A Prescription for Joy

swingWe received permission from this gifted author to post some of her content as written on another site and this one also stood out. Sometimes real joy can be achieved by doing the simplest of things. Have you found your joy?

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A Prescription for Joy

By: Kate Evans

Originally Posted on Elephant Journal.com

As part of our nomadic life, my husband and I were housesitting in north L.A. County.

The house was amazing, perched on a cliff where we could watch the waves and sunsets.

But I was in a slump. I was sick with a weird virus thing, and on top of it had three—yes, three—Freddy Krueger-ish periods in one month.

I am peri-menopausal, hear me roar.

I was also feeling blue about illness, death, and divorce happening in my loving circle of family and friends.

As can happen when you’re down, I became what T. Harv Eker calls a crap magnet. Bad thoughts swirled around like metal shavings, collecting in the magnet of my mind.

To interrupt a plunge into the black hole of WTF?!?!?!, it seemed a good time to try a meditation I’d recently read about.

Lying on the couch, a cat at my feet, I breathed in love on my inhalation, and breathed out stress on my exhalation.

Then, softly, I asked how I could be of service, and how I could amp up my mojo.

What came to me is: Change is the truth of life. Nothing is going wrong. Be love.

Afterward, I went into the house’s amazing backyard and swung on this swing, overlooking the vast Pacific ocean.

Then I hula-hooped.

Swinging and hooping, I was no longer a 52-year-old woman; I was a timeless child.

Later, on a walk, I saw a woman struggling to pull one of three refuse cans up her steep driveway. I thought about how my mom always said, “If you want to feel better, help someone out.”

Then I thought, I might frighten her if I grab one of her garbage cans and haul it up to her house. She’s going to think I’m a murderer or a Jehovah’s Witness.

So I said, “Hi! Would you like some help? It’ll be my Random Act of Kindness.”

She laughed and said, “Sure!”

So I lugged her garbage can up, and she smiled and said, “Thanks.” I bounded down the road feeling the best I had in a long time.

We were here on the housesit a month.

I decided my daily routine would be this:

* meditate
* swing
* hula hoop
* write
* perform a random act of kindness.

It’s hard to think of a better prescription for joy.

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