Where is your pure joy — that which refreshes your soul?
Have you been so busy denying joy in your life that you’ve started to kill the spirit of who you are?
Life has a way of crashing in on our joy-giving activities.
We get so busy doing stuff that the pure joy activities get shoved to the end of the day where we never get to it. We tell ourselves, “Tomorrow I will ….” But our tomorrows get consumed in the fires of urgencies.
We high achievers are typically lousy at taking care of ourselves.
We are so burdened with the agendas of others and our own overscheduling that our days are consumed, but we’re left unnourished. Eventually, our identity becomes our work as we become more outward focused, driven, and impatient. We pay for our “accomplishments” with the currency from our joy account and we risk being overdrawn or burned out, bummed out, and thrown out.
Many years ago, my daughter and I were working out at the local high school track. As Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame described the pure joy of just running, I too felt “His pleasure” in that moment. No crowds and no cheering, just the physical wonder of using my body as it was designed to be, and being with my daughter, Anne, whom I adore.
Let’s avoid the all-too-common mistake of not tapping into the joy of who we are.
The price of such denial of the deep self is costly by any measure. Putting off joy drains the wellspring of well-being.
Go! Take your walk on the beach, or paint your masterpiece, or pray, or read a great book, or serve the poor. Be who you are and do what you were called to do.
Do what it takes to refresh your spirit, feed your soul, and restore the essence of who you are. As you do this more often, the scrumptious serendipity is that you’re also nourishing the world. Life falls more into place both peacefully and powerfully simply because you are being on-purpose. We all gain when you are joyfully who you are in the process of being and becoming you.
How to make On-Purpose progress
A My Life ON-PURPOSE membership features four courses to help you tap more deeply into who you are and to discover your inner seeds of joy.