The Transformational Power of Joy

One of my favorite things about joy is that JOY TRANSFORMS! Joy is the tool that helps us become. Joy is the tool that helps us grow into our fullest potential – A Joyful You!

Joy is what makes all goals possible because it is a power that is transformational! It is what helps us create new habits, new patterns, a new mindset, and a new way of being so we can become a “new creature in Christ.”

Tune into this episode to discover three ways you can tap into the transformational power of JOY.

1. Get in touch with your true self
2. Stop seeking “faux joys”
3. God’s pattern for joy

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

• Email Rachael at rachael@ajoyfulyou.com
• Instagram
• Website
• 2 Nephi 2:25
• Belief Windows
• Stop Buffering Podcast

 

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Rachael Collins at the Joyful You Podcast; this is episode 65: The Transformative Power of Joy

Welcome to The Joyful You Podcast.  On this show I talk all about living a joyful life on purpose so you can be live well, feel well, and become your strongest, healthiest, happiest, most amazing self. Let’s do this.

I’m so excited about the topic of today’s show! Y’all know I love Joy. It’s the name of my business, my podcast, my coaching program, and basically the theme for my life. You could say I’m obsessed with Joy and today I want to talk about joy and hopefully by the end, you’ll be obsessed with joy too.

One of the reasons I love joy so much, well, let’s back up a little bit and let’s define joy first. What is joy? The dictionary defines joy as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness, but I have come to learn that it’s so much more than that. So, let me give you my definition of joy. In my opinion it is different from happiness. Happiness is fleeting, meaning it comes and goes, but joy is constant. It is possible to experience joy even in difficult times because joy can share space with other emotions. You can 100% feel sadness and grief or any other what we would call “negative” emotion simultaneously with joy. I have a sweet friend who recently lost her mother. She’s told me several times that she feels so much joy that her mom doesn’t have to suffer anymore and so much joy for the memories she has of her mom while sat the same time feeling deep grief and sadness.

I believe joy is an attitude that is present inside every one of us. It’s a gift from our loving Heavenly Father, a fruit of the Spirit as Paul calls it in Galatians, and it is something we were born with. We don’t have to earn it. We can’t buy it. We simply have to choose it. I love the truth found in 2 Nephi 2:25 “Men, meaning mankind, both men and women, everyone, Men are that they might have joy.”

The word might means permission to or possibility of. In other words, joy is a choice. It has to be intentional; it doesn’t just happen. We have to use our agency to choose it and to accept it. God will never force it on us. It is always our choice.

Here are a few other ways I’d describe joy:

Joy is of the soul not just in the moment.

Joy transcends.

Joy embraces peace and contentment

Joy is a practice and a behavior. It’s not something that once we gain it, it stays forever without us having to nourish it and consistently choose it.

Joy endures hardship and trials

Joy connects us with meaning and purpose.

Joy is a spiritual connection to God. Sister Cordon talked about this in her most recent General Conference talk, where she said, “As we bind ourselves to Him through covenants and ordinances, our lives are filled with confidence, protection, and deep and lasting JOY.”

Joy comes when you make peace with who you are. It is not externally triggered and is not based on other people, places, things, etc. For that reason, when you have true joy, self-esteem and self-respect are indestructible!

Can you see why I love joy so much and why I’m constantly preaching it?

This is not all though friend. My favorite thing about joy is that JOY TRANSFORMS! Joy is the tool that helps us become. Joy is the tool that helps us grow into our fullest potential. That is why my brand is called A Joyful You! That is our goal.

Joy is what make weight loss possible. Joy is what makes marriages and other relationships improve. Joy is what makes all goals possible because its power is transformational! It is what helps us create new habits, new patterns, a new mindset, and a new way of being so we can become a new creature in Christ.

Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want us to have joy. That is why they said, “Men are that they might have joy.” This transformational power of joy is what I experienced and learned on my weight loss journey of losing 50 pounds. As I chose joy, and aimed for joy, and practiced joy, and cultivated joy, and lived joy, I was transformed. My habits, self-talk, and mindset changed, and the weight came off.

How do we know joy, practice joy, and live joy?

Today I want to offer you 3 ways.

Way number 1:

Get in touch with your true self.

This comes down to identity. How you see yourself. There is a divine identity that each of us possesses that sometimes gets obscured by our human experience. When we start to belief the voices of the world that tell us we’re not good enough until we look a certain way, or accomplish a certain something, have a certain amount of money, a certain position, or  ___fill in the blank. Or we’re not valuable until we ___fill in the blank. Living from this false identity robs us of our joy. We often feel we’re not worthy of the gift of joy until we can earn it. We put a false sense of worth into what Stephen Covey calls our Belief Window. When we look at ourselves through our belief window, we are seeing ourself as we believe we not, not always as we really are. The goal is to see as God sees.

And in case you don’t know how God sees you, let me tell you:

Jacob 2:21 “One being is as PRECIOUS in his sight as the other.

Doctrine and Covenants 18:10 “The worth of souls is GREAT in the sight of God.”

God sees you as precious and great! Our worth is a given and it is always the same. It never changes. You were born with it. You cannot earn it. Think about a newborn baby. I recently had the pleasure of tending the most adorable newborn twins. I was immediately in love. I wanted to cuddle them and kiss them. These babies had done nothing to make me want to do this. In fact, one of them was super fussy. I think we would all agree that a newborns worth is great. When does this newborn lose it’s worth? Is it when it becomes a toddler and starts making messes and writing on the wall with a Sharpie? Is it when it becomes a sassy teenager and starts trying to think and do for itself? At what age does one lose their worth?

Has their worth really changed? No. God still thinks that sassy teenager is just as precious and great as a newborn. And God thinks you are precious and great too. Right now, exactly as you are. You don’t have to do anything to earn your worth. Believing this truth brings with it great joy

This was a hard concept for me. I was so wrapped up in the belief that I had to earn my worth and that God was unhappy with me because I wasn’t perfect, and would continue to be until I could become so.

If you struggle with this, I encourage you to do what I did. First of all, I had to loosen up the grip of my belief by changing it to: maybe it’s possible I am valuable and of worth right now. I also spent a lot of time praying in faith and asking God if he really loved me and if I had worth even after all the less than stellar things I had done, and the way I currently was.

At first, I felt nothing and the reason was because I kind of didn’t want to. I wanted to keep feeling sorry for myself and believing that God thought less of me and didn’t love me or think I was anything special fed this attitude. I was choosing my false self. I was choosing the opposite of joy which is misery. It wasn’t until I decided to cast away this belief and open myself up even if it was just a tiny bit to the possibility that maybe I was of worth and loved after all, that I was finally able to feel God near, whispering the truth to me. It’s like the analogy Dieter F. Uchtdorf uses of the umbrella. We have to put down our umbrella of unbelief so we can receive. I second Susan H. Porter’s testimony: “As we receive His love, we find greater joy.”

Way number 2 is to stop seeking external influences to experience what I call “faux joys”. So many of us have lost touch with true joy and we substitute it with faux joy. We either don’t know how to cultivate true joy or we forget it is a practice and something we have to be intentional about. We resort to quick fixes -things like addictive foods, binge watching Netflix, shopping when we don’t really have the money or we already have plenty -anything we can do that gives us a hit of pleasure usually just in the moment, but the negative consequences catch up to us. I call this buffering. I did a podcast on this. I link to it in the show notes. Buffering is also known as numbing. When we use these things that feel good in the moment but then they catch up to us and actually leave us worse off, we are robbing ourselves of joy. External influences cannot cultivate joy.

When I stopped using the faux joy of overeating, I was able to feel true joy. And boy does it feel so much better! Yes, it was hard at first to change my habits and to allow my cravings and urges, but it was 100% worth it. Elder Michael A. Dunn in his most recent October General Conference talk One Percent Better, encouraged us to “Seek modest but makeable fixes in your life that might result in the sweet joy of being just a little better.” Pick one faux joy you want to work on changing and then strive to change it 1% better each day.

Way number 3 is to use God’s pattern for joy.

President Nelson in his April 2020 Hear Him General Conference gave us this pattern. It is 3 things: Hear, Hearken, and Heed. Hear the words of the Lord. Hearken to them, and heed what He tells you to do!

If you’re unsure how to choose joy or what’s preventing you from choosing joy, or if you need help discerning the faux joys in your life that are actually preventing you from true joy, Hear, Hearken, and Heed. Ask God. Hear what He is saying to you. Listen to them. Put down your umbrella so you can really receive then, and them do what he tells you to do. If we use this pattern, President Nelson gives us a promise. He says, “I promise that your capacity to feel joy will increase even if turbulence increases in your life.”

Hopefully you love joy now too. And hopefully I’ve convinced you to choose joy because happiness isn’t enough.