Joy Blog...Pleasure Journal

"The secret to happiness is simple: Find out what you truly love to do and direct all of your energy towards doing it. Once you do this, abundance flows into your life and all your desires are fulfilled with ease and grace."-unknown

Sarah Ban Breathnach swears by a gratitude journal in her book "Simple Abundance." I agree with her when she says "the more you have and are grateful for the more will be given to you." So it is suggested that after each days end you reflect upon your day and consider all the things that you have to be grateful for that day. For me personally, gratitude is great for days when I'm feeling negative or in a slump. The days when I feel my life is a total mess, my relationships are a disaster, my finances are a sad state. Basically, on the days when I feel hopeless. Being grateful for the big things helps me to feel hope and remind me that my life is more abundant than I can remember at that moment. When I say being grateful for the big things I mean:

*My children

*My partner

*My health

*The health of my family

* Our house

*Our 2 cars

*My friends

*Our jobs

Those to me are the big things in life I am grateful for and most days even if I'm angry at the children and husband or I'm hating my house because it is "too small" I can recognize them as blessings, even through a negative filter. The big things convince me keep going...
A pleasure journal convinces me that life is filled with joys that make life worth living. Now, like I said, you can't be in a mood as discussed above when you sit down to write this. This is for days when I'm are feeling okay, or the days when I am feeling happy! Its appreciating the little things that bring me pleasure and focusing on those things in my day.

I like to consider all 5 senses (or somedays 6 senses) when I sit down to write in my pleasure journal. Here's an example of an entry in my own personal journal:

*Sipping strong hot coffee, along with my journals, my favourite books in the early a.m.

*Hearing Alex say "I love you" spontaneously

*Using colourful markers for anything possible

*Hot lemon water before bed

*Playing with Jalen and Ruby while they giggle hysterically

*Chatting up market vendors on Saturday morning.

*Buying my first pair of skinny jeans

When you begin to focus on these pleasures you realize what you should have more of in your life, like love and laughter and coffee out of polkadot mugs and you realize that if you brought more of these simple pleasures to your everyday life you would feel more joy. And isn't that what we all ultimately want...happiness.