Since today is the 1st day of the rest of your life, might as well make it joy filled!

Now, you might be saying "right on, let's go for it!"

Or you might be saying "maybe later, right now I have real life to think about, time for feel good psycho-babble later."

Or you might even be saying "give it a rest, there is nothing good about the day. let alone joy filled" and then follow through with all kinds of examples that prove your point.

Either way, I challenge you to think about bringing joy into your life the same way you do other things that require a step by step incremental process.

What do I mean? Let's use the analogy of gaining better physical fitness. If starting from poor or moderate fitness, you might start by taking a walk around the house, then the block, then down to the corner store. Excited with your results you might add more and more until you are walking a mile at a time! Who knows, you might even take on a walkathon, or a challenging day or week long hike. And before you know it, you are physically fit and feeling so great, maybe even joy filled!

In the same way, if joy hasn't been in your life for awhile, you might start very slowly, by encouraging yourself to find it. If joy is too much of a stretch, how about looking for something that is "pleasing". I remember a time when I could find nothing... not even a glimmer of a hope. But, I wanted to because I remember that joy just felt good - way better than the alternative, which is where I was at the time.

So one morning, I started my search with the thought that my toothpaste had a nice, refreshing taste to it.

Then every day after that I found one other nice thought to add to the first. The nice thoughts started to shoot out glimmers and flashes of pleasing, that gave way to fullblown moments of happy that then...hmmm...felt a whole lot like joy. Could that be possible? And then one day I was godsmacked with an entire day of it. That is when I realized that sometimes, at least for me, to be in joy, I had to condition myself to it by accumulating one pleasing thought at a time.

Try it, you'll like it.