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[00:00:00] Shirin: Welcome to Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life, then you have come to the right place. I am your host, coach and life Alchemist, Shirin Eskandani. And I have worked with thousands of people showing them how to create their dream lives while also living their dream.

[00:00:27] This podcast is where mindset, mindfulness and manifestation meet together. We're going to release limiting beliefs. Put your dreams into motion all while prioritizing your ease, rest and joy. Let's do this love. Hi love. Welcome to Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my mindset Monday post, which you can read on Instagram at whole hearted code.

[00:00:55] Or if you want to go even deeper into this week's episode and get my free weekly journal prompts, sign up for my email list and you'll be able to explore the topics we're talking about in this episode. Even further, you can do that in the show notes or by heading to my website, whole hearted dash coaching doc.

[00:01:15] And if you're interested in working with me, whether that's one on one, in one of my group programs or one of my transformational courses, you can head to my website, wholehearted-coaching.com/offerings to find out more. And of course you can also head to the show notes and all of this information.

[00:01:35] We'll be waiting for you there. All right. Love. Welcome to this week's episode. So I had to record this podcast five or six times. This is not normal. I usually do the podcast and one take. But today's topic. Joy is one that I am really struggling with right now, which may come as a surprise to you, especially if you've been part of this community for awhile.

[00:02:02] You know, my whole work is rooted in joy about how we can create more joy. How can we cultivate more joy? How can we do the hard things in life with joy? I mean, part of the opening tagline to this podcast includes. So the fact that I'm struggling with joy is big, really, really big. I'm going through a lot right now.

[00:02:29] And this morning warning alert, I'm going to swear. Okay. So fast forward, if you don't want to hear it. I was meditating. I was doing my morning routine and I decided to pull a card because I'm just really struggling with something right now. And I wanted to pull a card to get some clarity. And the God damn card I polled was joy.

[00:02:51] And I just looked at that card and I said to myself, fuck joy. Okay. So, you know, your girl is going through something. And the fact that. This week's podcast is about joy that I had planned to talk about joy this week. You know, that the universe is trolling me because the universe is like, okay, girl, you have to double down on what you preach.

[00:03:16] You got to practice it. And honestly, I'm really happy that I'm talking about this today because I need this reminder. I really need today's podcast. I need it. And I have a feeling that you may need it too, because. Times are rough times are difficult. We are approaching the anniversary of the penny and globally things are still uncertain and chaotic.

[00:03:42] And I just know life life's right. Life gets lifey. So I have a feeling also in your personal or professional life, things are maybe challenging or difficult, and it can be really easy during these times when things get messy to forget about. To put it on the back burner, or to think that once we figure things out, we can then have our joy.

[00:04:08] We can then indulge enjoy. And what I've really come to understand is that the more messy life gets, the more difficult things become. The more we need joy. I need joy right now in my life. You maybe, probably most definitely need joy in your life. So today's episode is a really instructional one. It's a lot of me breaking down what joy looks like.

[00:04:35] I'm going to break down my for ease of joy. What are the things we can do to create and cultivate more joy in our lives? What really makes joy so special to me, why I talk about it all the time is that joy can be present in our lives, regardless of what's going on around us. Joy is really an inside job.

[00:04:55] It's an inner state of. So while it's connected to a lot of like positive feelings and emotions like happiness and euphoria and gratefulness joy is really, to me, this inner state of being this inner contentment, this place where you can really accept what is going on in your life, and you can accept it with grace and compassion and a humor.

[00:05:19] This place where you can celebrate who you are and what you are doing, and also really acknowledge what's not working and not judge yourself for being there. To me, joy is this place of contentment and peace and acceptance. And when we can really tap into that during difficult times, that's how we become resilient.

[00:05:42] So this is why joy is so important because right now everything is testing. And I know that we all have the capability because I know my whole hearted community. We are some bad ass people and we have shown to ourselves and others time. And again, that we can get through it, that we can get up, brush ourselves off and just do the damn thing.

[00:06:06] But I also know that we often get to the finish line and we are exhausted. We're miserable. We're bloody, we're torn. We're burnt out. And these times are times in which we can become burnt out so easily. So what I really want for all of us is the ability to be resilient, to thrive during these difficult and challenging moments, because I don't want us getting to the finish line, a shell of ourselves.

[00:06:36] And I know that we all know what that feels like. So right now we need to double down on our joy. We really need to be so intentional about our joy and you may be listening, thinking, okay, cool. That sounds great, Sharon. But like, how do I do. I got you. I got us. Okay. I'm going to be breaking down my four ease of joy.

[00:06:56] And we're going to talk about different tools and practices and concepts that we can use when life gets hard to find, to reclaim our joy again, because all of us deserve joy. We are worthy of joy. Joy is our birthright, and oftentimes we really forget that. So let's get into joy. Today's mindset. Monday reads joy is not some prize we earn once we figure it all out.

[00:07:25] Joy is not a thing we put on hold when things get difficult. Truth is joy is an intentional choice. We have to make each and every day. Joy does not show up by accident love. So I think we kind of struggle with joy because we mistake it for. False positivity. All right. We think that joy is just skipping down the street, completely oblivious to everything that is going wrong in our lives in the world, that we have to become some sort of Pollyanna to find our joy.

[00:08:01] And that's not what joy is. Joy to me is really the ability to accept your life exactly as it is. It's the unconditional acceptance of your life. It's the ability to really acknowledge what is working so amazingly and to also embrace what is not working so amazingly and to not have judgment and to be in a place of grace and compassion and gratitude contentment.

[00:08:32] And so to me, joy is so incredibly important during these difficult times, because oftentimes we put things on hold until difficult times are over and y'all, we are reaching burnout when it comes to things like the pandemic, when it comes to things like plans that have been on hold for about two plus years.

[00:08:57] So really with joy, what we have to. Is that joy is meant to be a part of our day to day. Joy is something that we can really control, quote, unquote control, because we have the ability to tap into it. Joy is an inside job. Joy is our job. So let's get into what creates joy in our lives. How can we create more joy when things are difficult?

[00:09:24] So let's get into the four ease of joy. So the four E's of joy are embrace, enjoy, engage, and ease. And in this episode, I'm going to go through each step and we're going to talk about some tools and practices that you can use to cultivate joy. And let me tell you, when I say you, I'm also talking to me.

[00:09:47] Okay. Because I need these for EAs more than ever, right? So the first pillar is embrace and embrace, I think is the most transformative of the pillars. And it's also one of the more difficult or challenging ones for us to wrap our hearts and our minds around. So embrace is also known as acceptance and mindfulness.

[00:10:12] Which is the ability to accept, to embrace what is going on in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly, the neutral, all of it. It's the unconditional acceptance of your life as it is now. I remember when I heard about, you know, acceptance, when I was learning about mindfulness, I was like, listen, I can get on board with all of this mindfulness stuff, but this acceptance.

[00:10:37] Uh, I don't know about this because to me, acceptance sounded like resignation. It sounded like settling. It sound like giving up. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I want to change things. I want more, I want different. I don't want to just settle. I don't want to just settle with how things are and not want more.

[00:10:58] No, this is not for. But love that is not what acceptance is. Acceptance is not resignation. It is not settling. It is not complacency. Acceptance is the ability to see your life exactly as it is, and to not judge it, to not judge ourselves, to not shame ourselves for being in the situation or the circumstance.

[00:11:23] When we can really accept what is going on in our lives. It doesn't mean that we don't want different. We don't want to change things, but it means that we don't spend hours or days or weeks or years, wishing things are different pushing against them or running away from them. Embrace acceptance is about really being present with how difficult, challenging, or hard things may be.

[00:11:48] And letting go of that judgment, guilt or shame you may be feeling and really allowing yourself to feel the feelings for being there. So right now I am struggling with something that it's hard for me to accept, and I can see how I am trying to run away from it at times, like, try to ignore it like this isn't happening, which doesn't work.

[00:12:13] Right. Because it's at the back of my mind and I feel all inside. And sometimes instead, I wish it wasn't there. Right? I wish this wasn't happening. If only this was different. And other times I find myself really judging myself for being in this situation and embrace is just all about allow yourself to feel the feelings, Sherine, be sad, grieve, be angry, be frustrated.

[00:12:43] See that situation face it, head on, be in the feelings and by being in the feelings, by embracing how sad we are by embracing how messed up the situation is, we can actually tend to ourselves the way that we actually need to. Right. Because when I run away, when I judge myself, when I wish this thing wasn't here, I'm not actually tending to the wound.

[00:13:10] The wound of the pain of the situation that I find myself in and will get when I can actually tend to the wound, that's how I can heal. And that's how I can then take the next step that could possibly solve or fix or create some peace around this situation. So, this is what I mean to say that with acceptance, it doesn't mean that we have to settle or be complacent.

[00:13:36] No, we can change things. We can create more. We can get out of the pickles we're in. Right. But we first have to really embrace what's happening except what's happening. We have to allow ourselves to feel the feelings about being there, like our really true feelings, not the shame or the judgment or the guilt that we build on top of the feelings that we're too afraid to feel.

[00:13:57] No really allow yourself to be angry, to grieve, to cry. And then when you've processed that with that clear mind and head and energetic space, you can take the next step that is best for you. So with embrace love, I'm really asking you to embrace the suck, embrace the suck of life, embrace those parts of your life that you just wish were not there in all.

[00:14:26] Moments of our lives. There will be a suck, right on the best day of your life. There'll be something that is less than ideal. And if we judge that moment based on the stock, then we take away some of the beauty of that moment, like, right. Imagine like a wedding day, right. A wedding day is just one of those days that has so much expectation and just a lot of weight on it.

[00:14:47] Right? Oh gosh. There's so many sucks as part of a wedding day. But if you. To value base the value of that day on the socks. Oh, and that's not the beautiful day that it was, that it could have been embrace, allows us to see that life is both bitter and sweet. That an incredible life is 50 50. Awesome as an awe, a w E and 50%.

[00:15:18] Oh my gosh. This is the worst. Right? And to not judge ourselves for being in the, oh my gosh, this is the worst place. So with embrace love, I really want you to just acknowledge what is the suck in my life. What are the sucks in my life? What am I trying to push against? What am I trying to run away from?

[00:15:39] And then just allow it to be. And allow the feelings that come up with it to be there. And sometimes what happens is that we kind of get really fixated on the socks, right? We start to really define our lives, these chapters in our lives as the suck, right? This is just the worst day, the worst week of the worst year of my life.

[00:16:00] And what really balances out the difficult parts of life is gratitude. Oh, gosh, gratitude. I love gratitude, but it's kind of become like the kale of self care. Right. We know it's good for us. We know we need more of it, but like, we kind of roll our eyes when we hear the word gratitude. Right. But gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to show you, to take you out of that fixation on what is not working in your life.

[00:16:29] It shows you what is working in your life. Here are three things that I recommend. If you struggle with gratitude, the first is be consistent with your gratitude. So have a practice, maybe it's every morning, every evening, or at lunchtime. Sometimes I know people like to have certain cues, right? So when they sit at their desk, they have a moment of gratitude.

[00:16:53] When they sit at the dinner table, they have a moment of gratitude, but that consistency piece really helps with creating a transformative gratitude practice. The second tip is to really acknowledge what you're grateful for. Right. Not just like, think it and be like, oh, okay. I'm really grateful for that.

[00:17:10] No, say it out loud. Write it in your journal, right. Truly acknowledge what you're grateful for. Right? This is like when you have a partner or a friend or a family member who does a lot of really great things for you and, you know, you're grateful for them. You are really thankful for what they do, but if you never actually acknowledge what they do, then they start to kind of be like, wait, this is like ridiculous.

[00:17:34] I'm doing all this stuff for you. This isn't so great. And it's the same with our lives. Really just acknowledging what is working so well, what we are thankful and grateful for, and the final piece for gratitude is to get specific with it. So don't just say I'm grateful for my health. Say I'm grateful for my legs that allowed me to walk two miles today.

[00:17:58] I'm grateful for my deep belly breaths that I can take every morning during my meditation, getting specific with our gratitude, making it super like delicious. Really allows us to feel those quote unquote delicious feelings. So those three tips are be consistent, acknowledge and get specific with gratitude.

[00:18:22] So now we're in the second E and that's enjoy and enjoy is probably my favorite favorite pillar, because enjoy asks us to celebrate, to saver, to be in the joy of our day to day lives. Now, the keyword here is day to day. All right. Cause we are so good at celebrating and savoring, like really big moments.

[00:18:47] We are generally great at celebrating big accomplishments, throwing a big party, doing some amazing thing. But when it comes to our day to day, we do not celebrate ourselves enough because more often than not, we don't see what we're doing as a cause for celebration. And let me tell you some days just getting out of bed is worthy of a celebration.

[00:19:12] So with enjoy, it's about bringing that enjoyment back into your day to day. There's this amazing Brenae brown quote that I love. And it's all about this small moments of celebration. She writes. Joy comes to us in moments, ordinary moments we risk missing out on joy. When we get too busy, chasing down the extra ordinary.

[00:19:38] Right. I mean, how true is that? So what I really want to encourage you to do when it comes to your joy practice is to celebrate something every day. Celebrate. Celebrate sending that email celebrate, not looking at your phone in the morning. And when I say celebrate, what is a celebration to you? Maybe it's a little dance party.

[00:20:03] Maybe it's literally saying out loud. I am so proud of you for not checking your. Maybe it is taking a deep breath and just acknowledging how proud of yourself you are. Maybe it is literally hugging yourself. I do this, I pat myself on the shoulder when I do something that I've been delaying forever. So celebrating our day to day wins really is about changing our minds around what is worthy of celebration.

[00:20:33] And what does celebration look. What does enjoying look like? What does savoring look like? It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be grand. It can be as small as you want it to be. But as long as it is a moment of celebration for you love, that's what makes the difference at practice that I love to do when I give to my clients all the time.

[00:20:54] And I've talked about it on this podcast before is called stop. Pause. So I asked my clients to set an alarm on their phone that will go off three times a day in times where they, you know, they're not in the middle of a meeting or putting their kids down to sleep, but three random times. And when the alarm goes off, they stop what they're doing, they pause and they savor that moment.

[00:21:18] So let's try that together. Okay. I want you to stop, pause and saver what's happening, right.

[00:21:31] As I'm doing this, I'm savoring being here, talking with you on my a hundred and first episode of my podcast. I'm savoring the fact that my husband is outside in our kitchen, making a really delicious meal for us. I'm savoring that my curls look really good today. So love what are you savoring? There is always something that we can save her in every moment.

[00:21:58] And when we remind ourselves of that, that's when we can really tap into our joy. So now we're at our third pillar, engage, engage is about really engaging with your community in a meaningful way every day. Again, the key every day. And your community can be your friends or your family, but it can also be a colleague, a coworker.

[00:22:25] It can be the person at the grocery store, but in a way that feels meaningful to you. Now, I'm not telling you to go tell your life story to your grocery clerk. No, but maybe it's just about cracking a joke. Or asking them how their day is in a really genuine way. Y'all I am leaning on engage so hard right now.

[00:22:46] I know for me, engage, allows me to really be in my joy. We are really disconnected from one another right now. Right. And when we are with our communities connecting in a meaningful way, We feel not so alone, we feel like we're not the only one we feel like it's not just us. And that sense of support and community is so incredibly important.

[00:23:12] I want to share another quote with you, and this is by Jamie Veron and she writes the work of joy is on the ground level one to one interaction, a brief moment that tells us. I see you, it can feel so small and yet it can build up to so much. One of the ways that I love to practice engage, and it actually combines a couple of the pillars is to send a random text to a friend and let them know how grateful I am for them.

[00:23:41] Actually, if you listened to my last episode, episode, a hundred, all about love. That episode is me surprising for people in my life with love letters. And if you listen to that episode, you will hear, you will see, you will feel how much joy is generated when we connect with others in a meaningful way, in a deep way, in a way that is so rooted.

[00:24:03] And I see you, I hear you and I am here for you. That type of connection y'all oh my gosh. It's so incredible. And if you listen to that episode to last week's episode, you will hear. That it's not just the recipient. Who's like all in their joy. I'm in my joy. I hate it's like giving someone a gift that you know, that they want, but maybe they never asked for.

[00:24:29] And it's just that for you, the gift giver, you're just like so excited for them to open the gift and then you, they open the gift and then they're so happy and you're so happy. They're so happy. Y'all this gift of texting a friend, how grateful you are for them. It's furry and you can do it so easily. So I'm going to challenge you to do that.

[00:24:49] I want to challenge you to text, to email, to reach out to four people in your life that you love and let them know why you love them. Let them know why you're grateful for them. And I'm telling you, your joy is going to spike. It's going to go off the charts. Okay. I'm telling you literally pause this podcast.

[00:25:09] I challenge you. Pause it, send it. I'm waiting. Did you do. I hope he did it. Just trust me on this one. Okay. All right. Let's get into our fourth pillar. So ease y'all he sees, we all need more ease in our lives, and I know that you would like more ease in your life because my podcast about ease, rest and joy is my most downloaded podcast.

[00:25:37] Okay. Ease is all about ease and rest and pause in our day-to-day everyday life. Okay. Again, underline, underscore daily, we are good at like grand moments of ease and rest, right. Maybe taking a week off to go on vacation or taking an entire weekend off to just chill, but no ease and rest. It's all about daily moments, daily practices, whether that is now.

[00:26:05] Meditating, stepping away from your computer stopping work. When you say you're going to stop work, ease, and rest, create such a sense of calmness and groundedness and peace for us. And it's not something that we have to earn our work towards. We are worthy of rest of pausing of our ease in any moment, and we need to have it day to day.

[00:26:32] This is a non-negotiable thing, right? You know, an apple a day, then what I'm recommending to you is ease every day. And so the question when I'm struggling with ease is how can I make this easier? How can I infuse more ease into this task? Maybe how can I make this easier is asking someone to help me, maybe how can I make this easier is not being such a perfectionist about it?

[00:26:56] Maybe. How can I make this easier is not doing it at all or not doing it today. But asking myself, how can I make this easier is such a great place to start. You don't have to know the answer right away, but if you can just get curious about that, I promise you the answers will come to. Allow yourself, moments of pause and rest and ease everyday love and listen.

[00:27:24] I know how hard that can be because we live in a society. That's conditioned us to believe that we have to work for moments of rest or that we're not worthy of or deserving of ease or rest that's BS. And if you want to go deeper into it, check out my podcast episode on ease, rest. Enjoy. But in order to create more joy in our lives to cultivate that joy in our lives, we really need to allow ourselves, give ourselves permission to pause when we need it, take breaks when we need it and have more ease and rest in our lives.

[00:27:59] So those are the four pillars. Maybe some of them resonate more with you. Maybe some of them you want to just sit with and see what comes up for you. But for me this week, I'm going to be leaning on those four pillars. Hard. Sometimes I will write them down on a piece of paper and I'll tick off what I did that day. [00:28:19] Write down what I did that day. That allowed me to embody that pillar love joy. As I said at the top of this podcast and the mindset Monday, doesn't show up by accident. Joy is an intentional and deliberate choice that we have to make every day. And some days it is the easiest choice and some days it is the hardest thing that we can do.

[00:28:42] But joy is what creates this beautiful quality of life. Joy is our birthright. Joy is the wish and the dream of our ancestors joy is what we all deserve and are worthy of. So as we. Finish. I want to share a quote with you by Mary Oliver. It's from one of her poems and it reads, if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate.

[00:29:13] Give into it. Don't be afraid of it's plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. So love. I am listen, I'm in this with you. Okay. But we need our joy more than ever, right? When it shows up, however, it shows up revel in it, create it, cultivate it. So as we finish up, I want you to think of one thing that's really resonating from this episode for you.

[00:29:44] And we're going to take a deep breath in and out holding that one. Aha moment. That one insight, that one thought that you're having right now. So breathing in pause. Thinking of that thing, embodying it and breathing out until next week. Love, I will talk to you then. Thank you so much for joining me this week.

[00:30:11] If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend subscribe or follow where you love listening to. And if you haven't yet leave a review, you can do this on apple podcasts, Castbox pod chaser, or podcast addict until next week. Love.