As I was journaling yesterday morning, I realized a distinction that’s become interesting to me. I noticed that, for me, there are two kinds of Joy. Real-time and in-retrospect.

Real-time joy is joy I am feeling in that very moment. I feel this when I am hugging my kids or we’re all laughing out loud. When I am making art. When I am driving and a song I love is turned up loud and it’s sunny outside so I have the windows down. This kind of joy comes from a happy experience combined with presence and the feeling of aliveness. The feeling of being in this very moment, feeling grateful, and really just soaking it in.

In-retrospect joy comes in cases where I am not always enjoying the moment while it’s happening but the memories of it bring me a lot of joy. This can happen on vacation sometimes. With little kids and a lot of moving parts, vacations can sometimes we hectic in the moment. But then I come home and I look at our photos and relive the moments and I am swept with huge, deep joy.

This also happens with my projects sometimes. There are weeks when working on the Savor Project isn’t maybe super-joyful in the moment (or even the art is like that sometimes) but it’s always always joyful when I sit down with the album. Deep, satisfying joy.

I think both of them are valuable and add to my life in different ways. The in-retrospect joy helps develop delayed gratification which is an important skill to have in life. It also allows me to tap into joy in moments where I might not be feeling it. I can grab my Savor Project, spend some fifteen minutes and I am guaranteed to feel the rush of joy.

The real-time joy gives meaning and light into my days. If I had no real-time joy, I think life would be a lot harder to get through. With a four-year-old, however, there is plenty of real-time joy, thankfully. Having said that, when he’s not around, I am not always good at this one. And, as I was journaling, I was thinking that what would be good is to have a balance between the two. So that each week (and even each day) is full of both: things that make me joyful right now and things I do because I know they will make me joyful later.

Part of this is knowing what those things are. Identifying them, noticing them. So for the next week or two, I’ll be keeping track of the moments of joy and making a list so that I can then infuse them into my weeks deliberately. As much as I believe in serendipity and being in the moment, I also believe there’s something to be said for life by design (another post for another time) so this is how I start to design mine to be full of joy.

PS: I have a blog post up on the big picture classes blog today. You can read it here.

Last week had some rough moments for me. I went through a few days where I struggled so much that I had those times where the world just looks dimmer. It doesn’t even matter what started it and what added on top, what matters is that I found myself sinking and the hole was narrow and deep.

When I find myself in one of those, it requires a lot of clawing to get out. It seems easier to give up and just sit there. Easier to just cry, yell, or unleash it on others in some way. But, of course, that doesn’t get me out of the hole and I do more damage, and continue to look at the world with the glasses that block out the joy.

This morning, as I was journaling around 5:45am, I made a decision about the next three months. I gave myself the challenge that each time anything upset me, angered me, frustrated me, or even remotely irritated me, I have to immediately stop and think of something I am truly grateful for. Not one of those general “I love my kids” or extreme “isn’t it good to have arms and legs” ones. (Not that those aren’t amazing and important but I wanted to make sure I got specific, detailed and not hand-wavy to ensure I was taking it seriously.) I have to think of a specific thing I am grateful for in that very moment that makes my life magical. That’s special and wonderful about my life. Every single time.

This is not as much to replace the “bad” thoughts as it is to balance things out. I think that I have a tendency to assume “everything is terrible!” when I get in a downward spiral. The plan is that these moments I have to take to acknowledge the good will keep me and this potential spiral in check.

I already do a daily gratitude practice but I’ve come to think of this as gratitude on steroids. Gratitude with more in-the-moment presence.

I don’t know if it will work but I am going to focus on it consistently and try to make a practice of it and let’s see what comes of it. If you’ve ever tried anything like this, I’d love to hear how it went for you.