When you feel little joy in your life
• Your mood is often clouded and moments of happiness are rare.
• You can´t be happy for other people and are rather envious of their happiness.
• You feel guilty in a moment of happiness.
• The days go by and you realize that you are somehow missing something: maybe you already have everything you ever wanted, but you don´t really feel joy.
• Your everyday life feels heavy and you have few or no moments of lightness.
• You don´t really feel alive.
• You dream of the next vacation, the next time-out, because then everything will be better again.
• You rush from one appointment to the next, but have no time for downtime and moments of peace and reflection.
Joy is the feeling we would much rather feel than fear or anger. Joy is associated with positive things: happy faces, a child jumping for joy and his or her hands up in the air.
And yet it is difficult for many people to feel joy in the here and now, everyday life seems gray and depressing.
In order to feel joy, various conditions must be met.
As mentioned in the previous sentence, joy must be able to be felt, so this is about the ability to feel. Many people have forgotten how to sense and feel, which was so natural as a child, over time, conditioned by society, among other things. Most of their lives take place in their heads and are often characterized by a carousel of thoughts.
But you can´t feel in your head, it happens with and through your body. The more the body is felt, the more it becomes anchored in the here and now and joy then sets in automatically. It doesn´t have to be something big, it is often enough to see a beautiful, colorful flower and the heart opens up and the joy is there. The more such moments are cultivated, the more joy can expand. And this can be practiced.
To be able to feel joy, it is also important not to be permanently trapped in a state of collapse.
What do I mean by collapse?
As mentioned elsewhere, the autonomic nervous system, which as the name suggests cannot be consciously controlled, consists of the sympathetic nervous system, which adjusts the organism to an increase in activity, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest and regeneration. Both are important and a well-regulated nervous system switches from one state to the other naturally, not abruptly, like a surfer surfing his wave, calmly, with confidence and trust.
If people remain in the parasympathetic nervous system for too long, they are no longer able to feel excitement and joy. Then they are trapped in a state of deep sadness, of collapse.
The first aspect, sensing, is very important for regulating the nervous system. And this can be practiced, even as an adult. It is practicing, allowing, letting yourself be there and physically feeling.