🤩 Finding Joy in Hidden Places While Living with MS
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SUMMARY
When you live with MS you can build pathways in your brain that connect you with joy. You can change your life energy. It starts by finding joy and hidden places.
Finding Joy in Hidden Places While Living with MS
Often, when you think of your life with MS, do you equate that with struggle, frustration or discouragement?
These are the kind of words, the emotions that come to mind when people often think of MS in their daily life. The reality is these words then become connected with multiple sclerosis. What we want is we want to connect other words also with MS; like courage, curiosity, tenacity and resilience, the power words.
I remember the last time I was at my sweetie's family cottage, there’s a grassy backyard with beautiful yellow and red flowers popping up. In the wild garden are raspberry bushes. Yummy. When I think about them, what comes to mind is joy and delight.
As I came up close to the bushes, I could see the odd raspberry, but most of them weren’t ripe. I squatted down and hidden underneath were these juicy, soft red, ripe to pick, ready to eat berries. I tasted a few, then I started to pick them. How delightful. Imagine fresh berries right off of the vine.
This got me thinking about in a life with MS, sometimes joy is hidden. We have to go look for it. To feel it. To experience it. When you've got this wave of MS symptoms that are rising up and taking over, how do you navigate the impact it has on your daily life? For me, it's fatigue. I wake up in the morning with fatigue. I go to bed with fatigue.
How can we look beyond and find the joy that's buried there?
That's what I'd like to invite you to ponder. Where is that joy hidden in your life? Because it's always there if you look for it.
When you go outside and it's sunny, and then the clouds come and they cover it up. Then the wind and gray skies come. But it doesn't mean that the sun isn't there. It's just hidden behind the clouds. Just like the raspberries are hidden under the leaves.
So we need to look for joy. We need to notice it. To be intentional about the fact that joy is there. When you can notice the little things in life, looking at the flowers or hearing the chirping birds. Or noticing that bud that is starting to develop on a branch or the stem of a flower.
It's that simple.
In life there's so much beauty around us. With the beauty comes an opportunity to experience joy. To notice it. When you notice it on a continuous basis, when you say to yourself, “okay, I'm going to take a moment and I'm going to look around the room I’m in now and notice one thing that connects me to joy.” Maybe there's a picture that you're looking at of a fond memory.
Maybe it's a painting on the wall. I have several paintings from my daughter that she did in her early teens. When I look at them, they bring me joy. What might that be for you?
Then go outside. What do you see and connect with that brings you joy?
When you build this practice into your life, you are substituting, not replacing, the feelings of joy for other feelings. You're not pushing them away or ignoring the anger, fear, discouragement or worry, you're substituting. You're shifting your focus to something that is joyous.
You're building pathways in your brain that connect you with joy. You're building that habit of noticing joy and filling your body with the feeling that lifts you up.
Imagine if you were to do this once a day to start. Just to say, "okay, now I'm going to pay attention to something that brings me joy" and do this every day for an entire week. See how that feels for you after seven days have passed.
Notice what’s different within you.
Jen DeTracey is the founder of Women Thriving with MS and a certified coach. Women Thriving with MS is an online community for women living with MS. You can join the private Women Thriving with MS Facebook group it's free and YouTube channel. Jen offers online courses, a membership and coaching.
Jen's been living with multiple sclerosis for over 11 years. She went through this process of surviving with MS to striving MS to thriving MS. She is a guide, coach and teacher who helps you move forward on your journey from surviving to thriving with MS.
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