Episode 08 - The One Where You Call The Shots

In today's episode we're chatting about joy and what that means to you.

If you're unsure what that looks like for you - don't worry we'll work through a little exercise (don't worry, you can do it sitting or lying down!) to unlock what joy means to you!

I would love to connect with you ✨

I spend most of my time on insta so if we’re not already friends let's change that right meow: @freespiritstitches 

Grab your free 20 page joy guidebook right here!

Check out my website for all your cute, cozy + chic crochet goods you didn’t know you needed: freespiritstitches.com

If you’ve been searching for a new hobby/obsession - check out my online self paced ‘learn to crochet’ course: Learn to crochet! 

You can also find me on Facebook: @freespiritstitches

Transcript

Sarah 0:03

Let me guess you've been feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or like the world has totally gone to shit. Well have no fear you're in the right place friends. Our mission here at free spirit stitches is to create more joy in the world anyway we can and one of those ways is with the create more joy podcast. So join me, Sarah D your joy seeking, donut eating, crochet obsessed host as we chat about all things joy and how to create more of it in your life, because we know the world really needs it. Now, I'm not gonna pretend it's always sunshine and rainbow because it bloody well isn't, but I do know among all those messy bits, there's lots of joy too. You're guaranteed to hear some F bombs, that's what she saids and lots of tangents. But if you hang with me, I'll help you create more joy. Hey is your girl, Sarah D back with another episode of the create more joy podcast. Thanks so much for being here. I love chatting with you every Wednesday, or whenever you happen to be listening in hope you are all well and feeling joyful. Today I wanna talk about joy. Of course, but that there's no one size fits all for joy. And what I mean by that is we need to define joy for ourselves. So there's about 7 billion. I'm not sure the latest stats of how many of us wonderful folks, are on this planet, but there are that many different definitions of joy. We are all unique. We are all unique people. So we're all going to have different definitions of joy. What brings me joy doesn't necessarily bring my husband or my kids or my coworker joy. Obviously there's gonna be similarities, but you catch my drift, right? We have to define that for ourselves. You are the boss here, you are in full control of what you define as joy for you. Okay? Cuz your joy is yours and yours alone. And for you to have so in order for you to have it, to find it, to create it, you must define what that is. And defining joy doesn't have to be one succinct sentence. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a Webster dictionary definition of joy. It can be a multitude of little things that as you do them, you feel joy, you're creating joy in your life. Therefore you're feeling more joyful and it ripples out to those around you. My mission with, free spirit stitches is to create more joy in this world. And in order for me to do that, I have to look inward and I have to know and understand and define what joy means to me in order to ripple that out to everybody else. I need to understand what joy means to me. And like I said, that's a lot of different little things, but all those things add up and I mean, some are big things. You may be listening and saying, okay, that's, uh, sounds all, all hunky dory, Sarah but, how do I go about defining joy, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed, which I'm willing to bet most of you are right now. You know, we've been through a lot as a whole, as a population the last couple years. And we've had to do probably more surviving than thriving, you know, more of just getting through the day and just putting one foot in front of the other. And that's okay too. That is perfectly okay. We have to do what we gotta do. Right. But if now you want to hit pause a little bit and come back to yourself, come back to your joy, come back to finding new things. So not necessarily coming back to what used to bring you joy. So if you are struggling to define what joy means to you, either take a few minutes when it is safe for you to do so and have. a quiet space that you can sit and reflect. If you like to journal or if you like to doodle and make notes, grab pen and paper, pen markers, whatever you have around you grab it, have that handy just in case you feel inclined to, use that, but sit for a few minutes and you wanna reflect on what used to bring you joy. So if you're having a hard time finding joy today, and you're thinking, you know, nothing brings me joy anymore, I'm sure that's not the case. Sometimes it's hard for us to see the forest for the trees. I think that's the right saying, take a few minutes and think about what were things that used to bring you joy if you can think of a time or some different scenarios, when you felt so joyful, so full of joy, there was a huge smile on your face and you just felt light and airy and, you know, you felt good. Take a note mental note or write it down. I think that is even more powerful if you're physically writing these things out because the act of writing it out, even if you never come back to it again, but the act of writing things down and writing things out it's being imprinted on your brain and in your body and you can feel it. So write down some things that you used to do that bring you joy, even if it was when you were a kid. Honestly, I think. As we grow up society makes us believe that some things that used to bring us joy as children, that as an adult, we should no longer do. I mean, certain things probably don't eat mud pies or something. dancing, drawing, acting like whatever it was, write it down. There's ways you can do it now as an adult. So write those things down from your past, then sit and think if it's been the last 24 hours, if it's been the last 48 hours or, you know, three, five days, whatever it was in the last week, really take some time to reflect and see what made you smile. What did you find you felt a little bit light about or made you laugh or you could think and say, oh yeah, that was just a really nice moment. And I'm not talking a moment has to be 30 minutes an hour, a whole day or something. It's just, I sat and I had 15 seconds of quiet in the house and I had a few good sips of my coffee or your tea or whatever it may be. Or you just sat and everything was still, or you love the hustle and bustle of seeing your kids, playing together or whatever it may be. Whatever that is, I just want you to sit and think about that and write those things down as well. Then third thing. Dream, dream big, put down if you could do anything right now, what would you want to do? And it could be something that you've never done before or never experienced before, but always thought, Ooh, that seems like that would be really fun. I would love to try this, or I would love to try that, write that down as well. So how'd that feel? Was that fun? If you haven't done it yet, maybe just pause and then come back or re-listen to the podcast and journal, write down more as you go along. I'm willing to bet that felt pretty good. Kind of felt exciting. Did you feel like a little tiny bit of a spark of something that was there and if you did well, that's joy. That's joy busting at the seams to get out. It's busting at the seams to come out and play with you. So surrender to it, give into it, let it happen. I really want you to know that joy doesn't have to be these big, huge, lavish things, big trips, spending money. If you go get a coffee and they ask if you want whipped cream, say hell yes, I do want some whipped cream on this, please. And sprinkles, if you have it All right, this was a short but powerful one today. Oh, that's some, that's what she said, gold. but it really is powerful to define what joy means to you. And again, remember it's not a one size fits all. It's gonna look different for everybody. Don't worry about other people. I tell my kids, just worry about you. So you worry about truly looking inward and listening to yourself of what brings you joy and know that what brings you joy is absolutely perfect and absolutely what it is. It simply is what it is. when you know what brings you joy, you can start creating it. You can start being more joyful and it is magic when that starts to ripple outside of you and other people see that other people are inspired to do the same thing. The thing about joy is that we are an active participant in our joy. We cannot simply just wait for it to happen to us. We cannot just wait to feel it. We must create it. We must create it for ourselves. Spoiler alert. We are in full control. Of our joy. So my goal with each episode is to leave you with a takeaway what I'm calling a joy challenge, something that you can do to take actionable steps right now today to start creating more joy in your life. Your joy challenge for this week, for this episode is to do the exercise to simply sit and do this exercise that we spoke about in the episode and define what brings you joy. And remember, it's not a pretty perfect sentence that says joy is, I mean, if that's what you want to do, honestly, I gotta take my own advice, you are the one that defines your joy. So if that's what joy is to you to have a nice, perfect pretty sentence, go for it. Or if you're like me, I just have sticky notes or words all over the place. That's fine too. That's okay. Joy is what you define it as, so go out,define what joy is for you. And then start frigging making it happen, start creating it, start doing it. Take one little step to do that. Even if it is taking one minute of a dance break in the middle of your day, do it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that episode. And if you did, please spread that joy everywhere. Also make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss any of the fun. And if you're feeling really fancy, go ahead and leave me a review. I spend most of my time on Instagram, so you can find me there at free spirit stitches. And I would love to know when you're tuning in or taking part in a joy challenge. So tag me free spirit stitches and use the hashtag create more joy podcasts so I can celebrate right along with you, or if that's not your jam, just slide into my DMS and say, Hey! Now if you really wanna double down on the joy, I have an amazing free 20 page guidebook to creating more joy when you subscribe to my newsletter. So you can grab that now on my website free spirit stitches.com. Till next time I'm sending you all the joyful vibes.