  
Joy Replacement Therapy: Your Prescription for a Joy-Filled Life!
by Anne Nelson
From your soul to your senses, joy is accepted, rejected, noticed,
ignored, savored, severed, shared, withheld, increased, denied, or multiplied. You choose when and how to have joy in life.
Your choice is influenced by the beliefs that are deep in your soul, planted in childhood and affirmed through the use of
your senses and emotions as you became an adult.
What you believe is what you see—until you learn differently.
Think
about how you grew up. Think about your home life, schooling, religious beliefs, and friendships. In all areas, well-intentioned
people told you what they believed to be true. They all did what they could as parents and mentors to influence you, protect
you, and teach you what they thought was best for you.
Did you hear statements such as the following?
Money
doesn’t grow on trees.
Being rich doesn’t make you happy.
We each have a cross to bear.
Beware the hand
of God.
Children should be seen and not heard.
Stop daydreaming—you’re wasting time.
With grades like
that you’ll never amount to much.
It’s better to give than to receive.
You can’t do that.
It can’t
be done.
It’s a hard-knock life.
Don’t rock the boat.
Don’t go against the grain.
Only in your
dreams.
Only the good die young.
Life isn’t a fairy tale.
Boys like him are nothing but trouble.
We all
have to pay our dues.
It’s always darkest before the dawn.
It’s a weight you’ll have to bear.
There’s
a price to pay for happiness.
What other statements did you grow up with in your home, church, and school?
Joy
Replacement Therapy
You can decide to change the negative beliefs you knowingly or unknowingly carry with you. You
can unload those ideas that hold you back from accepting joy and abundance in your life. Joy Replacement TherapyTM is the
way you jump-start your joy from a clean slate. This technique helps you change worn out thoughts or beliefs, one at a time.
Move past an old belief by replacing it with a new one. Consider the new mantras below, or create your own, to replace ones
that are not working for you anymore.
Money doesn’t grow on trees. Money grows in my IRA.
Beware the hand
of God. God’s gifts of mercy and grace await us.
Children should be seen and not heard. Children should be seen and
heard.
Stop daydreaming—you’re wasting time. Daydreaming is a good use of time.
You can’t do that.
You can do anything.
Don’t go against the grain. Be your own person.
It can’t be done. Anything is possible.
It’s always darkest before the dawn. This too shall pass.
There’s a price to pay for happiness. Abundance
is your birthright.
Put Joy Replacement Therapy to work for you right now. What other thoughts or beliefs would you change?
Write down the worn out belief and then a fresh, new version. When your beliefs are what you want to believe, then you’ll
begin to create your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to generate more joy in your life.
To take it a step further,
what you focus on in life, you get back in multiples, and what you focus on directly affects the flow of joy into your life
each day. When you focus on some thought or feeling that negatively affects you in some way, you need to replace that thought
or feeling. If you are looking straight ahead, you see one thing; if you turn around, you see something different. The picture
changes. In the same way you need to pivot in your mind from thoughts or feelings that close off joy to those thoughts or
feelings that bring joy into focus for you. Joy Replacement Therapy will help you turn a joyless perspective or situation
into one of joyful abundance.
You generate joy in your life by seeing the joy in life. It then naturally multiplies
over and over again. Joy Replacement Therapy is one quick way to shift your focus to joy. It’s like a bubble bath for
your soul. It simply feels good.
Deliberate Joy
If you live with deliberate joy, you reach the point where your
life is full, but full of what you want. Living with deliberate joy gives you the ability to experience life around you on
your terms. It is having good things in life flow to you. It is living guilt-free and feeling satisfied and confident about
the choices you make. It is letting go of obligation and acting from an innate point of desire. It is a new level of self-discovery
that brings you back to the point of being able to dream again, to recognize the miracles around you. Living with deliberate
joy fills your soul with the warmth and love of all that is intended for you by your Creator.
Your life is what it
is because of the choices you have made so far. As you already know, these choices will take you to either the pits or the
possibilities in life. You have the power to make choices and changes that will give you the life you are intended to live—a
life filled with joy. Everyone deserves joy in life. You deserve joy in life. Start today.
**
This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. To get complete details
on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life”, visit http://www.selfgrowth.com/greatways2.html.
Author's Bio
Anne Nelson, author of Find Your Joy Zone: How to See What Makes You Happy
and Love What Makes You Real, is an expert in the joy of daily living. Anne has studied her own and other people’s lives,
both to tackle what’s missing and to openly celebrate what makes us thrive. Like night vision goggles for those dark
corners of life, Anne’s practical solutions bring out the Aha! in all of us. She is a speaker, direct sales entrepreneur,
and the founder of http://www.YourJoyZone.com, designed to help you bring out the best in yourself—personally and professionally.
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Are You A Worn Out Woman?
by Ellen Besso - Life Coach for Women
The women I speak to and read about often
say that they feel overwhelmed with their lives. Career, kids, partner, home. Where is the time for me they ask? But is this
question really a call for change or is it a rhetorical question?
Could it be similar to the way many women respond
to perimenopause issues? In the fall of 2007 a local retailer of women's clothes called me. She told me she advertised a menopause
support group in the newspaper so she could share what she had learned and help other women. But not one woman replied to
her ad! She just couldn't understand it because women were constantly speaking to her in the store about their issues. (This
didn't surprise me at all as women had not responded to my call to Embrace the journey of menopause, but that's a story for
another time).
We concluded (and I know this is a simplistic analysis), that (some) women wanted to complain about
what was happening to them but not initiate change. Is it the same with feeling worn out?
How we blend our personal and
work lives is a matter of choices. I'm not saying it's easy. I am saying that it's imperative that we give this subject careful
thought. Because there are only so many hours in the day. And one woman has only so much energy to go around.
Where
is it written that we must succumb to a grueling, joyless schedule? Is it true that women must put everyone else's needs before
their own? (think boss, coworkers, kids, partner, service clubs, church, etc.).
Listing everything we are doing in
our personal and work lives along with amount of time spent on it and carefully examining the items may yield surprising results.
If you want to take it one step further, quickly, without monitoring, rate each item from+10 down to -10 (with +10 being 'I
love it'; and -10 'yuk!'). With your lowest-numbered items you have 3 choices:
* Don't do them at all
* Do them for
shorter time periods or
* Do them less often
This clever exercise was designed by Martha Beck. I use it often with
my clients. You may be surprised at the answers that emerge. And you will definitely be pleased with the time you have freed
up.
Brenda Lautsch, Associate Professor of Business at SFU in Vancouver, BC, and Michigan State U professor Ellen Kossek,
have co-authored a book called: CEO of Me: Crafting a Life that Works in the Flexible Job Age (Wharton Press).
It's
filled with tools for taking charge of and organizing a life that works on your terms. Their most startling discovery was
that a flexible job (such as telecommuting, flex-time or self-employment) doesn't automatically improve your work/life situation.
Lautsch
was interview on CBC radio yesterday in Vancouver. She said that we have to make choices and consciously take charge of how
we manage the boundaries between work and family.
The book helps people clarify their values and learn new ways to self-manage
work/life issues. It also profiles people who have succeeded and gives strategies for negotiating change. “People have
more choice than they think,” says Lautsch, herself the mother of a four-year-old and a 10-month old.
I guess
that last point "people have more choice than we think" is what I'm trying to say here. So let's think again before we just
accept our worn out status.
Author's Bio
Through her
'Odyssey of Change' coaching program, Ellen Besso offers Midlife Women the opportunity to navigate the midlife maze and find
joy & fullness in their lives.
Personal action plans include strengthening the body-mind connection; releasing
beliefs that limit growth; & specific actions to move you forward into your ideal life. Ellen
is uniquely qualified to be your guide because she has personally journeyed through perimenopause and into an inspired life
as a menopausal crone! Her professional credentials include certification as a Martha Beck Coach and an M.A. in Counselling
from City University. To find out more about Ellen’s work and read articles written by her contact: www.ellenbesso.com or ellenbesso.com/midlifemaze
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