9 Habits – being joyful

Posted:

Now is not the sum of everything!

2020 has been quite a year – a year that was totally unexpected and one that has brought much challenge, sadness and loss.

And here we are, at the end of the year, carrying all of that experience, all the feelings and all the emotions connected with it into the month of December – the month where we think about the habit of being joyful – which is an interesting juxtaposition.

Struggle, sadness, loss, challenge, and we end at joy! So how do we get to joy and joyful? How do we practice being joyful in the face of all that this year has been?

There’s a piece of graffiti by the artist known as Banksy which is simply made up of the following statement ‘Most things look better in a circle!’. Banksy then drew a circle around those words!

 

 

It’s an incredibly simple but effective idea. In essence what the Banksy image shows is that things can be contained within a boundary. And when it is within a boundary it enables us to see that things can exist outside of it, outside of that experience.

So, 2020 and 2021,  the pandemic years, are not the sum of everything. There is more – more life, more to see and know and understand and experience. There is goodness and hope. And there is joy too.

And a really good way to rediscover and know that joy is to look for and notice the small things that bring us joy and be thankful.

  • Small things.
  • The ordinary everyday things.
  • The joy-bringing things.
  • The things that remind us that there is more than just the struggle and challenge.

Because the struggle and the challenge are definitely not the sum of everything.