The 90-Day Joy Journey: You, Dear Reader, Could Use More Joy
90-Day Joy Journey Overview
Regardless of the season of life you find yourself in, I’d bet, Dear Reader, you could use more joy.
“Emerging adults” have grown up receiving endless doom and gloom reports via predetermined algorithms that have only contributed to confirmation bias. For those of us who identify as “middle-aged,” hopes and dreams have often begun to wane, giving way to burnout or a sense that we’ve plateaued. And as we head into our “golden years,” even here we begin to face a whole new set of concerns as we start to wonder what it looks like to age gracefully or to live well in the midst of an ever-changing world.
Turn your attention towards the news and one thing becomes exceedingly clear: We. Are. Suffering.
Now, of course, it’s not all bad. We do have our celebrations, our vacations, and our guilty pleasures. We may well be able to identify at least a few sparks of happiness in our lives…but do we feel joy? Do we even understand joy or believe it to be something worth our attention?
For many, joy is seen as a positive emotion of delight that is experienced in a strong wave and then recedes as we return to life as usual. For others still, joy is perceived as something we receive from the beyond.
Either way, whether we view joy as a psychological phenomenon or a sacred one, joy tends to be one of those feelings that seems to dull over time, which has left millions of billions of people choosing to settle for an experience of life that is not at all what they had hoped for.
This does not have to be. Each of us possesses the capacity to experience more joy.
What is the 90-Day Joy Journey?
The 90-Day Joy Journey was designed believing that 5-10 minutes a day of engagement in a spiritual practice could qualitatively improve people’s lives. We all grapple with feelings of overwhelm, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, and depression, often beginning to lose our sense of connection to joy.
With the 90-Day Joy Journey, we discover that joy can be experienced on a continuum, producing feelings of peace all the way up to the delight we’ve come to associate with the word. We engage with joy as the essence of our being, as a wellspring within that we can learn to draw from at any time.
The Joy Journey leads Journeyers through daily practices over the course of 90 days – nature, journaling, movement, and more. In addition, Journeyers are invited to meet monthly with a spiritual guide, three 60-minute sessions in total, where they further process their experiences, leaving space for meaning and insights to emerge.
Past Journeyers report feeling up to 40% better in up to 6 areas of their lives and begin to see those improvements within the first 2 weeks of practice. They speak of increases in their capacity to roll with the ups and downs of life. They find they are able to name which tools work best for them. In short, they begin to see they can, once again, experience life more fully.
Written with Diversity in Mind
What’s more, the 90-Day Joy Journey was written from an Interfaith/Interspiritual perspective, meaning, the practices are designed for people from any religious, spiritual or ethical tradition or no tradition at all. Journeyers from incredibly varied walks of life all have seen positive results from engaging with the Joy Journey.
As a trained Spiritual Guide with almost 2 decades of experience in the field of spiritual care, it was important to me to write variety into the program. We already know that some people are more physical, while others are inspired by images, that others still experience Presence through words, and so on. For this reason, while each week connects to an overarching theme, the daily experiences offer a variety of options so that Journeyers can begin to become familiar with an array of tools and rituals as their journey moves from a habit (21 days) to a lifestyle (90 days.) Journeyers are encouraged to co-create their own experience and to lean in to what will work best for them on any particular day.
Expanding our View of Joy
And if all of that weren’t enough, those who engage in the Joy Journey are offered a chance to connect with joy from both scientific and spiritual points of view. On some days, the Joy Journey provides an invitation to do something we might describe as “outward,” things like organizing a shelf, laughing at a joke, or drawing spirals on a page. These days tune us in to cultivating an environment that is conducive to joy.
At other times, Journeyers are invited to go inward, to pay attention to the emotions they may be having, to name their limiting beliefs, and more. On these days, the attention is on taking steps to integrate and transform their pain, to begin to view themselves as part of an interconnected experience of living so that they can begin to experience joy as Joy - as the unlimited essence of their being, as a deep Wellspring within that they can draw from throughout their days.
The Practices Work
In my experience with Joy Journeyers, the results are electrifying. Perspectives on their difficulties shift and effective coping tools emerge. Some even marvel that a practice which might have initially seemed to have no effect, surfaces again later in the day, or even a couple days later, producing an overflow of meaning in their lives. Journeyers report being able to see a difference between days when they had practiced and days when they haven’t, and practice becomes associated with less anxiety and an ability to roll with the ups and downs of their days.
Your 90-Day Joy Journey can begin today.
Cost to participate: $300
Includes
90 days of practices delivered via email
3 hour-long one-on-one Spiritual Guidance sessions via Zoom.
It would be my great delight to accompany you on your Joy Journey.
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