olivierbranford
- Sep 15, 2023
- 12 min read

Joy

Updated: Apr 18

Joy: What Is It, Where Does It Come From and Why Is It So Important?

Joy is the soul of happiness. There is always clear sky behind the clouds: Either blue sky or stars. Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer who famously fought episodes of deep depression yet became the President of the United States, said “Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Perhaps President Lincoln actually meant joy? Whereas feeling happiness is not a choice that we can make, joy, on the other hand, is a choice that is purposefully made.

Joy is a short word that unfolds and becomes expansive. Defining and unpacking joy is challenging and yet could not be more worthwhile. Happiness is the external layer of an emotion that you experience as it happens to you. Joy is more than just an emotion and comes from within you. Joy is not simply a feeling that happens. It’s not elation, jubilation or exhilaration - emotions that may be present with joy, that may seem like an expression of joy, but which don’t define joy. Joy is not happiness or even extreme happiness. Joy is something much grander than happiness.

Adela Rogers puts it beautifully “Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness - happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you’re lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and Faith and love.” Unlike pleasure and satisfaction, joy does not have an opposite. There is no disjoy. There is unhappiness, but no unjoy. Joy is the soul of happiness. Joy is of the soul, of the spirit. So, joy is related to happiness, but is not its twin. Joy’s twin, as Adela suggested, is love.

Mother Theresa concurs “Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.” Prayer is the daily practice of asking your Higher Self to guide you to fulfil your higher purpose in life. Prayer need have nothing to do with religion. After all, as Joseph Campbell said “What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man’s imagination?” Prayer, and also meditation, as Amit Ray wrote is “A way for nourishing and blossoming the divinity within you.”

Joy - what is it?

Happiness is conditional, transient, and fleeting. Joy on the other hand is unconditional, constant and transcending. Joy never leaves you. Joy doesn’t come and go – but our awareness of it can. Happiness is for the moment, whereas joy is in the moment, and experienced in true deep presence. Joy is a state of BEing. Happiness is ‘because of’. Joy is ‘in spite of’. People pursue happiness but go within to find joy. Happiness reacts. Joy endures hardship and trials and connects with meaning and purpose. Eckhart Tolle wrote “To know yourself as the BEing underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, Enlightenment.”

In the Bible James (1:2-4) wrote “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” One does not need to follow any religion to be inspired by joy during adversity. Like love, joy is fearless and untroubled by the world. It is as if nothing in the world can tarnish or diminish the essence of joy. As such, it is free.

We all have the capacity to look within. It’s possible to experience joy in difficult times., whereas happiness isn’t present in darkness and difficulty. In its truest expression, joy transforms difficult times into blessings and turns heartache into gratitude. Rumi, the poet and philosopher wrote “Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take its place.”

Joseph Campbell, the author of 'The Hero’s Journey' said “Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” In choosing joy, there is hope. With joy, hardship offers growth and opportunity. Carlos Santana said “If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal at any moment.” William Blake wrote so eloquently “He who binds to himself to joy, does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity's sun rise.” The Buddha said “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” Perhaps the Buddha could have used the word sunshine. So, joy flows from the inside out.

Therefore, joy is a fundamental pillar of transformation, it is our constant companion, our inspiration, and our source of hope and love. Joy underpins all the other positive core values, such as love, service, authenticity, zest, compassion, peace, personal growth, and creativity: These are my core values. Joy is the energetic serenity that fuels our artistic drive and our drive to succeed in line with our core values. True joy is a limitless, life-defining, transformative reservoir waiting to be tapped into. Upon discovering joy, many people experience a greater sense of clarity and creativity that rushes through them. Joy can be the author of your life if you allow it to be.

The key to transformation is to awaken as your assertive adult Self, your real Self, the real author of your true story, to be the main protagonist, to step into that role, and become fully present. Say “I know who I am”. Be full of love, joy, and compassion. Leave the Drama Triangle. In one of the Upanishads, the classic texts of Indian literature, it is written: “From joy springs all creation; By joy it is sustained. Towards joy it proceeds; and to joy it returns.” Something inside you bubbles up and it flows and erupts out of your heart. It needs nothing external to sustain it. Rumi wrote “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” Bring joy to every communication and obstacle. Try it. You will be creative, fearless, limitless, and at peace. Deepak Chopra said “According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of Enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.”

While your happiness is accountable to your wishes, desires, and goals, joy is, has and always will live within you. With joy, self-esteem and self-respect are indestructible. Helen Keller wrote “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar… Your success and happiness lies in you. Your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” Because of this, aiming for joy is infinitely more beneficial in life, as it is less transitory than happiness and is not tied to external circumstances, judgements, or opinions. Happiness may be caused by luck, egocentric pleasures, dwells on the materialistic, and is not reliable. Bertrand Russell said “A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.” I call this place of presence 'energetic serenity'. Eckhart Tolle calls this 'alert stillness'. Happiness tends to be externally triggered and is based on other things, people, places, events, and the intrusive thoughts that are triggered by them. Most people overemphasise the attractiveness of happiness and expect it to happen in the most grand way with fireworks and fairytales, especially in 'romantic' relationships. That is the basis of addiction – seeking a neurochemical high. With joy there is no craving for more, as it is enough. Percy Shelley said “I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.” Joy is happiness without a reason – it doesn’t need a cause to exist. It comes when you make peace with who you are, why you are, and how you are. When you need nothing more than your Truth and the unconditional love of your Higher Self to bring peace and compassion then you have settled into the abiding joy that is not rocked by relationships or anything external to your self. So, happiness is a destination, whereas joy is an attitude. Happiness is future-oriented and it puts all its eggs in someone else's basket: This is never a good idea. Joy does needs you to connect though – this connection is often with other people or things in your lives, such as pets, hobbies, creative pursuits, and so on. So, it’s a connection, not an attachment. Think of your body as a world where happiness is like breezes, delightful, and inevitably pleasing, but joy is the ever-present oxygen, regardless of the wind. Happiness weighs heavily on our subconscious: When we don’t meet the expectations that we set for ourselves, it effects our happiness in the different areas of our lives. Joy carries no burden or expectations. The truth is that you are never going to experience true happiness unless you practice joy. You do not need to be happy to feel joy.

It is often said that life is what you make it. This is true but often misconstrued to mean that working hard and saving money will allow you to have more luxuries in life. Having luxuries is promoted as "living the dream," the greatest endgame, but it's invariably a false promise. Having more can lead to wanting more, and the more you have, the more you fear losing. There is no true happiness to be found in possessions, despite what those who don't understand try to convince you otherwise. True happiness, in other words joy, comes from within. To understand this is to free yourself from the chains of always needing more. There's nothing wrong with having creature comforts, but freeing yourself from selfish wants and desires creates space for peace and happiness that selfless thoughts and actions will bring into your life. Your life is what you make it, but a joyous life is never delivered to in a gift wrapped box. There is no greater wealth than joy and peace of mind.

The Beatles famously sang, "All You Need Is Love." Reflecting on these words creates an opportunity to look at your life with fresh eyes. Know what matters; know what love is, understand what love is, and you will find true wisdom and joy.

Have an attitude of gratitude. Joy blooms through connection, gratitude, service, and giving, not through attachment. Rabindranath Tagore said “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” Joy brings purpose and meaning to life. It brings life to life. Jonathan Sacks said “Make space in your life for the things that matter, for family and friends, love and generosity, fun and joy. Without this, you will burn out in mid-career and wonder where your life went.” It’s ok not to be perfect all the time. We are human. We are vulnerable, and that vulnerability makes us courageous. Brené Brown said “I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.”

When seeking joy inside your self it’s important to be able to tap into your heart rather than your head and your intuition rather than your thinking mind. Quieten the chatter in your mind through silence and meditation: Creating space within you allows you to listen more closely to what brings you joy.

In his book “Awareness” Anthony De Mello states the powerful words of timeless wisdom “All is well. Everything is a mess. But all is well.” As we’ve said, joy comes from within, and so does misery. Choose joy every time. Don’t sabotage joy: We all deserve to be full of joy.

Anthony De Mello elaborates and expands on the four steps to wisdom and joy, which may be practiced during silence and meditation and throughout your day:

Step 1: Simply note your negative thoughts and feelings and let them pass like a wave – for example fear, shame, anxiety, and sadness.

Step 2: Understand that the negative thought is in you and not in reality. Nothing has the power to hurt you or diminish your joy when you awaken to your true self. Negative thoughts only exist in the human mind. Feelings are just a comment on the quality of your thoughts, a biological feedback on your thinking. If you don’t have negative thoughts you don’t have negative feelings.

Step 3. Never identify or define yourself with those thoughts or feelings. Say to your self “I am not those feelings. I am not my thoughts.” Don’t say “I am depressed” or “I am afraid”. Everything passes. Leave the thought or feeling alone, simply noting it. It will pass, it will come and it will go. It has nothing to do with you and your happiness. You only feel love and joy. You were trained to define yourself by those negative feelings: You learnt this from society. Now it's time to unlearn it.

Step 4. Understand that when you change inside, then everything changes. When you change outside, nothing changes, and you are still utterly dependent on external validation. Change your inner self: Set your self free; Don’t accept labels or judgement from your self or anyone anymore. This is the true basis of surrender, of 'letting go'. You don’t need to belong to anyone, anything, or any group. What you need is to be free, joyous and to love. You don’t need to be applauded or be loved, when you love your self unconditionally. You become formidable when you are awake and are unaffected by what people think: All nightmares disappear. You don’t care about criticism any more. You become free. You are not a puppet. Be fearless. Behold the human BEing that is you. You suffered only because you were asleep. Now you are awake!

Remember, that your natural state is to have a mind that is at ease and you revel in the experience of being alive. Joy is your factory setting: You may need to press reset to return to this. It will rewire your brain, literally. Wisdom is calm and free from superficial emotion, and is full of joy. Fearful or negative thinking is less accurate than happier thinking. Given that our true nature is well-being - and the only thing that can ever hide that wellbeing is thoughts – we’re always only a thought away from bouncing right back to our default state. With a lot on your mind, bouncing back is interfered with by your own thoughts, especially fearful ones. Fear is the language of your ego. The word emotion means in motion, as in always moving. If you are not feeling peace, you are believing a lie. So, fear is illusory. Happiness is illusory. Joy is truth. Lies and anxiety always pass as thoughts and emotions are temporary. Just wait, go within, and trust the process. I will expand on dropping out of thoughts in my blog post on the universal transformational pillar of presence.

Neville Goddard wrote “You are already that which you want to be, and your refusal to believe it is the only reason you do not see it.” He continued “Man moves in a world that is nothing more than his consciousness objectified… Stop trying to change the world since it is only the mirror. Man’s attempt to change the world by force is as fruitless as breaking a mirror in the hope of changing his face... Leave the world alone and change your conceptions of yourself. The reflection then will be satisfactory.” And you will find your joy.

Sending you love, light, and blessings.

Please let me know if you would like to join my 'VOICE for men' group: 'Vulnerability & Openness Is a Choice Ensemble', where men can find their strength, courage, and authenticity, by dropping their egocentric fears and instead communicate openly with vulnerability. It will change your life. It will empower you. This community is a safe space for men to connect and discuss philosophy, spirituality, positive psychology, and timeless truths, to share our experience, strength and hope, and to find solutions to our pain and fears.

Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD

My gift is to be your guide. Let me know if you would like to continue this conversation...

Email me: hello@transformativelifecoach.co.uk

“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of BEing, which will transform how you perceive and intuitively create your world. My work is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.” Olly Alexander Branford

My coaching themes and services - I work 1:1 and in groups with men who are looking for: Transformative Life Coaching, Transformational Coaching, Life Coaching, Personal Coaching, Positive Psychology Coaching, Recovery Coaching, Trauma Informed Coaching, Work Addiction Coaching, Workaholism Coaching, Addiction Coaching, Mindfulness Coaching.

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