a wonderful reminder about joy and how to bring it into our lives.
Todd reminds us of the key psychological principles of joyous moments and inviting us to embrace the three stages.
The enthusiastic anticipation
The experiential component
The post-mortem - take mental photographs and replay events in the minutes, hours, and days after. This act of savouring is what plants gorgeous experiences into long-term memory - a reminder of positives that exist in your life on rainy days ahead.
I encourage you to read his article about the first two (I've deliberately tantalised your taste buds by not explaining the first two stages).
As for the third, the post-mortem, it reminds me of a practice I've done for the past few years.
As the year goes by, I add photos to a "Highlights" folder. I've been doing this for a few years now, and it's a wonderful way to savour.
A reminder of the positives in my life.
I also include the negatives in my life - for me I find they can be as enriching as the positives when I discover the joy in those moments.
Here are the moments I've captured in the last three years of highlights folders.
Images for me are like words. Both create worlds. Worlds just as vivid as when I walk into my old school buildings, and I notice the smells that bring with them all the mental representations I have associated over the years with school.
Words create the spaces that we bring our teams, our loved ones into, and how we can shape them
Words transform how we think, how we feel, and how we behave
Words, like effortlessness, can guide our capacity for how we show up and take courageous action
👉 Over to you
As 2024 draws to a close, I invite you to savour something from this year to bring a moment of joy into your life.
ps: If you're a lawyer, entrepreneur, or high-performing professional curious to take the first step to how you show up effortlessly, let’s discuss how small shifts in your lifestyle and mindset can transform your leadership.
That’s it for this week!
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To your health, joy, and success—one step at a time!
Eric
Your consistency is inspiring. It got me thinking about consistency and its relationship to joy. Sometimes it seems as though consistency can lead to joy, and at other times lead to drugery and dread. Any thoughts on the matter?