I Put Myself in the Path of Joy Every Chance I Get

Author Shauna Niequist shares tips for living a more inspired life, excerpted from her latest book

When I’ve taught writing workshops or been interviewed on the topic of creativity over the years, someone inevitably asks about “being inspired” — or staying inspired or getting inspired — and I get so excited. I jump up on my little soapbox and tell them what I know about inspiration — the myth that it’s mercurial and wispy, that it’s unpredictable and you just cross your fingers and hope it lands on you at the right time.

“Not true!” I tell them. Inspiration is my responsibility. Inspiration is part of the job description. It doesn’t strike like lightning so I lay myself open to receive it.

You can’t manhandle it or make demands of it, but you can put yourself in the path of it. You make yourself available to it. It’s my job as a writer to live in such a way that every time I sit down to write, I’m inspired, not in the moment necessarily, but in my life, as a way of life.

What this means is that it’s my job, literally, to go to art galleries and read poetry and go for walks and spend time with interesting people. It’s part of my work to read widely and learn new things and be curious and ask questions and wonder and doodle and dream because living inspired is a requirement for rich creative work.

You can’t watch bad television and endlessly scroll Twitter and expect great things to show up on the page. It’s your responsibility as a creative person to actively put yourself in the path of inspiration. I learned some of this out of practical necessity. When I was writing my first book, I had a newborn. I did not have the luxury of lollygagging around, waiting for inspiration to strike. The baby ate every three hours, and so I wrote like a madwoman for two hours and fifty-seven minutes, and then I ran two blocks, unhooking my nursing bra as I flew through the door, back to the babysitter and the baby. That was great training for me, useful in my work in a thousand ways since.

It’s part of my work to read widely and learn new things and be curious and ask questions and wonder and doodle and dream, because living inspired is a requirement for rich creative work.

Now I’m realizing, in yet another way, that I have expected joy and faith and hope to rise within me the way they have in other seasons. Where are they? What are they waiting for? What I’m learning is that in the same way we put ourselves in the path of inspiration, we also put ourselves in the path of joy, and sometimes, frankly, it takes a little muscle.

I no longer wait for joy to appear unbidden. I put myself in her path every chance I get. Extending myself in that direction delivers me to gratitude, to hope, to a cascade of things that tumble out after joy but don’t show up without a little effort on our part.

One morning, after we had just moved, when even easy things still felt chaotic and complicated, I did not wake up joyful. I felt groggy and annoyed, and one of my sons needed to be asked seventeen times to get in the shower; the other one asked me to fill out a school form right as he was walking out the door, scolded me for not doing it sooner, and then forgot the dumb form anyway.

But then something extraordinary happened. It was my day to walk Mac and our neighbors’ kids to school, and on my way to drop them off, I saw eight familiar, kind faces. That might not seem like much, but if you consider that when we moved here I only knew nine people, eight people saying good morning felt really good.

It gets better. After I dropped them off, I went on to Trader Joe’s, which is my happy place, and my favorite cashier, Medley, and I rocked out to Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” as he rang me up. I bought an enormous tray of fresh figs and I didn’t really know what to do with them, but just seeing them on the windowsill made me happy.

One more small victory: I bought just enough to fit in the four totes I’d brought. That might seem like an extremely small cause for joy unless you know how many times I had bought way too much and had to text my husband and beg him to come and help me get everything home.

One of my goals is to be a person who is easily delighted, who can find great cause for celebration in a fig or a familiar face. I want to live with an extremely low bar for delight. It takes almost nothing at all — a good song, a ripe piece of fruit, a perfectly packed tote.

You are allowed to love tiny, daily, ordinary moments in your life. You’re allowed to feel wild joy for the simplest and smallest of reasons. You’re allowed to be unreasonably delighted by spicy pickles or a perfect apple or a joke your teen tells you. You’re allowed to be bewitched by your partner, even after all these years, to yearn to be close to him, to bury your face in his neck.

You’re allowed to feel joy for almost no reason, except that you walked by the candle that your mother sent you, and just seeing it there on the hutch makes you happy. You’re allowed to hold memories in your mind and play them over and over like an old-fashioned slideshow — click, click, click.

I’m learning to put myself in the path of joy and beauty. I’m making my life small and simple. I’m building a shelter for myself — writing, walking, reading, cooking. Self-compassion, simplicity, joy, rest.

Shauna Niequist is the New York Times bestselling author of Cold Tangerines, Bittersweet, Bread & Wine, Savor, and Present Over Perfect. She is married to Aaron, and they live in New York City with their sons, Henry and Mac. Follow her on Instagram: @sniequist.

For more thoughts on inspiration, the joy of being a beginner, starting over and embracing change and the importance of snacks (and people to eat them), pick up I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet by Shauna Niequist, available now.

Excerpted from I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet by Shauna Niequist. Copyright © 2022 by Shauna Niequist. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.