Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I'm your host, Deb Maisner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach, and alcohol Free badass. I have found that there's more than one way to address drinking. If you've ever asked yourself if drinking is taking more than it's giving, or if you found that you're drinking more than usual, you may have reached your own alcohol Tipping point. The Alcohol Tipping Point is a podcast for you to find tips, tools and thoughts to change your drinking. Whether you're ready to quit forever or a week, this is the place for you. You are not stuck and you can change.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Let's get started.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Hello and Merry Christmas to those who are celebrating. I realized that my podcast was due to come out on Christmas and I was trying to think of what would be an appropriate topic. And then I remembered that I had done a talk about joy and ways to cultivate joy More joy in our lives back for one of my groups. I think it was last year, a year and a half ago, and I just thought what a nice topic to revisit on the holidays. I think a lot of us are looking for joy.
A lot of us look to alcohol to bring us joy. And then it didn't anymore. And now if you're someone who's thinking about removing alcohol from their lives, it's like, where do I find joy? How can I have a more joyful life? So I think that this will be really interesting episode for you to listen to. Like I said, it was a class that I recorded so you may get some background noise. It's not a perfect recording, but you know what? Nothing is perfect and I am not about perfection. I'm about progress and practice.
So I hope that this brings you a little joy and I want to thank you so much for listening. I am also going to invite you to join the next Alcoholiday which is a monthly dry group I run every month and of course I gotta do Dry January. Couldn't be a dry January without an alcohol a day. So I do want to invite you if you are thinking about doing Dry January. If you want a group and you want some tools and you want a safe place to practice not drinking, then come join us in the January group. As a podcast listener, you can always get 20% off with the code LOVE L O V E and you can go to my website alcoholtippingpoint.com/alcoholiday to sign up. Also put the the link in our show notes. Wherever you find yourself today, I hope that you are doing well and I hope this brings a little joy, a little glimmer to your day. Thank you so much for listening. Merry Christmas, Happy holidays.
Cheers to you all.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Well, thank you all for being here tonight to talk about joy. So today we're going to be talking about finding more joy in your life. And we're going to get into the importance of it, the benefits of joy, barriers to joy, which is interesting, and then just ways to find more joy. I have to say, I was always kind of intertwining joy and happiness, but as I did the research for this again and again, it was joy and happiness aren't exactly the same thing. Happiness is easily manufactured. It's come, can come from external sources. And joy is internal, it's innate. It is a core human experience and it comes from within. We all have the capacity to feel joy at any moment. And again, not relying on the external. It's internal, it's something inside that we feel. And it can be a state of mind. And again, it's the focus on the present moment, like it is in that moment presently where we feel joy.
I love Brene Brown's definition of joy. This is from the Gifts of Imperfection where she says twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments, often ordinary moments. And sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we're too busy chasing down extraordinary moments. Other times we're so afraid of the dark that we don't dare let ourselves enjoy the light. A joyful life is not a floodlight of joy that would eventually become unbearable. I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments, gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration and faith.
So leave it to Bernay to have a great explanation for joy. Twinkle lights.
So lots of reasons why joy is important. I mean, it's not only like a pleasant feel good feeling, but it also can help transform our lives for the better. It can broaden our perspective, it can enhance our creativity, it can increase our resilience, strengthen our relationships. And it can also help make us more compassionate, generous and altruistic. So it's really like a, a gateway, positive, almost said drug feeling that has so many cascading effects on our life, both mentally and then also physically. There are a lot of health benefits to joy. There have been studies that show that people who experience joy have a lower heart rate, a lower blood pressure, they have stronger immune systems, fewer illnesses, longer lifespans.
It can also help us recover from negative emotions more quickly when we can get back into joy. Tap into it and it can reduce the impact of stress on our mind or body. And they've had a few studies that they've done. They did one with none who wrote autobiographies. And they found that nuns, and I don't know why they studied nuns, but they did. But nuns who expressed more joy in their autobiographies lived longer than those who expressed less joy. And they also did another study that found that people who had more positive emotional states such as joy, they had a lower risk of stroke and disability when they were older adults. So great health benefits to joy. And then joy does increase those happy brain chemicals, the dopamine, the oxytocin, the serotonin, all those things naturally get released when we're experiencing joy.
Those things that we try to capture when we're drinking, we try to capture that, but nothing quite does it when we can do it naturally. And again, it will be in the burst, it won't be sustained, which I think is what we're trying to do. You know, when we're drinking, we're like, oh, I want to feel good, I want to keep this feeling going.
And so you see that there are some barriers to joy. And one that Brene Brown talks about is foreboding joy. And so that's, you're feeling joy, you're having a positive moment, but then you start to feel anxious, you know, you start to feel guilty or undeserving. When something good happens in your life, you start to feel dread.
And, and really what's happening is we're trying to protect ourselves when we're feeling vulnerable, we're trying to protect ourselves from getting disappointed. You know, we, we fabricate these worst case scenarios about post joy possibilities.
But then in the end we're diminishing the joy that we're feeling at the moment. And it just happens, it happens to a lot of us. And we're just trying not to feel disappointed. You know, we have seen, you know, when Brenna A. Brown was doing her research and especially for the book we were reading, the Gifts of Vulnerability, she was asking people when they experienced joy, what were they doing? And she found that they were often at their most vulnerable to. So the examples were like standing over my children while they're sleeping, acknowledging how much I love my partner, knowing how good I've got it, getting engaged, going into remission, getting promoted, having a baby, being sober. You know, so these things that are joyful can also make us feel vulnerable.
And part of that is just because there's this feeling of not Enoughness.
There's this deep scarcity. Scarcity just means, like, I'm not going to have enough. Maybe I'm never going to feel this way again. We're afraid that it won't last or there's not going to be enough, or it's going to be too difficult on the other side. So we feel not safe, we feel uncertain, and we're waiting for the other shoe to drop. That's pretty common expression. Like, okay, yes, it's good now, but I know the other shoe's gonna drop. I'm gonna feel shitty again. So we just kind of can't allow ourselves to feel joy sometimes because we do feel vulnerable and we feel scared.
And again, that's that kind of worthiness issue. Like, do we, do we, Do I even deserve joy giving, given that I'm imperfect? Like, we're all imperfect. So do we deserve joy? And of course, the answer is yes. Yes, we do. We can have joyful moments in sorrow too. So you can be going through a hard time. You could be at a funeral mourning someone, but there will be those little glimpses of joy's moments too that pop up during sorrow as well. So I just think, you know, a lot of people say, like, well, you can't hold two emotions at the same time. And I really disagree with that. I feel like you can. And that's just one example of the joy and sorrow and kind of mixing them together. And again, I'm thinking of Inside out, the cartoon, you know, the Pixar cartoon, where there's the character Joy and then there's the character Sorrow or sadness, whatever, I can't remember her name. But in the end, they took the main character's memory and made it into a combo of the joy and sorrow. Instead of trying to fight, like, who gets this memory? What is it tinged with? We find that they. They get tinged and combined together. So what Brene Brown says is using gratitude and to get us towards joy. So gratitude and joy, that's the antidote to scarcity and fear. And they find that those that live a joyful life actively practice gratitude. And in our book, the Gifts of Imperfection, this was guidepost 4. Guidepost 4 was gratitude and joy. And it was one of those emotions that she found came in pairs. So she found that people who experience more joy used gratitude and people who were more grateful had more joy in their life. So she really thinks of those as two connected emotions.
And so a way to transform your fear, your fear of scarcity or not enough or the other shoe dropping is to transform it to gratitude, which then can lead to more joy. It's kind of this idea of acknowledging the fear, the vulnerability, the scarcity, the not enoughness, transforming that into ideas of, like, abundance and gratitude and love and joy.
And so the. The fill in the blank that Brene has is acknowledging like, I'm feeling vulnerable, which may be in a joyful moment, right? But feeling vulnerable like the shoe, the other shoe is going to drop. That's okay. I'm so grateful for.
In and fill in the blank could be this moment for having a day without drinking, for connecting with my friend, for whatever that looks like to you.
So again, you're acknowledging the vulnerability and then you're leading with gratefulness.
And it was interesting today, too. I got an email. I get an email. I don't even know why. I've been getting some random junk emails, but one I'm kind of glad that I get it sends me quotes every day. And the quote today was a Buddhist proverb or proverb. And it was enough is a feast. And I was like, oh, you know, because we're always like, practicing like, I'm enough, it's enough, it's sufficient. It's this idea of sufficiency. Enough is a feast. So everything else is just extra. It's not needed, Superfluous, right? And there's a British version of the same proverb, and it's enough is as good as a feast. So I think this is an interesting concept that had to, like, think about for a while. Like, oh, yeah, it is enough, right? We're always trying to get the next thing and feel better and strive and get more. But, like right now, we're a nuts. Just sitting here, showing up, being present. That's enough.
And think about too, like your living situation, you know, like, there's. Are there nice things I want, like a new kitchen, right?
But I have enough. I have enough to take care of myself, to take care of my kids. It's just an interesting concept, but I find it helpful. So I just want to touch on gratitude a bit because it is, again, that antidote to not feeling enough and to experiencing more joy and so focusing on positive aspects of your life, writing out your gratitude list, doing a gratitude journal, practicing saying thank you to others, to yourself, reflecting each day on what you're grateful for, always to practice gratitude. And I know, like, it's a buzzword that comes up a lot, but there's a reason, because it does work and the research shows it works. So we'll point that out. And gratitude Is also another way to bring us back to the present moment. We don't really think of gratitude as mindfulness, but gratitude is what we're grateful for right now.
Again, focusing on right now, not what we're trying to get to. You know, like, not like, okay, I'll be grateful when I get my promotion or when my kids are graduated and happy and successful and whatnot. It's like, what am I grateful for right now?
Okay, let's move on to more ways to find more joy.
So one way is just all about your mind. Cultivating a joy mindset, just a way of thinking. One thing you can do is focus on your strengths. Instead of dwelling on your weaknesses or failures. Just acknowledge and appreciate your strengths and your achievements. Recognize what you're good at and what you've accomplished and then use those to overcome challenges and pursue your goals. Really focusing on that, sometimes we just kind of stay fixated on, on that one day we drink or on that one promotion we didn't get or whatever that looks like to you. Like just. But focus on like okay, but what did you get? What did you do? How many days have you not drank? Like really focus on that.
And this kind of leans into focusing on your positive qualities. So sometimes your strengths are action behavior focused. And then positive qualities may just be what's unique about you. What do you like about yourself? Maybe it's your sense of humor, maybe it's your kind, maybe it's your dance moves that might be straight, I don't know. Anyway, consider what is positive about you.
And then one of my favorites, practice self compassion. So just being kind and caring, understanding towards your yourself, especially when you're suffering or struggling. So, so important, you know it's going to help you with stress, anxiety.
It, it's going to lead you to more joy when you can be compassionate to yourself and then you can allow yourself to feel those positive emotions.
Really practice radical self compassion. Practice radical self care.
That's another, like cultivating a joy mindset is taking care of ourselves, whatever that looks like to you. Getting enough sleep, eating well, not drinking, exercising, moving your body, relaxing, having fun, just doing things that are taking care of you.
We can also shift our attention. So sometimes you get stuck in negative thoughts or emotions and affects our mood. So to break the cycle, shift your attention to something more positive or neutral. And you can even just use like distraction techniques where you go take a walk, take a cold shower, listen to music, watch a funny bed video, you know, just do something that interrupts that negative thought loop and you can reset, reset your mindset, be more open to joy and then finally being optimistic. So optimism, just expecting the best out of people, expecting positive outcomes, seeing the best in situations, just seeing the glass half full. And that can take practice, too, but it's where we're really. We're shifting, we're leaning into, okay, what's the best case scenario? Instead of always falling back on the worst case, like, okay, yes, what could happen if I go to that party? I could end up drinking. I could end up drinking too much, I might drive. I'm going to feel like shit the next day.
Shift that into be more optimistic. Like, well, what's the best case scenario if I go to this party? Best case is I don't drink. I rock a Diet Coke. I have a great time, I meet a new friend, I get good sleep, you know? So that's where we're talking about, like, okay, how can we lean towards optimism, which in turn makes us feel more joyful.
Okay. And then this slide is just about how to feel joy. So how to actually feel it in your body. Like, when you have those moments of joy, what does that actually feel like in your body? And because sometimes we get kind of disconnected from our body and the sensations that are going on. So the next time you have a joyful thought, and we're also going to do a little mini meditation, too, really capture it and breathe into it. Use deep belly breathing. Because when you hold your breath, that kind of keeps us from getting the emotions flowing. It can also cause more anxiety when we are holding our breath. So really breathe through it so that you can allow it and accommodate it and just practice feeling the joy in your body.
And I just, I find this fascinating. When they do these heat maps of people when they're experiencing different emotions, it's just a reminder, like, we really feel our emotions in our body and so really tapping into, where are you feeling it? What does it feel like? What's lighting you up?
Some people describe joy, like, as a lightness in your body or feeling a little warm or maybe bubbling on the inside. Some people cry like tears of joy.
Sometimes it's like your whole body. Sometimes it's flickering. It's like your heart. You can see, I mean, this is for happiness, but you can see, like, that heart is. Is full and happy and the whole face lights up like a light bulb. So that's kind of like that joy coming from the inside to the outside, which is really cool. And then using mindfulness to capture joy. That concept again of being in the Present moment. That's where we can feel joy and recognize like nothing lasts forever. Everything fades, everything goes. You know, we talk about life being 50, 50. Sometimes it's awesome, sometimes it's awful. So how can we really pause in that moment with mindfulness and experience it without trying to change it? Because sometimes we want to either keep it and hang on to it or we get afraid of it, we want to suppress it or whatnot. So it's just allowing it instead of avoiding it. We're adopting it, we're acknowledging it, we're accepting it, we're flowing with it and just recognizing. Because these moments pass, these pleasant moments, joyful moments, we want to be there to experience them fully. And that is what mindfulness allows us to do. It allows us to pause and really experience the beautiful moments.
Some of the stuff I'm going to talk about next really involves being with other people and the connections that we have with each other. That being so key to tapping into joy. So one is singing and dancing.
Obviously you can listen to music and release feel good hormones, but there is something specific about singing, singing in a group that is going to release even more endorphins. It's going to promote even more positive feelings. It can even change your perception of pain.
And it's so interesting. It can be a stress reliever. They had a study that was showing they were measuring cortisol, cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And they were measuring it in people before and after they sang. And they found that people who sang in a group felt more relaxed, they had less cortisol after singing. So I thought that was really cool. And you can also get the same effects, reducing your stress levels if you're singing in a group or by yourself. They found that singing together can stimulate your immune response. It can boost your immune system. Super cool stuff there. And then that whole connection, that sense of belonging and being together, it's just. And you see it all the time, like people want to get together and sing. They, they will do it at sports games, they'll do it in pubs that, you know, we have all these choirs, we'll go to concerts. Just. There's something about being together and singing together and moving together, dancing together, that is so beneficial for us. Okay, so move your body. That is a way to tap into joy. Any kind of exercise or movement. Get curious, think again about what did you like to do when you were a kid. Maybe make a list of things you want to try or haven't done since you're a kid. Pick something to try out this week. Maybe it's a new class you could go to. Maybe you haven't been hiking. Maybe you want to ride a bike and you haven't ridden your bike for a while. You know, just kind of get curious about it and try something new just to get yourself moving. Being in a group again, that there's that extra boost of feel good hormones of reduced cortisol when you're exercising with a friend or you're in a group.
Another thing is getting out into nature and just experiencing, just being somewhere that's greater than ourselves.
And I mean, sometimes we can't get to those areas easily in our lives. Maybe you are just purposefully noticing more awe.
I mean, think about, you can just go outside your house and look at some little flower that's popping up through the sidewalk or the ground, or just like really studying the leaves on a tree, really looking at the clouds in the sky and just really taking a moment to like savor this experience and the colors and, and the sensations and maybe how things feel and how they smell. Just really getting into nature and appreciating like what a, what an amazing world we live on. Okay, let's get into more ways to cultivate joy in everyday life.
So one is, and we kind of alluded to this before, stop waiting to be happy. Like, you can choose it now. You don't have to get to a certain milestone or place in your life. You don't have to postpone your happiness. You can feel it now. Even when you're going through rough times, even when you're changing your drinking, even, you know, find those moments of happiness in every day because it's just going to make it easier and it's going to want to make you continue to go forward in a more positive way.
Having positive affirmations, ones that sound like, I am joyful, I am grateful, I am loved, I am willing to feel love or to feel joy. I am open to joy. So kind of think about those affirmations, especially if you're like, I can't quite get to I am joyful. You know, how about I am willing. And I think something that has stuck out to me again and again is the willingness and using that word willing. Like I can sit with that. That kind of is a bridge into another emotion or another way of thinking. I can be willing to accept a new feeling. I can be willing to try a new experience. There's, there's just something that I like about that word willing.
Visualizations can be really powerful and at times your Mind doesn't know if it's actually seeing it in real life or visualizing it. It can still produce the same hormones and neurotransmitters. So you can still picture yourself on a beach, in a forest with your family, Some kind of scene that can be really powerful.
Surround yourself with positive people again. You know, it's that energy rubbing off on us, on each other. It's contagious. So really try to surround yourself with people who are inspiring you, who support you, encourage you, make you laugh. You know who you want to be around with. And you'll start to act like those people too.
Laughing, more laughter. One of the best ways to find more joy in everyday life. And it's so good for us. It reduces our stress hormones, it boosts our immune system, releases endorphins, improves your mood, enhances social bonds. There's just so much that we can turn to with humor that, that helps us tap into joy. And there's even like laughter clubs. Did you all know this? Like, you can literally. And you stand around in a circle and you start laughing, like, start. And you can start fake laughing too. And you just start, like, laughing, and that becomes contagious. And then you feel silly, right? And then it's more laughter. So looking for meaning, finding meaning in our lives, whether it's through our work or hobbies, relationships, spirituality, learning new things, growing, you know, just kind of tapping into what you're passionate about. What are your values? What are your goals? How can you make a difference? Those are ways to find more meaning in your life, to tap into just that cultivation of more joy in everyday life. And recognizing still, like, you're not ignoring the negative aspects of life, those are always going to happen. But just recognizing that you can lean more towards this joy side, you can make the most out of any situation. Look for the best in yourself and in others. I love this little frog. I love, to me, I'm like, that frog just knows how to live, right? And so simply noticing and savoring the small things like we talked about, just when you're outside side noticing the different things in nature, when you're out with people and someone walks by and smiles at you, a stranger, like, take a moment to really notice it and savor it. Like, oh my gosh, that person just smiled at me.
Like, just feel good. Like, oh, thank you. Thank that person. Silently in your head, you know, you can even really get more focused and try to focus on something that is pleasurable. Try it for 20 seconds. So if that's a flower like really take 20 seconds to look at the flower and notice everything about it. How it smells, what the texture is, the colors, how it feels. Just really encode it into your brain, make it more memorable.
You can replace the FOMO the fear of missing out with Jomo, which is the joy of missing out. And so sometimes this goes with like our boundaries talk too. Like sometimes when you say no to something, that opens you up to do things that you would rather do instead of what you think you should do, right? So, so joy of missing out. Embrace that. You could be out, you know, at the bar watching people take shots, or you could be home all snuggled with your little pet and have your face mask on and maybe you're watching your favorite Netflix show and you're just so grateful to be home because you're. It's the joy of missing out. I really be cognitive about where you're getting your information from, whether that social media, the newspaper, you know, things that, what's your feed look like if you're on Instagram or Facebook? Like, is it stuff that's making you feel stressed and unhappy? Really be mindful of that and think about how much you want to pay attention in your day to those information inputs because they can really affect us. And then tap into your senses. Tap into your five senses. That's the sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. Really use those to just enjoy the beauty that's all around you. Really like with your food, really savoring it. The smell, the taste, the look, everything. The music you listen to the music of birds outside. Like really take a moment to engage with it. And again, you could do that 22nd, tap into it, really savor it, get it into your brain, imprint it.
And then finally what you can do, and you can do this for homework or any time, is write out your joy list. So what are some things that you find in everyday life that bring you joy? And then make a list of all those things and then try to do at least one of them every day. And you can think small picture, you don't have to think big picture that it can be your tea, it can be, you know, I, I put a little list together. I like, I love the, the smell of the outdoors after it rains. I like looking through photos. I like Kim's photo.
I like snuggles with my dog, you know, listening to an old 80s song, having tea outside, getting new flowers, the color pink, doing like search for the color pink, whatever that looks like for you. Like really having this list of cool, awesome things you can turn to and focus on and it will just make your life more colorful. Just improve it because that's what we're here for, right? We want to feel better. We want to live life to our fullest. So that is one way you can do it.
So I think that's all I got for you.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. Please share and review the show so you can help other people too. I want you to know I'm always here for you. So please reach out and talk to me on Instagram at Alcohol Tipping Point. And check out my website, alcohol tippingpoint.com for free resources and help. No matter where you are on your drinking journey, I want to encourage you to just keep practicing. Keep going. I promise you are not alone and you are worth it. Every day you practice not drinking is a day you can learn from. I hope you can use these tips we talked about for the rest of your week and until then, talk to you next time.
