Although this seems simple, it’s not easy. But it’s so, so valuable.

This is one reason I recommend having a success/accomplishment journal (or cookie jar). What you really want is to plant those successes and accomplishments in your brain and soul. One way to do that is to press them into a piece of paper (your journal). There’s a kinetic and cognitive energy that comes from writing things down.

You have to impress joyful things into your being. And we all have them even if we deny that on the superficial level. Joy is a relative term. I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood and spent most of my days afraid. But you know what brought me joy and allowed me to escape into another world? Listening to the radio for 2 hours while the Yankees played. I totally immersed myself in that. I kept score, I drew pictures of my favorite players. Anything. For those two hours I had found a place of joy.

Even now when I don’t feel well my joy is that I don’t have that horrific post-Shingles pain that made me want to kill myself (if you ever wonder “how” someone in chronic pain could contemplate suicide, let me know and I’ll guide you through it). Sometimes I have to remind myself that it could be worse and those are the times I remember to go back to when it finally went away. That’s funny too. I was extremely sick at that time but it didn’t seem that bad because that nerve pain had gone.

There are places of joy. You just need to do the work to search for them.

Whether it’s physical or emotional pain, the joy you find will ease a bit once you start to put your focus on the joyful things.