Tools to Build Resilience: 2) Cultivate Your Joy and Aliveness

Welcome to this third article in the resilience series—and how to grow it 🙂 You can read the resilience introduction here, which looks at what resilience is—and why it’s more important than ever to grow it. And in our second article we looked at what beliefs power our resilience and give us a strong, healthy mindset.

In this article we’ll look at 5 powerful ways you can cultivate your joy and aliveness.

First, why do joy and aliveness fuel our resilience?

Well, the brilliant Brené Brown said it well:

Joy, collected over time, fuels resilience—ensuring we’ll have reservoirs of emotional strength when hard things do happen.

And the great thing is that joy is “trainable”

For most of us, our feelings of joy and aliveness decrease from childhood into adulthood as we grow up and gain more life responsibilities. Yet joy and aliveness returns later in life for many as our increasing age reminds us that life is precious—and to enjoy every moment!

And this points to the fact that we can all find more joy and aliveness—at any age—if we choose to cultivate it.

But it can be hard to cultivate joy in today’s busy world where we’re often over-tired, over-committed and over-stimulated.

So below I share 5 ideas to nurture and grow your capacity for joy and feeling alive. And for each one you’ll find tips and an easy exercise to boost your resilience.

Here are 5 Ideas to Cultivate Your Joy & Aliveness

As you read each idea below notice which ideas resonate with you—and which ideas you resist or scare you! TIP: The ideas that scare you are likely the ones that will give you the most joy and aliveness—if you are brave enough to try them!

1) Dance and Sing

Dancing and singing are fundamentally human ways to express ourselves. Yet so many of us feel awkward and uncomfortable putting ourselves out there, fearing judgement and ridicule.

And I speak from personal experience! I remember being at a wedding, standing at the edge of the dancefloor and desperately wanting to dance, yet my cheeks were flushed with shame—and self-judgement. Fast forward a few years, and I will often dance at home on a Friday night or be seen on the dancefloor. With the help of my Fierce Kind Self, I now “feel the fear and do it anyway”—and love it!

When we dance and sing, we’re expressing ourselves through our bodies and it’s a powerful way to connect with ourselves—and experience joy and aliveness.

Dancing and singing are in our genes…

Dancing and singing is something humans have done since our very beginnings: between 500,000 and 1,000,000 years ago our ancestors had a specific bone in their throat that allowed for singing. There are also cave-paintings that show us dancing approximately 10,000 years ago.

7 quotes to inspire you to dance (or sing)!

1. “While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance.” Hans Bos
2. “Dancing faces you towards Heaven, whichever direction you turn.” Terri Guillemets
3. “On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined.” Lord Byron
4. “There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.” Vicki Baum
5. “To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.” Agnes De Mille
6. “There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.” Edwin Denby
7. “We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.” Japanese Proverb

2) Assume the best

Assuming the best or a positive outcome helps boost our resilience by keeping us in a positive frame of mind.

A question for you: If you’re going to spend your time and energy thinking about what could happen (because you have no idea how things will actually turn out anyway), why not assume the best?

• Consider how you feel when you focus on and worry about all the negative things that could happen. It’s hard to be resilient when you’re down in the dumps and feeling drained! This is the opposite of feeling joyful and alive…
• Now consider how you feel when you assume a positive outcome, or imagine all the ways things could work out for the best. How does this feel? Perhaps you’re excited and feel more connected to yourself, others and your life?

When we assume the best, we have more energy for the rest of our life—including being more resilent.

PS. You might also like to grab that resilience belief: “It’ll all work out in the end (and if hasn’t worked out, it isn’t the end).”

3) What Makes Your Heart Sing?

The “What Makes My heart Sing?” tool for joy and aliveness is one of my all-time favourite coaching exercises.

In it you make a list of things that make your “Heart Sing”. Now you have an abundance of ideas that boost your joy, uplift your heart and are good for your soul.

And I believe you’ll be surprised by what you put on your list. Because without giving too much away, the secret to this joy-boosting exercise is that these items will likely be small and easy to do (so why don’t we do them more?).

When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life. Jean Shinoda Bolen

4) Create things to look forward to

Aliveness is a quality where we are connected to—and engaged with—life. And often when we feel bored or disengaged from life it’s because we don’t have things to look forward to. This could be:

• Small things to enjoy give our physiology a boost—that can also create a helpful distraction and uplift during difficulty and challenge.*
• Larger things we have planned that, assuming they go well (and even when they don’t), become markers in our lives, breaking up the routine of everyday life and creating lasting memories.

* Of course we shouldn’t overuse pleasurable activities as a distraction from life’s challenges. But when used consciously, small pleasures can be helpful.

This is a little like setting a series of mini-goals—commitments to yourself—that keeps you looking ahead with a smile.

So, choose some things you’ll enjoy doing and put them in your calendar. Perhaps spread them out over the next few months to maximise the impact.

To support you, try our free resource (part of a recent giveaway): the Kind 3 Month Goal-Setting for Fun & Resilience Workbook

Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us. They are essential to really keep us alive. Robert H. Schuller

5) Embrace Humour

We humans love to laugh. Did you know the earliest discovered jokes were written by scribes from southern Mesopotamia on clay tablets somewhere between c. 4500–1900 BC?

And there has been lots of research that proves laughter is also just plain good for you, helping with stress relief, reducing pain, boosting our circulation and immune system and much more. In fact I found this interesting read about actually prescribing laughter!

And here are 5 ways to bring more humour and laughter into your life:

1. Seek out humour. Watch funny movies, go to a comedy club or watch a comedian on TV. Another idea is to watch funny pet videos on Youtube and Instagram etc. (but if you’re going to do this I recommend setting a timer!).
2. Choose to spend time with people or friends who make you laugh.
3. Maintain a sense of humour. Work on being willing to see the funny side of things. Especially when you or others make a mistake.
4. Join a laughter yoga club (where people gather for the express purpose of laughing).
5. And a final idea for anyone feeling brave: Join an “improv” group. Improv will boost your confidence, and help you learn new ways of thinking, being and expressing yourself. Just do a web search for “improv group near me”!

Wrap-up

So, what do you think? Can you imagine that feeling more alive and growing your joy would boost your resilience?

We may not be able to force the feelings of joy and aliveness, but we can create the conditions and mindset where joy and aliveness are more likely to flourish. And the more you create and use those neural pathways, the more easily you can recapture and recreate those feelings!

Here are 3 final quotes to inspire you:

1. “I think humanity has forgotten—this planet is for joy.” Alice Walker
2. “Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.” Hafiz
3. “Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the joy is to miss all.” Robert Louis Stevenson

And remember: Resilience is a skill! So you can build healthy resilience and make life easier—if you work at it, take care of—and believe in you.

Lastly, we’d all love to hear what works for you! What makes you feel joyful and alive? Share with everyone in the comments below.

If you liked this article on building resilience through joy, you may also like:

• Build Your Resilience: 1) A Strong, Healthy Mindset and 7 Beliefs to Help
• What is Voluntary Simplicity? 10 Easy Ways to Live a Simpler, Kinder Life!
• Get Motivated: 6 Super Ways to Energize, Refocus & Lose those Blahs

Change the world. Start with you!