Joy is everywhere. Everything you do is informed by it and your pursuit of it. From the most mundane to the most critical decisions and actions in your life, the driving force behind them is joy.
Don’t believe me? Good! Your skepticism and curiousity makes you a perfect candidate to truly understand the meaning of all of this, so allow me to explain.
Is It The Shoes?!
Let’s take one of the most mundane things you’ve done today – getting dressed. Now, I don’t care if you’re wearing a three-piece suit or nothing but boxers and slippers as you read this, take a moment to account for whatever it is you have on. Maybe it’s nothing. That’s fine too. Now, ask yourself why you are wearing whatever it is you are wearing. How did you make that decision?
I can already hear some of you rebelling, thinking, “I didn’t make a decision, I just grabbed whatever was closest.” That’s fine, but recognize that your choice to just grab whatever was closest is, in and of itself, a decision as well. Fundamentally, it is a decision that to give any mental energy to thinking about what to wear is an expense too great given everything else you have going on in your life, or how tired you were at the time, or whatever other reasoning you might have had.
Now, recognize that in the blink of an eye, possibly in less time than your own brain could even recognize that you were doing it, you accounted for numerous factors. Cleanliness, comfort, easiness, likes, dislikes, when you last wore that item, pattern matching, alignment with your activities for the day, and so on all went into that decision – an almost limitless list of variables, and you did it in an instant.
Joy is everywhere and in every thing,
you just have to look to see it
The Amazing Data In The Mundane
And, the kicker is, no matter what you chose, it says something about you.
If, like we already covered, you just grabbed what was easiest and didn’t care one bit about anything else, that’s data.
If you picked your clothes to feel pretty today, that’s data.
If you picked clothes that were the only clean thing in the closet, that’s data.
If you picked clothes that you felt you had to wear to keep from catching hell from your boss or your spouse, that’s data.
It doesn’t matter, it is all informative. Moreover, it is informative of what is important to you, what drives you, and, as a result, touches on truths about who you really are.
And, this is a simple split-second decision you make every single day. You make millions of these decisions, most of them far more important and with more thought. And, yet, even in this tiny example we find a rich pool of data.
Every decision and action you make,
however ingenious or misguided,
is informed by joy.
What we do with that data, and how we create a life that constantly taps you back into your joy, is what we’ll delve into in the next post.