| Do you feel joy easily? It can take work to evoke a feeling of joy at times.
I count myself as lucky. I found an exciting profession and I love helping people.
If I feel blue I can easily find joy in doing certain activities. One of those things involves canoeing while taking in the beauty around me.
I was not always like this. There was a time when being happy was not easy. My cup was always half empty.
I remember having an AHA moment with a classmate in 2002. I was in the middle of my Feldenkrais training and Barb was my study buddy.
She was one of those glass mostly full type of people. When something unpleasant happened (from my point of view) Barb would laugh, and say something that had a completely different perspective than mine.
In fact it was so different I started to feel myself wanting whatever she had! I found myself thinking, "I want that!!! I want more joy".
Being happy came naturally to her, but not me. So I started to pay attention. To what you might ask? I noticed the emotional differences in those different ways of seeing and reacting to the world.
I am reminded of this phrase from Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais and a previous blog on Self Image: "We usually act according to our ability. That means no one decides or plans what he does and knows how it should feel, what it should be. He does what he does and, at the moment, feels what he does. In other words, everyone acts according to the image of himself that he created during his life."
I was making myself miserable, and Barb was not. It was almost as though seeing things in a negative way was a habit of mine as well as taking things personally!
I hung out with her more and tuned in to the way she noticed her environment. I got better at being happy and I was more adept at noticing my own response to things around me. The Feldenkrais® Method also gave me the tools to think outside the box.
Taking a course in NLP from Larry Wells has given me a much better insight into my internal stories, and overarching belief systems. Now I understand better and can chuckle over some of my knee jerk responses.
Well, I can laugh at myself sometimes, not always. I'm not without ego and don't plan to be any time soon. It is definitely becoming more natural to amplify the joy, rather than the misery, and that makes me HAPPY.
When I am out in my canoe I call it my happy place. I think most people have a place that makes them happy. You might think of sounds, smells, or see yourself doing something, or feel sun shining on your face.
Whatever that might be, it is real and it is all yours. When you find life hard, evoking that happy memory can be a saving grace and can be recalled whenever you need to be reminded to feel joy. | 
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