Don’t let fear steal the joy out of life.

I heard that last night in a show we were watching (Sweet Magnolias, for inquiring minds…don’t judge us) and it really spoke to me.

At a time where it seems like there is something new to fear every single day, it can feel increasingly harder to find the joy in life. And, a lot of times, it can often feel pretty pointless.

The optimistic dreamer in me wants to find the positive, wants to focus on the good and the joy. If you give up on believing there is good, you give up all hope, you let fear win, right? But the realist/pessimist in me questions doing almost anything at all when it feels like the world is about to implode at any given moment. Like what actually is even the point of trying anymore?!

For me, there’s also this sense of being stuck. Like you want to do something good, but then feel like no good will matter up against so much bad. Or you want to work on a goal/yourself/your business but almost like it doesn’t matter when every day feels the same. Or that you’ll come across as selfish or out-of-touch for trying to do something happy for yourself at a time when so many are struggling. Or like the effort to keep it together isn’t worth it when everything you can’t control is falling apart.

Is this a rough year? No question about it. Does every day feel like a rollercoaster of emotions? For sure. Is a meteor going to take out the world? Possibly. Is there some new disaster every single day? It kind of seems like it. Do we have to worry about a pandemic, small businesses closing, people losing jobs, racial injustices, fires, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, explosions, increasing crime, elections and more? 1000%.

But here’s the thing. We only have one life. This isn’t a practice round or a dress rehearsal, there isn’t a do-over, there’s no second chance. And unfortunately, the reality is that sometimes this one life that we have is messy, scary, unfair and hard. There are good days and bad days and good seasons and bad seasons and that is just part of life. And while we can’t always choose what season of life we’re in, we can determine what we do while we’re there.

Of course, when things are good, it’s easy to see the good. It’s like a pretty Instagram filter slapped onto real life. But when things are bad, everything feels really, really bad. It’s easy to spiral out of control saying negative things to yourself or others, thinking terrible thoughts, getting down and out. But remember, no one bats 1000 100% of the time. No one has good days every single day. It’s not possible, whether it’s 2020 or not. So, instead of stressing out about a bad day or a bad season, or trying to force it to be something it’s not, or trying to control something you can’t, learn to just let something be what it is while focusing your energy on the things you can control. In short, you can’t change reality, but you can change your perspective and your attitude.

Now, don’t take any of that to mean that I have it all figured out. Far from it. Most of the time these days I’m struggling to just get by and complete the simplest of basic tasks, like washing dishes and remembering to put on deodorant. But I know that I don’t want to look back to this period and only remember the bad. I don’t want to look back and see someone who didn’t try to shine a light into the darkness. I don’t want to look back at this time and see someone who sat around just waiting for the bad times to pass on by. I want to look back and see someone who chose joy- finding it, creating it, sharing it, spreading it, savoring it. Joy.

Finding joy doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, I wrote a whole post earlier this year about little joys and why they’re important and how you can easily add them to your life. It truly is amazing how even the simplest of things can bring joy. For example, we snapped these photos on a stop we made during one of our recent drives to Malibu. We frequently drive up PCH into Malibu as a bit of an escape. For the most part, we usually just go up and back. This particular time, though, we took a new-to-us road, we stopped and got out, and we even brought a picnic dinner to enjoy while watching the sun set over the Pacific. It was nothing groundbreaking, it was nothing fancy, it wasn’t even anything that required much more effort than we normally put in. However, those small changes brought us joy not only at the time, but for the rest of the week afterwards. And it’s that joy that I’ve been trying to find, or add, to the rest of life. There’s so much happening right now that I have absolutely no control over. You can’t add joy to things you don’t control. But I do have control over my actions, my habits, my thoughts, my words, my rituals. And that’s where the joy can be added. In the morning and evening routines, in the daily tasks, in the candles I light, in the perfume I wear, in the way I set the table and the way I do dishes, in the way I take vitamins and drink water, in the roads I drive and ways I enjoy a meal, the books I browse through and the bookmarks I use to save something noteworthy, the businesses and causes I support, the fresh flowers on the table and the notes I write to loved ones and the stamps I use on the envelopes…It’s in these tiny details, the details that make up a day, that make up a life, where there is so much joy to be found and to be had.

And never feel bad about finding that joy in your life. Because here’s the thing, the more you find the joy in your own life, the more you’re able to help other people find their joy. The more you choose joy today, the more it accumulates for your tomorrows. The more joy you choose for yourself, the more joy you have to give others. I hope you can choose to find, create, share, spread and savor the joy of your life today, whatever today may look like for you. Because today is your life. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. Yesterday was a memory that you can relish in today, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, but today, well, that is where your life is lived. That is where the joy is.