Why Joy and Happiness Need Each Other

1. Joy can be experienced without happiness.
2. Happiness relies on external and irregular occurrences.
3. Joy is a conscious choice that we can make everyday for ourselves.
4. Joy needs happiness.
5. When we spread happiness as a result of what we feel inwardly, we can equip others with the ability to experience joy when they spread happiness.
6. You can't spread happiness if you don't experience joy.

At first glance, joy and happiness might seem like the same thing. The two are similar in many aspects, but they are very different. However, joy and happiness actually need each other.

Joy is something that comes from an inward source. What is the reason for this? Joy is a conscious choice and does not rely on outside sources. Happiness on the other hand is something that is caused by external and irregular occurrences and it happens accordingly. We have to make a conscious choice to experience joy. When we make that choice, we are taking a step in the right direction.

Did you know that joy can never be taken away from us? Since joy is a conscious choice we make, it is something that can't be taken away from us. The only way someone can take joy away from us, is if we take it away from ourselves. We can hold onto our joy!

Joy is precious, so we have to feed it. We have to maintain the strength of our joy. Because joy is a conscious choice, our joy is something that can get hungry. Do we feed ourselves when we get hungry? Do we exercise when we need to build up our strength? Joy is like a plant. Feed the plant of joy, and it will grow, but ignore it, and your joy withers away.

How do we feed our joy? As mentioned before, we have to make the conscious decision to experience joy in our lives. Making that choice is the first step. The second step in feeding our joy is to spread it. This is where joy actually needs happiness.

Remember that happiness relies on outside and irregular occurrences. When we have joy, we certainly have the power to spread our joy when we do things that cause people to experience happiness. We have the power to place an external and irregular occurrence into someone's life path and present them with happiness as a result of what we have chosen to feel inwardly. When you use the outside circumstances of happiness as your own tools to build up your joy, you can spread joy to others. Once you realize there aren't enough people in the world who do good things for others, that should set a fire inside of you to go out and spread happiness- knowing that you can make a shining difference in this dark world.

Here's the twist. We actually don't need to be concerned with someone's journey towards experiencing joy. All we have to do is spread happiness all around us in our own creative ways, and people on the receiving end of that happiness will naturally want to make someone else's day. When they spread happiness, they are actually feeding their joy whether they know it or not. It just needs to be started with our own conscious choice to experience joy. If we don't make that conscious choice, we can't really get anywhere. Spreading happiness is a result of what we feel inwardly as joy.

Concerning joy, we must react externally as a result of what we feel inwardly. The more happiness we spread around us, the easier it will be to make a conscious decision to experience joy each and every day. Joy is like a muscle. You have to train it up. If we choose joy only to keep it for ourselves, we end the cycle. Joy needs happiness. Please don't end the cycle of joy. How do we equip others with the ability to experience joy? Spread happiness as a result of what we feel inwardly as joy. When we spread happiness as a result of what we feel inwardly, we can equip others with the ability to experience joy when they spread happiness. Do you see it yet? It's a cycle.

Joy and happiness are nothing without each other. Even in the darkest of times in our lives, when there is no happiness around us, we can choose joy and spread that happiness around us as soon as we create it. Joy needs happiness. Happiness is spread with joy. Happiness needs joy. Joy and happiness are different, but they need each other, and it's up to us to help ourselves and help others. Choose to experience joy today, and when you can, go ahead and spread a little bit of happiness around you. The world needs a little bit of both, and just like joy and happiness, we're all different but we need each other.