Joyful Living? But what about...
A big group of us engaged in in the “Joyful Living Challenge” in June— an invitation to five daily joy-boosting practices: meditation, naming 3 gratitudes, journaling the day’s highlight, enjoyable movement, and random acts of kindness. Seems pretty simple, right? Seems light, fun, and sweet, yes?
And yet… life isn’t really like that in this moment. There is quite a bit of intensity and heaviness in the air, on our minds, in our heart-space. To focus on joy or positivity can sound, on the surface, either inauthentic, shallow, or tone-deaf.
In about the middle of the challenge, I received a message from a participant and personal friend, Logan. She gave me permission to share her message here.
Logan's message
"Hi Katie! I'm enjoying the joyful living challenge so far, and am proud of myself for at least being consistent with the three gratitudes and journal each night. The others are hit or miss, but as I have a toddler I am extra lenient with myself.
I wonder if you can help me with a negative line of thinking. (And feel free to share this with the group, I'm only sharing this privately because it's a little... embarrassing?) When I read all the posts about joy and positivity, there's a pretty strong part of my that feels an aversion to what I'm perceiving as "saccharine." My thoughts are like "oo, that's too touchy feely for me" or "that doesn't acknowledge all the fear and negative feelings I do feel."
Somehow focusing on the positive feels like ignoring the negative, which feels disingenuous to me. How would you frame my thoughts to help me through this roadblock?"
I was so grateful to receive this message! Number 1: Forming a question like this, even just in our heads, means engagement, that she’s taking this invitation to heart enough to wrestle with it and get to what it actually means for her life. Yes! Number 2: She brought it up! I feel happy for Logan working through the embarrassment that she names, in service of all of us. Raising the question means bringing it into the light, being seen, and offering the opportunity for more clarity to arise. Others in the challenge got to read, comment, and think about her question, too… and this is a gift to all of us.
Too touchy-feely
Too touchy-feely... I get that! Does this resonate with anyone else? Often, when we start talking about important things, and especially happy things, language can get troublesome. The way that we each express ourselves is different, and we hold past associations with certain words. My personal turnoff is using really big or broad terms, like "love and light" or other ways of speaking that just somehow don't "land" for me because they're too broad or vague for me to get ahold of. For me, specific and concrete feels right. (I'm not trying to say that the bigger, broader ways of speaking aren't valid or true for someone else, just that it somehow goes over my head.)
Whatever the language, I do know that every person feels joy and gratitude... but I think it is up to us to find the expressions (verbally/written and otherwise) that speak to us, that we can connect with.
The heart of the question
For me, the heart of Logan’s question is this part: "that doesn't acknowledge all the fear and negative feelings I do feel. Somehow focusing on the positive feels like ignoring the negative, which feels disingenuous to me."
I get this, too... and to tell the truth, we DO need to check on and be honest about our intentions and the depth of our emotional processing.
It would be totally possible to use a focus on positivity or gratitude as a bypass of all discomfort and negative emotion. "Oops, I'm feeling sad about the world! But let's look on the bright side- I'm grateful for puppies!" A really exaggerated example, but you get my point.
This kind of bypass is the opposite of mindfulness because in essence it is not allowing and facing reality, whatever reality is in this moment.
It is very human to want to bypass anything uncomfortable or painful. We can get away with trying that for little while, but not long-term, because it is too shallow and dishonest. Sooner or later, we will need to face the fuller picture, which does include suffering and heartache.
Both / And: Space for All of It
So if we are NOT wanting to use positivity and gratitude to bypass discomfort, then what ARE we intending to do when we focus on “the good?”
How I see it is that we're not saying "NO" to discomfort. We are saying "AND."
There are difficult emotions that need to be present and to move through: grief, sorrow, anger, and more. These are part of the full spectrum of human emotion, and they are often the perfectly appropriate response to what is occurring. When these are here, it's so beneficial to turn toward, to feel and sense. To give whatever spaciousness we can, and especially self-compassion, as we live into what we're feeling. To be patient, sitting with discomfort and pain for as long as it is present.
AND we can't live there forever. If we stay there, if we hold on tightly, weaving these into our identity, we burn out, our view darkens and narrows. The sun will be shining, the people we love will be supporting us, and we won't even see it.
Because we cannot live in that place forever, this AND is also inviting us to give spaciousness to the light. So when a spark of genuine gratitude or a little smile arises, we don't ignore it or minimize it, but we allow it to take up space in our heart, too, to have it's own impact in lifting our spirits.
The key here, I think, is the word genuine. Beautiful things are happening all the time to each one of us. For me, this is about having our eyes open to receive them, NOT about shutting our eyes to the pain, and not about pretending that we are more happy than we are.
Difficult Emotions versus “Gratuitous Negativity’
I talked above about difficult emotions that are real and part of our experience. This is very different than "negativity" or maybe "gratuitous negativity." (I think I got this phrase from Barbara L. Fredrickson PhD.) For me, negativity looks like complaining about small things. Picking at my husband for being imperfect. Gossiping about other people's mistakes or problems.
This kind of petty negativity is so easy. And it is deceptively destructive. It chips away at our wellbeing, and ripples outward to sour other people's experiences, too.
Gratitude, sincere gratitude, reframes negativity and broadens perspective: "Oh, my husband isn't perfect? He didn't say "the right thing?" Well he is HERE, and he loves me, so what about that?"
When a person has been sitting in that kind of negativity, positivity (seated in authenticity) can be transformational.
Ending with a Question
I have one more thought to add here. When we notice that our response to focusing on joy and positivity/etc is, "Hey, no, wait a minute! What about the pain or heaviness that I'm feeling? This is legitimate!" Then I wonder: have we given space to these feelings yet? Have we let the emotions be with us and move through us? Have we cried, journaled, processed?
This is again where the AND comes in, that there is space for ALL of it, not just difficulties and not just joy, but all of it.
So this internal objection can be a signal that invites us to be with the heaviness, to not ignore it. It might be telling us that it’s not quite yet time to turn to the light because for now we need to sit quietly and hold ourselves in our pain.
What is needed here is a bit of stillness and discernment, an invitation to listen inward to what needs attention and space. A life that is truly joyful, in a deep way, includes space for all emotions, all states of being.
Do you like digging into questions like this?
Going to the heart of your current experience? Connecting with others around shared exploration?
If so, I’d love to invite you to join us at Flourish & Bloom Collective. It’s a space to show up as you are, and to Learn, Connect & Transform together.