Part 3 – Application
What Is Joy?
Joy = Relationship.
Joy = Someone is glad to be with me.
If someone is glad to be with me, even when I am experiencing the Big Six upset emotions (e.g., fear, anger, sadness, shame, disgust and hopeless despair), and they have the maturity and capacity to keep their relationship with me bigger than the problem I am experiencing, I will learn how to recover from upset, return to joy, and endure hardships well in the future.
The Joy Center in the Brain
It is the responsibility of the cingulate cortex (i.e., the “joy center” in the brain — Level 3 of the Right Control Center, also known as “the banana”), to learn how to return us to joy from the Big Six upset emotions. Ideally, this “joy skills training” is developed during childhood around 10 months old.
One of the objectives of “Return to Joy” exercises is to train the right control center to increase its relational capacity, so that “white matter” joy “habits” in the front of the brain are bigger and stronger than the emotionally upset feelings it must regulate in the back.
Practice Exercise
The practice exercises shared here are from the book, The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled People (C. Coursey, ). More free tools and resources are available at https://4habits.org.
I am particularly fond of this resource because I sponsored a “HR Happy Hour” event in the teacher’s lounge at school! (Non-alcoholic, prebiotic beverages were served in case you were wondering.) 😊
I mention this because at one of the snack stations I place a glass bowl and labeled it, “Tip Jar”. The catch was they were not supposed to put a tip into it, but take a joy tip from it that I cut out from this resource.
They absolutely loved it!
Conclusion
Long story short, in answer to Francisco’s question (if that is even honest to say after having you go through a three-part, mini-masterclass!), a practical way I practice joy skills is by training the right control center of my brain how to return to joy through sharing gratitude-based thoughts and feelings with my family and friends on a regular basis.
-Robert
R West Consulting 