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What If You Didn’t Fear Joy?
Find the courage to let joy into your life.
“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.” Milton Erickson
After getting up early each morning to swim, bike, and run for months, I had done it. I’d completed a triathlon. Jolene and some of my training friends were at the finish line waiting for me. It was an intense day of overcoming obstacles and pushing myself to achieve something I had never done before. I expected to feel the joy of accomplishment. The reward for all the work.
And I did for a brief time.
But then a thought began to creep in. My accomplishment wasn’t worth celebrating. It was only a sprint triathlon. Not anything close to an Ironman. Who did I think I was? Even within my age group, I’m nothing special. Just another name on a list. I started telling myself with increasing despondency that my cheap bike and poor swimming ability would never allow me to accomplish anything worthy. I’d just embarrass myself if I even tried.
My small amount of joy dissolved. I needed to get back to training and try for something bigger or just move on to something else entirely.
Research into the area of joy and vulnerability has shed light on what I experienced following my first triathlon. It turns out that it is what many others experience in the aftermath of accomplishment. The type and degree of accomplishment doesn’t seem to matter. Whether big or small, work or recreation, our experiences give us a glimpse of joy for the accomplishment but are then overrun by our negative evaluations.
Foreboding Joy
Brene Brown in her book, Daring Greatly, talks about foreboding joy, where we catch ourselves feeling joy but quickly turn to prepare for imminent disaster. We think to ourselves,
“work is going well. Everyone in the family is healthy. No major crises are happening. The house is still standing. I’m working out and feeling good. Shit. This is bad. This is really bad. Disaster must be lurking around the corner.”
Foreboding joy is a habit we develop over the course of our lives. After experiencing the raw pain of…
