“Don’t postpone joy until you have learned all your lessons. Joy is your lesson.”
~Alan Cohen
The other day my other half (in business) pointed out that many of our blog posts recently have been focused on struggle and overwhelm. Which makes sense I guess, given the moment we are all living in, but also can be tiring and perhaps, at times, less than inspirational.
So, when I read this quote, I knew it was something that I wanted to share.
We are the Leadership Consultants and Executive Coaches who talk about (appropriate) joy and love in the workplace, because joy and love are nearly as necessary for our health as sleep, food, and water. When we connect with others, we are more likely to flourish, and when we are filled with joy, we have more to give and more energy with which to do and to do well.
I have learned over the years that joy is ours to find and create. As I remind my clients (and myself), we can go into a meeting braced against the pushback we know we’ll find from our colleague, or we can go into a meeting open to possibilities and looking to laugh and learn with that same colleague. We can let our negativity bias rule our brains and keep us stuck in “Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good,” or we can look for what’s working, what’s going right, what we can positively affect.
If we wait for joy to find us, we lose so many opportunities. If we want to feel joy until we’re “done” and we’ve accomplished that huge goal, we, again, lose so many opportunities.
A little laughter, a little smile, a little love, a little hope, a little joy – these all go a long way to make the hard journeys a bit less hard and the tough work a bit less tough. We just have to be willing to find these and to let them be our lessons every day.
What lessons have you learned about joy?
Click here to comment.
If you enjoyed this post, you can read more like it in our book, The Power of Thoughtful Leadership: 101 Minutes To Being the Leader You Want To Be, available on Amazon.
If you want to live joy now, contact Robyn at rmcleod@chatsworthconsulting.com.
Click here to receive The Thoughtful Leaders™ Blog posts via e-mail and receive a copy of “Ending Leadership Frenzy: 5 Steps to Becoming a More Thoughtful and Effective Leader.”
Photo Credit: Prostock-studio/Bigstock.com
