SNS86 Saturday Night Special – Why is Joy so Hard
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Welcome to tonight's Saturday night, special episode 86.
[00:00:06] Matt & Jocelyn Woodrum: [00:00:06] I'm Matt and I'm Jocelyn from the family life movement podcast. We challenge you to find a way to balance your work and your family. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this inspired stewardship podcast by my friend, Scott Maderer.
[00:00:24]first step
[00:00:25] Scott Maderer: [00:00:25] is to stop waiting, to be happy, stop waiting for it, to change and recognize the moments of joy that you have in your life today. Regardless of what's going on around, you recognize that you have control over your response. You can begin to add gratitude and joy into your life right now.
[00:00:49] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to [00:01:00] use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence.
[00:01:12] So that you can impact the work.
[00:01:15]In tonight's Saturday night special. I talk with you about why joy is so hard to find and why joy is even harder to sustain. Also share some tips on what you can do to actually sustain joy. Now, one area that a lot of folks need some help with is around the area of productivity. Getting not just more things done, but actually getting the right things done can be really tough.
[00:01:46] I've got a course called productivity for your passion. That's designed to help you do this and then to hold you accountable and walk with you so that you can tailor productivity, [00:02:00] not just to be getting more done, but actually getting the right things done. What's more, we take the approach of looking at your personality and how you actually look at things in the world and tailor the productivity system to your personality.
[00:02:15] Because the truth is a lot of the systems that are out there are written really well for somebody with a particular personality type. But if you have a different approach to things, they just don't work, but there's tools and techniques and approaches that you can take that will work for anyone. And we help you do that and productivity for your passion.
[00:02:36] Check it out over@inspiredstewardship.com slash launch. The strange thing about joy is it's often a lot harder to choose, to feel joy than you might think. We often think, if things are going bad and then things get better. We'll be able to feel joy instantaneously. We'll be joyous and [00:03:00] satisfied with how things are going.
[00:03:02] If you've been struggling to find your calling and then you find it, or if you've been struggling to find work, and then you find it, or you've been struggling with a health problem, and then you find it, you think now I've got things the way I want them and all find joy and I'll take to it instantaneously.
[00:03:21] I'll know that I'll have it in, it'll be back there. But the problem is that oftentimes it's a lot harder than that to actually feel joyous, even when things are going well, because the truth is, as soon as we begin to feel that momentary joy, we often have negative things that come out of the woodwork.
[00:03:46] We have experiences and feelings that come out of the woodwork. And begin to cause us to actually sabotage. Ourselves, those feelings of joy. And I wanted to [00:04:00] cover three big reasons why this can often happen to us. The things that can derail us when we've had a change that should bring us joy. And we've discovered that it doesn't.
[00:04:12] And the first one is familiarity and habit. The truth is that because we've been dealing with struggles for a while, we suddenly. Can recognize that when the situation changes, even if it changes for the better, that, that becomes a hard thing to recognize and feel because we've been experiencing that pain for a long time, it has become normal to us.
[00:04:42] And that normal is comforting. Even if it's not pleasant, it's still comforting because change is always hard. Change of any sort is always hard. And so by going back to routine, by allowing ourselves to go back to [00:05:00] feeling that discomfort in that pain, somehow it feels more comfortable. It feels better.
[00:05:05] The second reason is. Around our self identity and our self worth. The truth is that as I've talked about before, if joy comes in part from feeling comfortable in your own skin, from feeling satisfied with who you are, not that you won't continue to struggle and grow and try to get even better, but at the core, you're still happy with who you are.
[00:05:29] You're not feeling like you're not worthy of feeling joy. Then you can feel it, but oftentimes we go around sub consciously sabotaging our own happiness and joy because at our core deep down, regardless of what we say to others, we actually don't believe that we're worthy of those core beliefs. And the truth is when you begin to discover that you are worth it, [00:06:00] Then you can begin to feel it.
[00:06:01] And the last one is fear because the truth is when things start going well, and you find happiness again, but you've been struggling with pain and discomfort for a long time, then there's a part of you that just keeps waiting for it to go away. We keep waiting for the pain to come back. We keep waiting for the happiness and joy to go away.
[00:06:25] And we have a great deal of worry and strain and fear and stress because we expect it to end at any time. But the truth is you can derail that you can do some things to help you sustain joy for the first step is to stop waiting, to be happy, stop waiting. For it to change and recognize the moments of joy that you have in your life today, regardless of what's going on around, you [00:07:00] recognize that you have control over your response.
[00:07:03] You can begin to add gratitude and joy into your life. Right now, part of it is to recognize your own self-worth and to take care of yourself, to let yourself have the time and the space and the energy. To take care of yourself, recognize that worry is not getting you anywhere and begin to appreciate the small things.
[00:07:30] Take joy in the smallest of moments. Recognize that the people that you surround yourself with and the things that you allow into your mind are important. If you've surrounded yourself with nothing but negative people and negativity, and you watch the nightly news religiously, and you study social media and you're constantly focused on what's wrong with the world today, then it's going to be really hard to find joy.
[00:07:59] But if you [00:08:00] focus on finding the positive people in the positive moments, Then you can recognize the joy and work on laughing and caring, more loving, more people, building more relationships, having moments of bliss enjoy in your life. And then when you have it, of them calling them out to yourself, taking that routine time.
[00:08:26] To actually do the gratitude journal and really dwell on what it is that is bringing you joy in this moment today, focus on your breath and your energy and how it feels to be alive and allow joy to come into your life because you are indeed worthy of feeling joy. Thanks for listening.
[00:08:55]Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast, [00:09:00] as a subscriber and listener, we 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 enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.
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