542. Unconditional Joy

Did you know that you are meant for joy? Just like the Stanley Cup I’ve got sitting next to me right now as I record this episode is meant to hold my favorite beverage. It is meant to keep cold things cold and hot things hot. And if I took that Stanley Cup and put it on a shelf and never took it down and filled it up with a beverage, that would be such a waste of this Stanley cup because its purpose is to hold a beverage and keep me hydrated.

And your purpose, my friend, one of your main reasons for existing is to experience joy. If you’re not experiencing as much as you’d like, this episode is for you. It’s a simple fix. It can happen literally today and I’m going to take you through it. Thanks for joining me for Better Than Happy. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you’re having a lovely end of your year. I hope it’s going the way you want it to go. I hope you’re showing up in the way that you want to and having lots of good memories. Today we’re going to talk about unconditional joy.

And I love the word joy because to me it is an all-inclusive word. That’s how I think about it. So, I know everybody has their own definition. The way I want you to think about it for today’s episode is something that is beyond just happiness, beyond even peace or relief. A lot of my clients tell me they’re seeking relief, which is just an escape from a lot of negative emotion, right? But it is beyond maybe what you might be seeking. I remember being in high school and going to a youth conference through our church and there’s a scripture in LDS culture that says that men are that they might have joy.

And I remember us talking about that scripture and realizing that at that point where I was a teenager in high school, my main goal was fun. And the speaker specifically pointed out that it doesn’t say that men are that they might have fun. And that’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with seeking fun. I still actually love to have fun. But I remember having this realization that’s true. I’m not designed for fun. I’m not meant for fun. Fun is maybe just a tiny little component of what is much bigger, what is much more expansive, which is joy, right?

And so I love that word joy and I do think of it as an all-inclusive sort of maybe mother of all emotions, you might say, that includes clean pain. It includes discomfort and challenge and struggle, but it also includes happiness and fun and lightness and peace and love and gratitude. I do think that’s what we are meant for. And we are meant for that because first of all, it’s what feels most fulfilling to us, but also it’s how we grow and become refined and become more spiritual beings, if you will.

So, I don’t want to get off onto a religious or spiritual tangent today. I want to talk about really practical strategies that you can execute if you want to experience more joy in your life. And the first one is to recognize, the reason I’m calling this unconditional joy is because you have to acknowledge and recognize that joy is not created by any conditions outside of you.

So, at first consideration, the term unconditional joy might imply that I think you should be experiencing joy all the time, and that’s not what I’m saying. Just like unconditional happiness doesn’t mean you should be happy all the time. It simply means that you acknowledge and recognize on as deep of a level as you possibly can because the deeper you recognize it and understand it, the more extraordinary you will feel and your life will become when you recognize that conditions do not create joy or lack thereof. Conditions are not powerful the way that our minds think they are.

So, the first thing I want to challenge you to do if you want to experience more joy is to start to recognize this. Recognize the difference in people’s experiences in the same given conditions. You don’t even have to be observing yourself if you’re not ready to. Just start by observing other people around you.

Last Saturday, my family and I had the opportunity to go to Disneyland, happiest place on Earth, they say, right? And it was. We had an incredibly fun day at Disneyland, especially because my younger daughter rode big roller coaster, the Incredicoaster for the first time, and she loved it and she rode it four times. Okay, now, Incredicoaster creates joy, happiness, or no? Obviously, no, right? Because you got some people getting off the Incredicoaster smiling, laughing, saying, let’s do it again. And you’ve got other people getting off there feeling sick, saying, I will never do that again. And you even sometimes have somebody getting off there in tears. I was afraid that was going to be my daughter. Thank goodness it was not.

So, how could it be that we see all different reactions? If conditions outside of us created our reactions, we would see all the same ones. It doesn’t even have to be a roller coaster, right? You walk around a place like Disneyland and you will see a lot of smiles and a lot of laughter, but you will see tears. You will see tantrums. Not just from kids, you will see adults having little adult tantrums, snapping at kids, yelling at kids, whatever, or at each other, right? You’ll see people upset, people crying, people hurt. But we’re all at Disneyland. Shouldn’t we just be walking around happy? No, not all the time, because conditions are not creating our experience. So, I like to observe this whenever I can because I’m constantly again trying to train my brain to better understand it.

I got to tell you one other story, which I might have told you before, but if not, it’s a good one you got to hear it. So, I was with my team, there’s about seven of us or eight of us, and we were on a trip. We went to Nashville, Tennessee to a concert and while we were there, we did a couple things, did a little sightseeing. At any rate, at one point, we needed to take an Uber to get back to our hotel, but there were too many of us to put in one car, so we got two cars, okay? So we split up half and half. As soon as we arrived at our destination, the people who were in the car in front of us got out and said, you guys, it was the weirdest thing. Our Uber driver didn’t talk to us the whole time. It was so creepy. And we started laughing, those of us who had been in the other car because we had just gotten done commenting about how much we loved our Uber driver because he didn’t talk to us, how peaceful it was that he didn’t try to make small talk.

So should your Uber driver talk to you? Does that create a feeling of safety? No, you do with your own mind or you don’t with your own mind. Now, I realize it’s more complicated than this. Human beings are complicated. We pick up on little things. We have intuition to read each other. It could be that one Uber driver was safer than the other. I realize that. I’m simply saying one car gave the credit for their emotion to the Uber driver not talking. And we gave credit for the completely opposite emotion to the Uber driver not talking. Interesting, don’t you think? This is because emotions are not created by conditions or things outside of us. So, the more you can begin observing this, the more power you will have in your own life.

Next thing I want you to do is to decide intentionally how you want to feel in a situation that maybe is challenging for you to feel how you want to feel. I want you to decide it ahead of time. So, again, this is not something that you’re going to be able to do all the time. You’re not always going to be able to predict what’s going to happen and when things are going to get challenging. But when you can, when let’s say, for example, you’re going to see someone who you know it’s difficult for you to be around. Maybe you happen to have a lot of emotions and thoughts when you’re with that person that you don’t love. Maybe you become a version of yourself you don’t love. Maybe you feel insecure or nervous or anxious or guarded or what have you, and you don’t want to feel that way, okay? Then it’s a great opportunity for you to decide how do I want to feel when I’m in this situation and what would I need to be focused on in order to feel that way?

Decide it ahead of time. I call this pre-coaching. Okay? You guys who are in The Lab, you can come to me, I can help you to figure it out. But you’ve got to decide ahead of time, how do I want to feel in this situation and what would I need to focus on and be thinking about and believing in order to feel that way? And then practice it, try it out. Don’t get mad at yourself if you’re not perfect at it, but give it a try and see, like, is it possible for me to feel differently in this situation without the situation changing? Meaning, without the other person doing anything differently, can I feel something different? And experiment with it.

Maybe it’s the kind of situation where you just tend to get nervous. Maybe you’re going to be giving a talk in church, for example, and you tend to get nervous or playing the piano somewhere or maybe you have to go, I don’t know, make a phone call. Some of you I know don’t like making phone calls and talking to someone. Before you get on that phone call, can you decide how you want to feel and decide what you’re going to focus on? Those of you who are entrepreneurs, you have so many opportunities to do this. I hope you are doing a lot of this if you’re a coach especially. I hope before you get on a coaching call, you decide how do I want to feel on this call and what will I need to be focused on.

I’ll tell you the most useful thing for me as a coach is I want to feel open and curious and confident. And in order to feel that way, I have to be focused on my client, not on myself. I have to decide, I’ve got this, I’ve got great training and great tools, and now let’s go. What’s going on for this person? How do I better understand what’s going on? How can I show them what’s going on for them? How can I best empower them? It’s a lot of questions. That’s what creates curiosity, right? Instead of going into it worried about myself. Are they going to like me? Are they going to like what I say? Are they going to feel like they got their money’s worth? All of that creates insecurity and doubt and fear.

So, what will you focus on going into a situation because even if you only do it for part of the time, even if it comes and goes, or maybe you have to try five different situations before you’re actually able to see yourself create a different emotion than what you’re used to. That’s okay. You experience it one time and your brain suddenly goes, oh, that was interesting. That’s fascinating that I felt that way this time.

Now, again, please don’t think that it means that you’re a changed person and you’re going to feel that way every time. Usually in the beginning, it takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of intentionally focusing your mind until you rewire your mind to the new normal. So give it some time and don’t expect perfection, but it’s a great experiment to do some pre-coaching and decide before you go into something, how do I want to feel and what would I need to be focusing on in order to feel that way? And you will find that you are extraordinarily powerful in your own life.

The next thing I want you to do is another form of observation in the world around you, but I want you to observe somebody who has a circumstance that you wouldn’t prefer and this person seems to either be okay with it or even like it and prefer it. Okay? So for example, I hate to use this example, but it’s just the one that is the most like mind-blowing to me when I see it, is sometimes I will meet somebody and then I meet their spouse and I think, wow, how is it that this person seems to be so content and happy and in love with this person that I think seems difficult to love or seems difficult to create a life with in some way, right? Have you ever noticed, have you ever seen this happen?

And then I go, wow, it’s impressive, actually. And I’m so glad. Like, obviously, everybody’s drawn to different things and everybody has different preferences even in a spouse. But I like to just let my mind be a little bit blown at like, that spouse does not create feelings of contentment, the person does. And if I were in that situation, it might be more challenging for me. Now, the next thing I want you to try is the opposite. I want you to notice somebody who has a circumstance that you think would be ideal or wonderful or would bring you lots of joy, lots of happiness. And this person seems to be dissatisfied, upset, unhappy with it. Okay?

This is also easy to do, maybe even easier to find because of the dominance of negativity in the human mind. But notice this person being dissatisfied. Again, I see this a lot in women when it comes to our appearance. I see women who are unhappy with their body or their physique in some way or just their physical appearance who I think, man, if I looked like you, I feel like I would be walking around like Amy Schumer in I Feel Pretty. Just notice it and be careful not to slip into judgment. I don’t mean that we’re judging people. I just mean you’re letting it kind of blow your mind about how, wow, it is not the condition. It is not the outside condition that’s creating the experience of it. It is the person creating their own experience, just like I’m creating my own experience. Whoa, crazy, powerful to observe.

Okay, I got one final experiment that you can try on if you want to have unconditional joy. And you don’t have to do all of the things I’m recommending here today, but try out one or two because what we want to do is get you more empowered at creating joy in your own life. So this final experiment has to do with the predictions and meaning making that our brains do automatically, but I want you to at times interrupt it and consider that you could be wrong about your prediction.

In other words, we tend to take the things that come at us in our day and label them either good or bad. I have a couple kids home from college this week for Thanksgiving, so wonderful having them home. And yesterday they flew home together. One came from Idaho Falls, one came from Provo, and then they met up on the same flight in Salt Lake to get home. And I remember thinking, oh, I just hope that their flights aren’t delayed, you know, that my one son who has a connecting flight doesn’t miss it and that they get home on time. And like I had all these ideas about what would be ideal, right? And it did go smoothly. It did go the way I desired yesterday, but sometimes it doesn’t, especially when we’re traveling. Often things just don’t go exactly according to plan.

And I would have labeled that had they not made it home, too bad. Too bad for them, too bad for me that I didn’t get to see them as soon as I wanted. And I would have labeled that as a negative situation. But my point is, what if I go, hm, what if I’m wrong? Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe that was actually really a blessing in some way.

So, I want to give you an example story to illustrate this. I did not write this story. I’ve looked it up on the internet before and I cannot find who to give the credit to. But the story goes that there was a wise old man, of course. We should make her a wise old woman, but anyway, the story says a wise old man. So, this man had a horse who was a great horse. He was a hard working horse and a well-trained horse. And all of his neighbors said, oh, you’re so lucky that you have this amazing horse. And the man said, maybe. And a couple days later, the horse runs away. And all the neighbors say, oh, that’s such bad luck that you lost your wonderful horse. I’m so sorry he ran away. That’s bad news. And he says, maybe.

And a few days later, the horse returns home and brings with him another horse that he had found out in the wild. And now the neighbors say, oh my goodness, what good fortune. You now have two horses. You got your horse back and you got another horse. What a blessing. And the man says, maybe. And a couple weeks after that, the man’s son is training the new horse, trying to break him in, and he gets kicked off the horse and breaks his leg. And the neighbors say, oh, what bad luck. Your son has broken his leg training this horse. And the man says, maybe.

And a couple weeks after that, the local army comes marching through town seeking all healthy and able-bodied young men who are now being drafted to fight in a war. Of course, the man’s son is unable to go because he has a broken leg, to which the neighbors say, what great fortune your son is spared from having to fight in the war because of his broken leg. And the man, of course, says what? Yes, he says, maybe. Okay, so we could go on like this forever, but this is my whole point is I want you to the next time you find yourself going, oh man, we missed our flight. That sucks. What bad luck we’re having today. I want you to just pause and go, maybe. And I want you to let your creative mind consider for a minute why maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s such a gift, maybe it’s such a blessing. This is where you can let your imagination run wild.

Now, I want to be clear, we’re not trying to actually figure it out. We don’t actually know the reason why this might really be in your favor or if it is or not, right? We don’t need to figure out what’s true, quote unquote, outside of you. We’re just playing with the fact that we don’t know what’s true. Because we think we do. We’re like, no, no, it’d be so much better if I made my flight and got to my destination on time. Maybe. Or here’s where my mind goes, is to things like, well, maybe if I would have gotten there on time, I would have been in some kind of a terrible accident and become injured and now I’m being spared that, and I’ll never even know that because I won’t encounter that accident now, but that could be true, right?

I remember having a client once, years ago, who said that her son was always late to seminary. So, seminary is like our scripture study class that our teenagers go to. And she said he’s just always late. I can’t get him to get there on time. And I said to her, now why is this a problem? And she said, well, I feel like in the very beginning of seminary often is a really important kind of like setting the tone and I feel like he might be missing something really good. And I said to her, yeah, maybe, or maybe not.

Maybe he’s missing something that would have offended him or upset him at times, or maybe he’s avoiding some kind of a car accident some days or maybe there’s some kind of message or gift or understanding or insight that he’s going to have from being late that he wouldn’t get had he been on time. And I’m not saying we have to walk around believing that’s true either. We just have to go maybe. The truth is, I don’t know what’s good and what’s bad because I can’t predict the future and I can’t even read people’s minds or I just don’t possibly understand everything at work in the world. And so just letting it be a maybe. You don’t have to shift it to a positive. Just try on that what you think is good news or what you think is bad news may or may not be. Maybe, just saying.

All right, my friends, thank you for joining me today. I hope you will try out at least one of the things I gave you today. I would love to hear how it goes. So, come to a free public coaching call if you haven’t done that yet, or come and find me on Instagram. Lots of places where you can get in touch with me. You can even call our hotline, which is 1-888-HI-JODY-M, and leave me a message. I will see you next time. Have a beautiful rest of your week. Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.