The Practice of Seeking Joy

The Practice of Seeking Joy

I’ll be honest with you: joy is not something that comes to me easily.

I don’t naturally wake up like Snow White—dreamy and alert, with a bunch of cute forest animals around me, ready to assist me with my day. As a single mom of two with plenty of things to take care of, there is usually a low-level hum of stress and fatigue that greets me as I open my eyes each morning.

But I’ve learned something that has changed the way I move through my days: joy is something I have to seek.

Not because it isn’t already there, but because I have to be willing to notice it.

On the heaviest mornings, when I open my eyes and immediately feel the weight of my  to-do list, my financial responsibilities, I turn to my breath. I deepen it. I stretch my weary body long beneath the covers. And before I let my mind run ahead into everything that needs to be done, I pause and think about how grateful I am to have another day—to be here, to live, to learn, to experience it all.

This, I’ve realized, is a kind of yoga practice, too.

Yoga teaches us to return. To the breath. To the body. To the present moment. And perhaps most importantly, to what is here rather than what we wish were here.

Joy works much the same way.

Once I’m downstairs and my kitchen duties are done, I make my way outside to our backyard. I sit in a chair with my coffee and watch the world wake up.

I notice the morning light.

The changing colors of the leaves.

The hummingbirds busy in the lemon tree.

I listen to the birds calling to one another. I take in the colors of the flowers. I feel the cool air against my skin.

Nothing extraordinary is happening.

And yet, everything is.

This quiet ritual has become a kind of life raft for me. When things get difficult, when life feels heavy, when I am tempted to focus on everything that is missing or everything I cannot control, I come back to this practice of noticing.

Because joy, I’ve come to believe, is not the same thing as pleasure.

We can certainly experience pleasure through shopping, drinking, a beautiful meal, a new dress, a vacation, or a relationship. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying those things. But pleasure depends on something happening to us. Joy can be much quieter and much more enduring.

Joy asks us to participate.

To seek.

To notice.

To be grateful.

No one can give you joy, and no one can take it away from you. You can’t buy it in a new dress, and you don’t have to lose it when a relationship ends. It doesn’t disappear simply because life becomes difficult.

It is always there, waiting for your attention.

This doesn’t mean we have to pretend that hard things aren’t hard. Gratitude isn’t about denying sadness, exhaustion, disappointment, or grief. It’s about making room for something else alongside them.

A difficult day can still contain a beautiful morning.

A tired body can still feel the warmth of the sun.

A broken heart can still be moved by birdsong.

A life filled with responsibilities can still hold moments of wonder.

Every time we turn our attention away from lack and toward gratitude, something shifts. We become available to what is already here.

And maybe that is the real practice of joy: not chasing happiness, not manufacturing positivity, but learning to recognize the small, beautiful things that have been quietly surrounding us all along.

Like yoga, it is a practice.

We return to it.

Again and again.

And each time we do, joy is there—ready to nourish us.