I’m very excited to launch this blog to enable Joyfinders like me who are awakening to their true joy and purpose to share their journeys, and their ways of finding this kind of joy. Over the next few weeks I hope to share some of my paths and experiences, because I am so amazed and happy that I’m finally beginning to experience something of what we read and hear about ‘out there’, about raising our levels of joy and ‘consciousness!!’
Also, my intention is to connect with all you other marvellous people out there who feel that you are on a similar kind of ‘spiritual’ journey of awakening to joy, or any other blissed-out core states you’d like to mention. It’s mainly for people who are interested in non-religious paths, as there are plenty of other avenues for you all to explore how different religions could help you to experience joy but you could share very briefly exactly what has helped you feel joy- if you are really feeling highly joyful all the time!!
I’m interested to know what sort of techniques or sources of inspiration you use, that could be used by anyone and everyone to find joyful states -rather than things, objects or people that are very specific to you… and definitely not about anything that most of us would find distasteful or reprehensible! However that still gives us a fairly broad remit and of course any unsuitable entries would be moderated and deleted..
Some ideas or CATEGORIES I had in mind might be:
Techniques (NLP); Techniques (Other);
Seminars; Workshops;
Meditation (we could create different categories for different types if necessary)
Sources of inspiration for joyful moments/feelings such:
Uplifting films that are positive and hopeful (particularly ones where the protaganists triumph over adversity or are heroes!)
Great websites or web-clips
Outstandingly joyful people (famous or not)
Great & unusual sporting moments (particularly as above!)
Personal Stories (of our own-or others but only if you have their permission..)
Links to websites or people that have helped you to connect to your joy!
Any other useful categories or ideas…
Well, that’s probably enough for now -just to let you know what my vision for the blog is…
Unfortunately I will have to stop here as, although I woke up feeling an unusual kind of bliss sweeping through me countering the normal not so joyful state(!), I haven’t been able to keep at bay the unblissful cold now sweeping over me-despite feeling joyful at the possibility of connecting with other like minded journeyers! Well I guess it just goes to show that it really IS a learning curve probably with a few back-tracks and hiccups along the way and hey!… I never promised you instant enlightenment!!! In fact while I think about it, perhaps I should clarify that this blog is for mere mortals on the journey, not any smart alecs or gurus offering instant fixes or nirvana in the next moment….although ideas/stories of rapid change are welcome! Neither is it for any kill-joys or anti-this or thats who insist that if we all did it ONLY their way & gave up whatever their pet-peeves are, we’d all be more joyful….blah..moan..blah! And here I am thinking of some authors in particular who just seem ANTI but don’t have any positive agendas ideas or ways forward..
This blog is really about a mutually respectful sharing of positive, uplifting and inspirational ideas, sources and techniques for us all to become Joyfinders in increasingly greater depths and dimensions…well- they do say “Aim for the stars..” don’t they?! And if anyone knows who the ‘they’ is who first coined or used that phrase-let me know..it might be kind of interesting..
Well- I’m off for a rest..sometimes that really is the best option for finding all kinds of joy, including the joy that comes from being really healthy and refreshed- after all, no matter how blissful we feel we still need our bodies to do things now and then!!
Authentically joyfully
Mrs Magnificent Joyfullyfabulous….who as a relative beginner is off to take her cough mixture and thereby minimize her risk of being slapped by all the pollyanna haters out there…!!
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Michael de Groot said
Hello,
I think you will find this article fascinating;
December 5, 2008
Forget six degrees of separation. How about three degrees of happiness? Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have mapped the relationships of happy people and found that happiness is a collective phenomenon that spreads like a virus through social networks – affecting even strangers three times removed from each other.
The theory builds on the notion of emotional contagion, the process at work when a person smiles back at someone who smiles at him. Human emotions appear in clusters, behaving like stampeding animals, says study co-author Nicholas Christakis.
“You would never think to ask a particular buffalo in a herd, ‘Why are you running to the left?’” says the Harvard Medical School sociology professor. “The whole herd is running to the left.”
Misery, on the other hand, does not love company as much as happiness does. “Unhappiness doesn’t spread as intensely or as consistently as happiness,” he says.
Researchers found that happiness spread more intensely in social networks among those who were happy.
The research, being published today in the British Medical Journal, is the latest analysis of data gleaned from the Framingham Heart Study, a longitudinal U.S. survey begun in 1948. The researchers, who have previously published similar findings on the spread of obesity and smoking from the data, focused on 4,739 individuals over 20 years, accounting for 50,000 social and family ties. As the mantra goes in real estate, the top factor in happiness is location, location, location.
Using a standard measure of well-being, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale, they found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend who lives nearby experiences a 25-per-cent increased chance of becoming happy. And the more centrally located you are in your social cluster of happy people, the more likely you are to become happy.
“Popularity leads to happiness, not happiness to popularity,” Dr. Christakis says.
Next-door neighbours who became happy increase a person’s happiness by 34 per cent, whereas a neighbour who lives merely on the same block has little impact.
“For emotions to spread you have to see the other person or interact with the other person,” he says.
Even your proximity to happy people you don’t know is a factor. While a person becoming happy affects his closest friends, a friend of that friend also experiences a nearly 10-per-cent chance of increased happiness. Take one more step, and a friend of that friend enjoys a 5.6-per-cent chance of a happiness boost.
How does this work among strangers? Dr. Christakis uses the analogy of the adoption of fashion trends.
“You start changing your fashion in clothes because a person four degrees removed from you adopts a different habit.”
While previous work in the area has shown that a person’s emotions are highly influenced by her spouse, this research found an 8-per-cent boost – small, compared to a next-door neighbour’s whopping 34-per-cent influence.
Dr. Christakis attributes the discrepancy to the fact that his research found happiness appears to spread more through same-sex relationships than opposite-sex relationships.
They also found the happiness ripple effect doesn’t happen at work. Our happiness has no effect on that of our co-workers. While Dr. Christakis says he’s not sure why this is, he speculates that it may be due to inherent competition in the workplace, or even schadenfreude.
Ulrich Schimmack, a happiness researcher and associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto (Mississauga) who did not work on the paper, says he is impressed by the study’s method, which measured multiple points of view about both relationships and happiness.
And while he says tracking the increase in happiness in a social group over time is an important finding, he says the study may not have taken into account the effects of environmental factors, such as changes in employment or income, that may have had a blanket effect on people within the same social network.
“That becomes very tricky to separate,” he says. “Contagion is possible, but they may just be responding to similar changes in their environment.”
Dr. Christakis says he controlled for this possibility, as well as for the tendency of happy people to befriend other happy people. Even when these factors are taken into account, he says, there is an additional “flow of happiness.”
Shared happiness has probably affected human evolution over time, he says.
“It would make sense that happiness is more socially productive,” he says. “There’s a survival advantage to emotional contagion … it increases group cohesion.”