Joy Hunting

“Choose Happy” photo courtesy Suzi Nance

For many of us, somewhere along the way, we have become pretty good at managing life. We handle responsibilities, solve problems, take care of people, power through stressful times, survive hard seasons, and just keep moving.

Sometimes that constant motion is warranted. Life demands it. We tell ourselves, “I have to.”

Other times, if we’re being honest, staying busy can become a distraction…or even a way of avoiding something we’d rather not feel. And I say that with absolutely no judgment; sometimes getting through the day is enough.

Whatever the reason, in the middle of all that managing, joy can quietly slip into the background. We stop noticing it, we stop looking for it, and sometimes we stop realizing how long it has been since we truly felt it.

But joy doesn’t disappear. Like all of our emotions, joy remains part of us whether we are actively feeling it or not. Life experiences don’t create our emotions so much as awaken them, amplify them, or even quiet them. Yet stress, busyness, responsibility, and pain can be so loud that they drown out joy’s voice.

And sometimes, when we are experiencing deep loss or heartbreak, it can almost feel like a betrayal to acknowledge joy at all. As if feeling one somehow dishonors the other.

But joy and grief can coexist…if we allow them to.

Intellectually, I’ve always known this. I’ve seen it in friends, family members, and many clients over the years, people who experienced tremendous loss and yet still found moments of beauty, connection, and joy to celebrate.

When Grief Knocked At My Own Door

Last Thanksgiving, however, I discovered this truth for myself.

The previous summer, our family experienced the devastating loss of our brave heart-warrior grandson, Rémi, just shy of his fourth birthday. It is a grief unlike any I have ever known, deep, relentless, and ever-present. One that I worked very hard to keep compartmentalized so I could continue to “manage the busyness of life.”

Thanksgiving was particularly difficult. My daughter, Rémi’s mother, my husband, his grandfather, his sisters, cousins, aunt, and all the people who loved him so fiercely were there, each acutely aware of our collective loss, each carrying it in our own way.

And yet, at the very same time, something unexpected happened.

As I watched his sisters and cousins gather together, I saw such love, kindness, and support between them that my heart felt like it might burst.

It was the first time I believe I had ever experienced such profound joy and profound grief at the exact same moment. Neither emotion was competing for space. In fact, it was the opposite.

I had not truly felt true joy in quite some time, and somehow it was the depth of the grief that allowed me to recognize joy’s presence.

While my experience focuses on a more profound and dramatic way that joy can be buried and then rediscovered, more often it is simply busyness that leads to its benign neglect.

How Do We Wake Up Joy?

So how do we wake it up? Sometimes it begins with something as simple as paying attention.

When you feel a smile starting to form or a laugh bubbling up, resist the urge to immediately move on to the next thing on your to-do list. Stay with it for a moment, let yourself fully see the humor, the silliness, the sweetness, or the beauty of what just happened.

Let the laugh out, remember how good a full-belly, almost pee your pants laugh feels. Let it go, let your heart feel the bigness of the moment.

Other times, the burdens and pain of life have so filled the cracks and crevices that even those brief signs of joy become trapped beneath them. When that happens, we need to go digging for it.

So how do we do that? We remind ourselves what it feels like.

I was a sugar addict. At the height of my addiction, you would have found candy everywhere: in my pocketbook, my car, my desk drawer at work, and squirreled away in random places throughout my house. At the time, I knew very well the pleasure I got from eating sugar and wanted more.

It has now been sixteen years since any sweet has passed my lips, and I have so completely forgotten that feeling, that today I would no more look at a candy bar or cupcake and find it any more appealing than I would a wad of paper or a pen. And yet, I have no doubt that if I took one bite of that candy bar or cupcake, my taste buds would instantly remember and crave more.

We can be a little like that with joy — having forgotten the sweetness.

Deliberately Create Opportunities For Joy

If so, we need to reintroduce ourselves to it, we need to kickstart it, deliberately create opportunities for our hearts to remember.

Start with humor. If your evenings are usually filled with news, crime dramas, or endless scrolling, try replacing some of that with things that make you laugh. The sillier, the better. Revisit an old favorite. What is a comedy that never fails to crack you up? Bridesmaids? Some Like it Hot? Everyone’s comedy sweet spot is unique.

The same is true for books. If you love reading, pick up something light and funny. Let someone else’s humor remind you what it feels like to laugh out loud.

Pay attention to the small pleasures too. A phenomenal cup of coffee. The smell of sunscreen on a summer day. Peonies blooming. A beautiful sunset. The first warm breeze after a long winter. These moments are often the first casualties of a complicated life because they are so easy to overlook. Pause long enough to notice them and appreciate them.

And don’t underestimate the power of music. There is a reason movie soundtracks are so effective. Music calls to our emotions. Listen to songs that make you want to move, sing, dance, or replay the soundtrack of a time when life felt lighter.

Sometimes remembering past joy helps in feeling it again. Think back to childhood summers. What did you love to do? Who made you laugh? What memories still bring a smile to your face?

And finally — and please, no eye roll here because I know you’ve heard this a thousand times — at the end of each day, write down three things that made you smile, laugh, feel grateful, or simply warmed your heart. There is a reason gratitude keeps showing up in books, articles, podcasts, and conversations about well-being. It’s not because it’s trendy. It’s because it works.

Gratitude doesn’t magically erase pain, grief, stress, or life’s challenges. What it does do is help train our brains to notice more than just what is wrong. It reminds us to look for what is still good, still beautiful, still worth smiling about. And sometimes, when we’re digging for joy, that’s exactly where we find it.

None of these suggestions will eliminate life’s challenges. But they do something equally important. They invite joy back to the table and remind it that there is still a place for it there.

Suzi Nance, certified hypnotherapist, change strategist, speaker and author helps individuals and organizations nationwide navigate change, improve communication, and close the gap between intention and action. Drawing on her expertise in behavior change and human performance, she shares practical strategies that increase engagement, strengthen resilience, and support lasting results. Suzi is the author of the best-selling book, Break Free of Negative Beliefs and the Weight that Clings to Them.

Find holistic Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.

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