The Joy of Feeling Joy

Joy is the intense feeling of happiness and fulfillment. It is a state of mind, body and spirit. Joy is a feeling of elated satisfaction in life, love and spirit. Joy is different things to different people.

So, why do we wish to feel joy? It's very simply a pleasurable, satisfying feeling. It is a feeling one obtains when all is right with their world.

How do we obtain joy? There is no set rules for finding joy. Joy begins deep within a person's heart. Here are a few tips to help lead you to the road to feeling joy.

• To feel joyful you need to first be content and peaceful with yourself.
• Try to spend a short period of time each day doing something you enjoy and are good at.
• Pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself whenever you do something right and good.
• Stay connected with people who make you smile, who make you laugh.
• Treat yourself as though you are someone important, as though you are someone who matters.
• Be grateful for the little things in life. - A baby's smile, a gentle breeze.
• Make goals, make them realistic and obtainable.
• Look inside yourself - be spiritual.

• Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give. - Eleanor Roosevelt
• Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy. - Sarah Ban Brethnach
• Joy is a constituent of life, a necessity of life; it is an element of life's value and life's power. As every person has need of joy, so too, every person has a right to joy...It is a condition of religious living. - Paul Wilhelm von Keppler
• Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Joy is not in things, it is in us. - Richard Wagner
• Joy, rather than happiness is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as being of worth and dignity. - Rollo May
• May your walls know joy; May every room hold laughter and every window open to great possibility. - Maryanne Radmacher
• To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth. - Pearl S. Buck
• Joy is the feeling of grinning inside. - Melba Colgrove
• Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression in joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy. - Oscar Wilde
• We French found it and called it joie de vivre -- the joy of living. - Renee Repound
• Joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living, in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge...Joy is there everywhere. - Rabindranath Tagore
• Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams. - Patch Adams
• Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift. - John Dryden.
• Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow. - Helen Keller
• The primary joy of life is acceptance, approval, the sense of appreciation and companionship of our human comrades. Many men do not understand the need for fellowship is really as deep as the need for food, and so they go through life accepting many substitutes for genuine, warm, simple. - Joshua Loth Liebman
• Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. - Thich Nhat Hanh
• Short is the joy that guilty pleasure brings. - Euripides
• We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are..Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring but for the life itself. - R.J. Baughan
• One joy scatters a hundred griefs. - Chinese Proverb
• Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are. Joy is not necessarily what happens when things unfold according to our plans. - Marianne Williamson
• A joy that is shared is a joy made double. - English proverb
• Gratitude helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness, where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong. It makes us feel complete, that we have everything we need, at least in this moment. - M.J. Ryan
• Drink deeply. Live in serenity and joy. - Buddha
• Life does not require you to sacrifice or compromise your joy to get what you want. Joy is what we want , so when you choose in harmony with it, you are fulfilling your purpose in living. - Alan Cohen
• Listen to the clues. The nest time you feel real joy, stop and think. Pay attention. Because joy is the universe's way of knocking on your mind's door. Hello in there. Is anyone home? Can I leave a message? Yes? Good! The message is that you are happy, and that means that you are in touch with your purpose. - Steve Chandler
• There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. - Kahlil Gibran
• Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it. - Greg Anderson
• Joy of life seems to me to arise from a sense of being where one belongs...of being foursquare with the life w have chosen. All the discontented people I know are trying sedulously to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do. - David Grayson
• Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. - Mother Teresa