How To Plan & Optimize For Daily Joy!

Good morning. I've been going back through thirty years of journals, and there's a page in journal number six that's making me smile. It was 1997. The prompt I'd written at the top of it was simple. Let's start with a list of all the things you can think of that bring you joy. And then just a list. Number one was a great day of golf with some good friends. Thirty years later, that one still lands. You know what a gratitude practice is. Think of this as a joy practice. Not what you're thankful for... what actually brings you joy. So you can go and put more of it into your days. Let me read you some of mine. There was a show I watched every morning when I first moved to Florida. Animated, comedians on a psychiatrist's couch. Very fun. A day at home with nothing to do but lay around and read and study. Still true. Going to a movie at Celebration. Still true. Those are two-hour things, which means they go in the calendar. Like anything else you actually intend to do. Being in resort-like surroundings is on the list too, and I've built my life around that one. Where I live, we call it the Four Seasons Valhalla. Dan Sullivan said something once that stuck with me. That he and Babs don't want to do any less at home than they would if they were staying at the Four Seasons. So we have a logo. Robes in the guest room. The logo on the coffee cups. Then there's dreaming up big schemes. Some people do Sudoku. I like to crack a marketing puzzle. Same puzzle, same recreation, and mine happens to pay. The ones that surprised me are the very specific ones. My friend Stacey Hurley used to throw apple crisp and Trivial Pursuit parties. She'd make this legendary apple crisp, invite everybody over to her beautiful home, and we'd play Trivial Pursuit all night. I read that line and the whole feeling comes back. Which is the part I didn't expect. Even the things that don't fit into your life this week still bring you joy, just from the remembering. Then there are the rituals. At the time it was Sunday night at the movies with Tim and Darlene. Their place or ours, every Sunday. I still do it. Now it's Josh and Diane coming to the office to watch a movie. Having money is on the list. They say money can't buy happiness... it brings me joy, and I'm going to write it down. And an afternoon by the fire at the Delta Meadowvale in Toronto. A big lobby, a real wood-burning fireplace, hot chocolate and a stack of magazines, and somebody coming round every so often to stoke it with actual logs. It's a gas fireplace now. Not the same. But the remembrance of it is still doing its work. So here's the whole thing. Take some space in your journal and write down what brings you joy. Then either fit more of it in, or ritualize it so you know it's coming. And you get paid twice. Once now, filling your days with the things on the list. And once in thirty years, when you open the page and find you knew all along. Here's your nudge for today. Start a joy page. Just the list... everything you can think of that brings you joy. Then look at this week and put one of them in it. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/096-how-to-plan-optimize-for-daily-joy/