What I love best when I look back to when I was a kid is the amount of joy I  could find in the world around me.  Joy was free to me, and I happily took it from as many places as I could get it. One of the most used phrases in my vocabulary was “I’m so excited about” followed by whatever sparked my joy at that moment. I would run and play and enjoy everything the world handed to me. I would dive into books and want to share the plot with anyone who would listen no matter how long it took to recount it. I wore bright colors and sang and danced and rarely chose to care about what my peers thought of me. I wanted to hear stories of all shapes and sizes and asked as many questions as I possibly could.

Somewhere along the way, that joy seemed to wane. The things that once brought me great excitement were suddenly moments to be wary of. I began to question the things that would make you the happiest and started to listen to people around me who wanted me to focus more on success than joy. I pursued an intense drive to become the best artist I could be, and in the process, I allowed myself to become less of a human and more of a machine in my art. I ceased asking questions, put blinders on, and never stopped to find the joy within the journey. All I could think of was the next step and how I could advance my career and life. I was scared to let other people know about the things I was passionate about and the places I found joy because if I let my guard down in a joyful moment, it would be possible for that joy to be taken away from me (Brene Brown calls this “foreboding joy”).

When I first recognized that I had lost my sense of joy, I realized I was carrying this huge sense of loss. I started to grieve the years in which I hadn’t taken the time to stop and enjoy what was happening at the best moments. In that same moment, I felt this need to begin an active search for joy. I started making lists on my phone and in a small journal of all the things in the day that brought me joy as soon as I experienced it. And this small act of joy finding began to bring me (dare I say…) JOY! I started to enter every space and every new situation with the intention of looking for joy. In those moments, I began to see a clearer possibility of joy in nearly everything I did.

Of course, there are going to be moments in the day when joy simply isn’t a possibility. Without the highs and lows and peaks and valleys, I wouldn’t be able to recognize the joy. Life throws so many things at me – at all of us! – and there are many moments in which it feels like I won’t be able to climb out of the hole and back into the light. Since I started my joy-finding practice, however, I have found that those holes might be a little bit shallower or have a few more footholds to grab onto because I know that the possibility of joy still exists.

Today, I know that the gaps between my moments of joy still are plentiful and wide. But because of the work I’ve done to find joy on a day-to-day basis, I have rediscovered the moments of excitement, the opportunities to run and play both literally and figuratively, and the joy of hearing and telling stories that matter to both the storyteller and the listener. That child that I used to be is still inside me, and his curiosity and joy have become a guiding force in my life.

Joy is all around us. It has the ability to arrive when we least expect it, and it also has the ability to be cultivated and grown. When we start to pay attention to the world around us and find the things that we are most attracted to and impassioned by, joy is sure to follow. The next question becomes:

What will we do with that joy when we find it?