SO GOOD QUOTES

One of the most valuable findings from my research has been learning the distinction between joy and happiness. I go into this in more detail here, but the gist is that happiness is a state of being — longer-term and more complex — whereas joy is an emotion — immediate, momentary, and visceral. We spend a lot of time in our culture focusing on happiness and the pursuit of it. Because joy seems small, it often can be dismissed as trivial and inconsequential, making it easy to overlook.

Yet focusing on joy instead of happiness has been perhaps the single most life-changing shift to come out of my work. Because joy is small, it’s accessible. I might not know how to be happy on a particular day, but I know that I can find one or two moments of joy that I might not have had otherwise. One more moment of joy every day for a year is 365 more moments of joy, and that is significant!

7 EMOTIONAL LESSONS FOR A MORE JOYFUL LIFE
By Ingrid Fetell Lee