A Sprinkling of Joy

The concept of an emotional baseline is introduced plus tips on feeling more joy in your day to day life. 

Find out more about my work: www.melindagerdungcoaching.com

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Transcript

0:16

Hey my friends. I want to talk about joy today. But first I want to talk about baselines. We all have an emotional baseline. Your emotional baseline is what is normal for you. Like what is your typical day to day feelings? On any given average day, what are the feelings that you experience? That's your baseline. Included in your baseline is also the intensity of the feelings. And it's normal to experience a wide range of emotions, but your like normal, typical resting state emotions are what I would define as your baseline. Kind of like, independent of varying circumstances, what emotions do you find yourself sitting in regularly? When I first got out of my abusive marriage, my baseline consisted mostly of anxiety, fear, anger, shame, at pretty intense levels too. What might have started out as feeling anxious because of abuse, soon turned into having a baseline that just consisted of anxiety. So even after I left my marriage and there wasn't an abuser to make me anxious anymore, I was still anxious. Because I had developed a habit, so to speak, of anxiety. It became part of my baseline. Part of feeling better post abuse is changing the makeup of your baseline. You have to consider what you would like to be part of your baseline and start deliberately adding that in so it can become a part of it. Much like how abuse became the catalyst that formed our baselines, we have to begin to create new catalysts and create new baselines. For me, this has consisted of dialing down the anxiety piece of my baseline. Now, I have general anxiety disorder. So I know that my anxiety is probably always going to be part of my baseline and I've made my peace with that. I am not at war with my anxiety any longer. But through a lot of thought work, the same kind I do with my clients, I have turned the dial way down on my anxiety. It is still a part of my baseline and probably always will be, but it's definitely not as loud. Because remember, intensity of feelings is also part of your baseline. My new baseline has a less intense anxiety than it used to have. Anger is still a part of my baseline, mostly because I tend to use anger as a masking emotion. So anytime I would be feeling something more vulnerable, like hurt or disappointed, I typically mask it with anger. I've left that part alone for the most part. I haven't really done anything with it. The biggest difference in my baseline now, apart from the lessening of anxiety, is the removal of shame and the addition of joy. And I want to speak particularly to the joy piece because what surprised me the most about it is that joy doesn't just come to you because you want it to. You can't just wish it into existence. You have to very deliberately create it and keep creating it. Because let me tell you, if I start slacking off on the intentional creation of joy, it goes away. Like I'm still at the point where I have to make sure I'm intentionally working that in otherwise it won't be there. I'm not sure if it will get to a point where that isn't the case, but it hardly even matters. What really matters is adding it in. I have to purposely add the things that bring me joy into my life and then on top of that let myself enjoy it. And that second piece matters a lot because you add a joyful activity like reading mystery novels in, but you guilt yourself while you do it telling yourself you should be doing something more productive or whatever, it totally defeats the purpose. You must both add joy in and allow yourself to savor it. And it is that second piece of allowing yourself to actually experience the joy that takes practice and that is what actually makes it become part of your new baseline. Emotions have to be practiced. This is something that I learned

becoming a coach: 6:16

that you can become good at feeling certain feelings. It becomes easier with practice to feel certain feelings in your body. Like I am well- practiced in anxiety. I'm very familiar with it. I know what it feels like. I can feel it with such an intensity because I am well practiced at it. Joy was quieter for me. I have to keep practicing it so it can get louder. So I can get better at feeling joy. So when you start to bring joy into your life and you start to feel joy, pay attention to how it feels in your body. Stay with that sensation of joy. Allow yourself to notice the feeling and notice what joy feels like in your body. Be present with it. Practice feeling joy. I know that sounds kind of weird to say, to practice feeling joy, but you will find that that will make a huge difference in the amount of joy you're able to feel in your life. And so I would invite you to ask yourself, what would you like your emotional baseline to be like? And how can you go about deliberately incorporating that into your life? How can you begin building a baseline that you want to have? And as always, if you would like some support with this, you can schedule a session with me. The link will be in the show notes. Until next time, my friends be well