Rediscovering Joy. What lights your up?

When we are small children, we don’t overthink what we like. We simply enjoy what we enjoy.

We don’t worry how we look, or if what we’re doing is “good enough,” or “weird.” We simply live, breathe, play, experiment and explore. 

As we get older, we start looking to our peers for validation. We worry about being cool and popular. We need to use the right words, wear the right clothes and hang with the right people. We strive to fit in. In doing so, we contort ourselves to measure up to standards that are completely disconnected from who we truly are on the inside.

We lose connection with our authentic selves. We are so busy looking “out there,” and relying on the opinions of others to tell us if we’re getting it right, that we often stop listening to ourselves altogether.

In middle-age, if we are lucky, we begin to realize the folly of our younger years. We start the long journey back home to ourselves. We begin the hard work of rediscovering ourselves, our joy, and our inner wisdom.

I believe the loss of joy comes for a loss of connection and appreciation for who we truly are, what we love, and the gifts we have come to share with the world. A loss of joy is really a loss of loving and trusting relationship with self.

Thankfully, we can turn that around. We can start listening to our inner voice, our heart and our gut. As we start giving ourselves permission to do things our way, instead of seeking to please others, we reclaim our power, our choices and our own unique knowledge of what is truly best for us.

As we begin saying no to what is not for us, we begin making space for what is. Opportunities emerge and good friends enter our lives.

In the equine-assisted learning world, we call this being congruent. Our insides match our outsides. We are in alignment.

When we finally show up in the world as we truly are, the world meets us in that place. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where we rediscover our joy.