When I first took my personal development seriously about a year ago, I happened upon a guy named Brendon Burchard. He was energetic, always smiling, and was happy to the point of being annoying.
Who is this guy and can he stop all the smiling?
But for whatever reason, I kept listening to what he said and finally responded to an ad to get this book that kept being shown to me, High Performance Habits.
I’m not affiliated with Brendon in any way and I’m not just singing his praises for the sake of it.
The first section of the book is about Energy and how to generate your own. Of course when I started reading it, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.
Yea, sure, I’ll ‘generate’ energy when I get a full night’s sleep.
But the following phrase popped up and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
BRING THE JOY.
Those three words were stuck on the back of my eyelids. It was all I could think about.
The analogy he used made the concept click in my brain:
The power plant doesn’t HAVE energy, it GENERATES energy.
Let me back up for a minute. I used to describe myself as a very angry person. I wore it like a badge of honor. I hated the world, the people in it, and I hated myself. I had been through so much I felt like the world owed me something that I just wasn’t getting. What I didn’t realize is that it was no one’s fault but my own.
The things that happened to me weren’t my fault. But allowing it to run my life years after the fact was a choice I was making every day. Every time I told someone I was an angry person, I was making a choice to live up to that persona. I couldn’t even fathom the concept of not being that person. So when I stumbled upon this concept of bringing positive energy on purpose, my whole world was rocked.
First, I was angry. I was straight up pissed off. I was mad at myself for allowing it to go on this long. That I allowed myself to get so worked up at all. I was mad that no one taught me this, that everyone just seemed to act like this was normal. I was angry that I lost so much of my life, that I opened myself up to this life of being the victim.
Then, something beautiful happened. I felt this overwhelming sense of peace. I was calm and grateful. I remember this moment like it was yesterday.
This was about a year ago, in the beginning of 2019. I had gotten up out of bed to use the bathroom. When I came back into the room and sat on my bed, I glanced over at my son who was sleeping soundly on the other side. I started crying. They were tears of sadness, grief, gratitude, and hope. It was as if I was given a gift, as if God himself said to me, “You don’t need to be angry anymore. You don’t need to carry this with you. You have been given the rest of your life – live it joyfully.”
My entire life flipped itself on its head. It’s as if a completely new world was given to me. I started finding things to be grateful and thankful for. I started looking for reasons to be happy. I became very aware of others and their emotions. I began to search for ways to make them happy, to be a beacon of joy in their lives.
I don’t want to come off as now I’m this Pollyanna-esque, “always happy” kind of person. I am most definitely not. I still have to make that choice every day, every hour, every moment to bring the joy to the situation. Being the single mom of a five year old – it isn’t always easy.
But what I believe the actual magic here is that I allowed myself to actually feel what my initial emotions were. I was angry and I allowed myself to be angry. I didn’t try to stifle it. I really felt into it. Then when I was sad and grieving the time that I lost, I allowed myself to be sad. I pushed myself to become open to these emotions and just rolled with it. I spent a majority of my life pushing feelings away, whether they were good, bad, or indifferent.
Allowing myself to actually feel these things taught me an important lesson: that I am capable of feeling true emotions and when they were done, I let them go.
This showed me that I truly am capable of not being an angry person, that I’m capable of feeling things beyond anger and sadness.
This is what taught me that I am the power plant. That I can change my energy, that I’m in control of it. Making the conscious decision to choose joy every day has impacted every part of my life.
I’m a better mom, daughter, sister, friend. I’m a better coach, I’m more productive.
I know this whole concept can be overwhelming and frustrating. It took me a long time to really break down how to apply all I had learned to make it work.
To save you time, I’ve created this cheatsheet. It’s a step by step guide that you can follow to bring the joy in every area of your life. Click here to download it and start adding joy to your life today.
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