How to motivate with joy

Joy is so important, it’s a great motivator and promotes loyalty, motivation, inspiration, growth, resilience, energy, and happiness. It’s always good to know what creates joy in your team, your family, your workplace, your social group, and especially for yourself!

Everyone knows what joy is but do you know specifically what builds and creates feelings of joy? or in fact, what works against it? Joy is our energy, if we don’t top up with it, we become sad, depressed, tired, angry, and exhausted. Not living our best life.

You can’t give joy to others, unless you are topped up and have excess joy to give.

Ways to energise & absorb more JOY

• Engaging in nice, fun enjoyable things

• Receiving things such as food, drinks, treats, gifts,

• Pleasurable activities, relaxing, watching a movie, a massage or afternoon tea

• Connecting with others, good family, children, supportive friends, a sense of belonging

• Peace, safety, calm, time out to pause, reading, learning, quiet time

• Happy company, belonging to a positive crowd

• Being positive and grateful for what you have

• Equality and kindness, receiving the same back (or more) as what you give out to others

• Appreciation, giving, and receiving thankfulness

• Fun and laughing

• Being creative (without judgment from self or others), dancing, music, art or singing

• A sense of achievement – a person win, overcoming a weakness, or learning something new

• A sense of helping others, giving joy, doing good or making a difference to the world

• Winning, succeeding, a sense of achieving progress or a goal

• Being in nature or spending time with animals

• Being very social if you are an extravert

How we feel when we are topped up:

Inspired, happy, motivated, energised, generous, helpful, supportive

 Things that drain our joy

You can’t give out joy to others if you are lacking in yourself. Feelings of lack can be any of the following:

Food, safety, finances, a home, time, health, rest, relaxation, happiness, peace, space, success, satisfaction, support, or belonging.

• Worrying about consequences or bad scenarios

• Drinking, taking recreational drugs

• Lack of physical or mental energy, exhausted, eating a bad diet, lack of sleep (or broken sleep)

• Stress, tension, anxiety

• Being serious and focusing too much on serious, negative topics

• Absorbing anxious negativity eg. news, social media themes, the films you watch, the book you read

• Being busy, no time to rest or time to oneself

• Anger, resentment, frustration, jealousy

• Grief, fear, loss, sadness

• Being bullied, excluded or abused (physicially or mentally)

• Being constantly judged or assessed for achievement

• Being policed, scrutinised, reprimanded, berated, or criticised for doing a bad job

• Competition with others, comparing to others success

• Striving to reach or maintain a high standard, perfectionism

• Being responsible for others’ safety or welfare, directly or indirectly

• Working hard, being active physically or mentally

• Losing, failing, not succeeding as well as you’d expected

• Thinking about lots of things or something complicated, learning new things

• Being too social if you are an introvert

How we feel when we are low on joy:

Feelings of apathy/depression, low mood, sad, unmotivated, uninspired, selfish, angry, exhausted, worried, anxious, taking from others.

We can feel depressed due to anxiety, which eventually takes its toll on draining our energy. Depression is also triggered when activities that are supposed to bring us joy are tinged with ways that drain us, such as wanting to win something (joy) but the process to get the win brings worry, stress, hard work, feelings of competition, comparing to others, assessing performance, feelings of beration at not being perfect etc. Sometimes the cost of the joy, drains more joy out of you than you receive. If you cannot see any ways of building joy without doing activities that will drain you more, you get stuck in a cycle of joy drainage that you cannot see your way out of and chronic depression sets in. Learning ways to create joy without the cost being more than you receive, is a mindset life skill and will keep you health in mind, body and spirit.

 Summary

Motivate yourself and your team with joy…not dictation or beration. Find ways from the build list to promote grow joy in your household, friendship group, or workplace…and most of all within yourself. Be inventive and see where it leads you.