The Enjoyment Experiment
The Enjoyment Experiment
My middle name is Joy.
For real. And for whatever reason, I've always thought life was kinda funny. I'm often the one having a good time even when it looks like no one would. People often comment on my smile and how joyful I am. I get people who disbelieve that Joy is actually my middle name and not something I picked. And sometimes people don't believe that I am genuine in my enjoyment.
It can look disrespectful or unserious.
But isn't life to be enjoyed? Why else would we have come here?
If your answer to that is something along the lines of "to be serious and sad, thank you very much and I like it that way", then by all means, stop reading. If you want to enjoy life even just a little bit more, then carry on.
In the last few years of exploring the three principles that make up our life experience, I've come to see just how magnificently and how simply we are made. And how simple life actually is.
Our life experience comes from inside us. Not from outside circumstances. What we experience moment to moment comes 100% from our use of the principle of Thought, hung on the framework of consciousness and enlivened by the intelligent energy of all things. Attention on any one of these three principles, or aspects of life, changes everything. In working with coaching clients using transformative conversation and presence, we do just that. We attend to these three aspects of life, and everything changes for the better. Magically.
Human beings create an illusion so real that we don't see that it's just that - an illusion. A very real felt illusion. Don’t get me wrong, if you fall off a cliff, the pain of landing is felt. For real.
One of the many benefits of understanding life as an inside-out job is that people commonly stop taking themselves and life quite so seriously. If what you think is true about yourself, others, and any situation can change in a heartbeat or thought-beat, then we aren't quite so attached to it. We disbelieve it just a bit. This is where it gets interesting.
Part of how elegantly we are made is that once that happens, we lighten up. And when we lighten up, we become lighthearted. And then it's a whole new world. A whole different ball game, if you will.
We have a mind-clearing function that activates on its own as soon as we lift a bit. Our natural clarity begins to return. Our natural calm reasserts itself. We know what to do. We know it'll be all right. Our natural joy comes in. Life circumstances begin to change effortlessly.
Ever try to not laugh because you wanted to be angry, but the person you wanted to pick a fight with was cracking jokes? Funny jokes. It's impossible. Joy is contagious because it's an aspect of our natural state. Human beings are playful. We have such an amazing and varied wide world to play in.
We are made of pure spirit and create our moment-to-moment experience out of the infinite rainbow colours of possibility using the principle of Thought.
I tend to enjoy whatever I'm doing wherever I happen to find myself because, as a human being, it's my nature. It's what exists before all of my perceiving and thinking.
Here is the experiment, if you are up for it:
Over the next week, make it your priority to enjoy. Get out your "enjoyment" coloured glasses and put them on first thing each morning.
Start with things you already enjoy some, and with curiosity and lightheartedness, see if you can enjoy them a little or a lot more.
Maybe something you feel pretty neutral about can be enjoyable. Maybe you can see something differently.
If it's not enjoyable, don't worry about it. Move on.
Maybe some things you didn't think you could enjoy, you might.
Bring curiosity and wonderment to each moment. As in "I wonder what will happen? I don't know. "Would that be so bad?" "Could I savour this more?"
Focus on aspects that you already like and enjoy in a larger scenario.
Also, know that you don't have to enjoy anything if you don't want to.
We're creating our experience, why not enjoy it as we do?
With Love,
Sara Joy