Joy
It's the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of succeeding. It’s a simple and light-hearted spark that transcends through your body and leaves feeling good vibrations.
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It's a pleasurable emotion brought by a state of well-being and contentment. It’s usually accompanied by an attachment to an idea, a destination or experience. It often weighs profoundly heavier on our subconscious.
The vision of the life you desire is a destination you shouldn’t ignore as it’s key to understanding your happy place.
If happiness is the destination, joy is the milestone that leads there. Joy comes and passes through without the heaviness of it being a “final destination” because joy is an attitude.
Gratitude is a way of seeing the joy in the little things and can be practiced with methods like journaling or subtracting. The more you practice gratitude, the easier it will be to see the simple joys in your everyday life.
Instead of overwhelming yourself by always looking at the bigger picture and the negatives of life, look at the small things that impact your world and imagine how life would be without them.
Living means learning how to navigate through life even when we are not completely in control.
When it comes to happiness, we sometimes feel we need a particular thing to be happy. But be it a material or an emotional need, we can always find joy even while it is unfulfilled.
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It's freedom from disturbance. A state of tranquillity and harmony that can be felt collectively or individually.
Peace and happiness can be entwined, but the circumstances from which they arise are different.
Joy is more consistent and is cultivated internally. It comes when you make peace with who you are, why you are and how you are, whereas happiness tends to be externally triggered and is based on other people, things, places, thoughts and events.
Happiness is dependent on outside circumstances to align with your expectations so that the end result is your happiness. It’s based on internal and external circumstances, thus unstable, with its chronic lack leading to despair and depression.
Meanwhile, joy is internal and not contingent on anything in order to exist. It can be cultivated and the first step to do it is to understand the difference between happiness and joy.