By: Dr. Barbara Eaton

Like you, I listen to a lot of books on Audible and/or audio trainings in my own boot camp. I would like to give credit to the author of the concept of Happiness Versus Joy; however, I cannot remember who was talking about it. Sound familiar? ; )

The author was distinguishing between happiness and joy. He accurately stated that we commonly have an outcome attached to happiness. “I’ll be so happy when I am finally done with chiro school…” or “I’ll be so happy when I finally make my first $500k.” or “I’ll be so happy when we’re finally married…have kids…the kids leave….” etc. You get the idea. Happiness is most commonly connected to an outcome or expectation.

Joy, on the other hand, is deeply connected to our individual decision to, in essence, choose happy regardless of the outcome. For instance, we don’t have to wait to hit that $500k mark to make us happy, we can instead be joyful because of the individual lives that we’re touching dy in and day out that then leads to $500k.

We can experience immense joy in the process of getting to the outcome. Joy is the by-product of a person’s conscience decision to live life on their own terms and therefore to be grateful, but never satisfied.

When we’re just simply trying to do our best v DOING our best, we leave room for failure. When we actually do our best-giving it our all-growth is the by product. There is great joy in knowing that we DID our very best. 

If you’re not experiencing the level of happiness and joy that you desire, I invite you to look inward to those things that you simply tried to do, but then when it got hard, or when you didn’t get the result you wanted, you gave up and moved on. Determine if the outcome is something you really want in your life and if it is, study the process necessary to make it happen and focus on the person that you must become in order to achieve those results. 

Commit to completing all of the action steps within the process. Focus on who you will become in the process and lean into that transformation. Joy will radiate from within you, yielding eternal optimism and satisfaction. You will be characterized as someone who is always happy because you stopped just trying in life-you finally started doing.

Focus on being the person who completes that work that you know is required in order to be happy.

Thanks to so many of you who reach out with input, feedback and encouragement. I greatly appreciate each of you!!

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