Episode 834 Joy Versus Happiness
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 834 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm
[00:00:08] Ryan Englin: [00:00:08] Ryan Englin with core matters and the blue collar culture podcast. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasure is to live out your calling.
[00:00:21] Having the ability to grow yourself and your business is key and way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.
[00:00:34] Scott Maderer: [00:00:34] trust me. I will admit to this. I am not perfect in this. This is something I've been working on. I've been keeping a daily gratitude journal. Now for several years, it's something that I've paid attention to over a lot of time. And yet there are still days and times where I struggled to find the joy in the moment.
[00:00:54] I'm
[00:00:55] Ryan Englin: [00:00:55] Ryan England with core matters and the blue collar culture podcast. I challenge you to [00:01:00] invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasure is to live out your calling, having the ability to grow yourself and your business is key.
[00:01:12] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Mader.
[00:01:19]Scott Maderer: [00:01:19] And today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about why joy and happiness. Aren't the same thing I talk about why focusing on joy is better than just focusing on happiness. And I also share with you some tips on how you can begin to see joy in your life.
[00:01:38] You've heard me talk about developing your talent and one of the best ways to do that is through books. But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free [00:02:00] trial.
[00:02:00] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via audible. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. So all this week, we're spending a lot of time talking about joy and happiness.
[00:02:27] And the truth is they're not the same thing. I talked a little bit about that on Tuesday, but I wanted to go into it a little bit more. Right now, happiness is external it's based on the situations, the events, the people, the places, the things, the thoughts it's. Based on hope it's often future-oriented in that it puts all of the eggs of happiness into something that has to happen from outside of you.
[00:02:58] That aligns perfectly [00:03:00] with your expectations from inside of you and the fact that these things don't usually align generally cause us to have moments of unhappiness instead. But joy is a consistent feeling. That's cultivated internally. It comes from being at peace with who you are with why you are, how you are understanding yourself, how you're wired, how you act, understanding how others are wired and how they act and not being dependent upon them.
[00:03:38] But instead being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable in who you are and how you exist and your relationship with God and with others, so that you become centered and mindful of your own connection to joy. It's not tied to [00:04:00] those external things that this is why joy is not created by stuff.
[00:04:05] Which we'll talk more about tomorrow. Instead, joy is created by those feelings that come out of ourselves. This is one of the reasons why therapy and spending time actually understanding yourself can be so valuable in bringing you long term joy. And the truth is focusing on joy is more powerful than focusing on happiness, because you can develop yourself.
[00:04:34] You can learn about yourself, you can grow yourself, you can develop a better relationship and feeling around yourself without having to depend on others to change. It's something you have more control over. And because you can focus on this, you can focus on growing yourself and your own relationship and your own mindset and your own beliefs.
[00:05:00] [00:04:59] You can control reaching joy. You can very seldom control whether or not a particular moment brings you happiness. But interestingly, as you find a deeper connection with joy, you will find more and more moments of happiness as well. So what are some steps that we can take to begin to see joy in our life?
[00:05:23] We talked about some of them yesterday, but I also wanted to go into some more today. One thing is you can limit your exposure to negativity that may mean limiting your social media exposure, limiting exposure to things like the news media. It means limiting what enters your brain because garbage in means garbage out.
[00:05:47] This is one of the reasons why I also talk about using meditation and spiritual and prayer time as a way of beginning to find joy. It's also the power of a gratitude [00:06:00] journal, because as you write those things down, that you're joyful for each and every day, your brain begins to look for those things during the day.
[00:06:09] See, we see what we see because we prime our brain to think. About it and to look for it. And as we do that, we begin to open up our moment and it really doesn't matter whether you're looking at things that are happiness or joy. In fact, I would argue that writing gratitude for both of those is important, but what's interesting is if you do this long enough, you'll find the things that bring you the most happiness are those things that aren't just external things.
[00:06:41] There are things that are connected in a deeper way. There are things that grow your relationships. There are things that help you communicate better with others. There are things that deepen your spiritual walk, there, things that develop you as a human being in a way that you weren't developed before.
[00:06:59] The things [00:07:00] that really change and challenge you are often the biggest moments of joy. This is why you can find joy, even in challenging and difficult times. But what's interesting is you have to begin to cultivate the mindset of finding joy all of the time or else. Whenever those difficult times come, you automatically respond, recognizing that you're not feeling happy and you equate that with not feeling joy, but the truth is if you can cultivate this in good times, Then you can see it even in bad times.
[00:07:37] And trust me, I will admit to this. I am not perfect in this. This is something I've been working on. I've been keeping a daily gratitude journal. Now for several years, it's something that I've paid attention to over a lot of time. And yet there are still days and times where I struggled to find the joy in the moment.
[00:07:58] This is something that you have to [00:08:00] do as a regular habit and routine, to be able to create that mindset so that in those days where it's really hard to find the joy, you can step back and refocus and reorient yourself and recognize that even at the worst of times, There is joy to be found and that you are supposed to be a joyful person.
[00:08:27] This is. Part of what we're called to do into the world. This isn't fake happiness either. It's not about not being sad. It's not about not feeling grief. It's not about not recognizing the emotions that you feel and accepting those and being present in those it's about recognizing that beyond those.
[00:08:47] They're still things to be joyful for. Thanks for listening.
[00:08:53]thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we [00:09:00] challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent.
[00:09:18] And sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent, or if you're in the us, you can text four, four, two, two, two talent tips. That's talent tips to four four, two, two, two, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world. .