Navigating life and work with joy

Wouldn’t we all want to simply have somebody giving us the recipe for a happy, successful and fulfilling life? And at work, how awesome would it be to have a handbook for how to do your job successfully while having fun? If these were not questions so many of us have on our mind, there would not be thousands of self-help and management books on the shelves, if only we could find the “right one” for us. Yet, leadership – or living a happy life – isn’t about following a pre-described recipe, it is a constant juggling with what is in front of us (and on our mind), how our context is changing, who we are co-creating and in relationship with, and how the problems we’re solving are evolving. Through all of this we seek access to a sense of peacefulness, happiness, relaxation and joy. So if there is not one global recipe for this, what is there to guide us?

Finding our purpose and letting it guide us

If you know this nagging feeling of wasting time in the job you currently hold, without knowing how to figure out what an alternative – one that feels more like what you want to get up for in the morning – feels like, you’re in good company.

One way to feel better about where you are at (or to figure out what it is you might be looking for instead) is to gain more clarity on your values and your purpose in life. If you don’t know where or how to start this kind of work, hiring a coach might be a great way to discover this for you! Great coaches will bring tools to help you discover *your* values and guide you through figuring out first steps to point your life more in the direction of these.

Yes, you can do this work on your own. You can however stretch much faster and feel more accountable to actually taking your first step, when there is somebody helping *you* to find that first step in your path, and helping *you* decide how you want to hold yourself accountable to actually take it. When you know *your* values it becomes easy for you to figure out whether or not your are living in alignment with them. And what it is that *you* can change to be more in alignment with them. A coach can be a great person getting you started and guiding you with this process of self-discovery.

Change is the name of the game – getting comfortable with it

Another aspect that might guide is is to simply know, that life is in a constant state of evolution, transformation and change. Acknowledging this and normalizing how this may trigger anxiety in you might be a first step in getting more comfortable with the fact that we simply can’t fully control what happens in our lives. The beauty is, that with every new day, with every new situation we encounter, we also evolve and change with it. Humans (unlike machines) are made to be capable to adapt, to be resilient, to be resourceful and to learn from new input. We thrive when meeting our life’s challenges in a collaborative, generous, networked fashion. When we tap into our ability to stay curious, to ask questions, to learn new information, to collaborate with each other, we are amazing problem solvers and resources for and with each other. And one day we might find ourselves to actually feel excited in the fact of change, trusting in our abilities to navigate challenges and looking forward to the new things that emerge out of every change.

Nobody goes through life without serious challenges. We may experience a traumatic family background, the loss of loved ones, a divorce, mental health challenges, physical health challenges, violence, oppression or simply feeling lonely, disconnected or unappreciated. Every one of us will meet change, challenges and hardships as part of our lives, and no they certainly don’t feel good in the moment. To better bounce back from adversity, we can learn about resilience skills and put these into practice in our every day life. There is an awesome free course from University of Pennsylvania introducing a lot of science based resilience tools. You’ll need to invest about 16 hours into it. Spending time on our own resilience skills enables us to have much more joyful and productive relationships in life AND at work.

This becomes particularly valuable, if you are working in an innovation context. You’ll want to co-create with people who are highly skilled at navigating uncertainty, creative abrasion, divergent viewpoints, learning from failure, and change. Innovation means you don’t know what kind of new solutions might emerge and you can’t control how they look and work. If you knew these solutions already, they would be part of your products or ways of working already. You also need people capable to ask good questions and listen, able to find patterns, able to structure ideation into prototyping and finally productizing or operationalizing a solution. It requires leaders capable to co-create, communicate and rally their team behind a shared purpose and have their teams successfully collaborate and experiment their path through a lot of uncertainty in their work context. These kind of leaders also benefit from working with a coach, both for themselves as well as for their entire team. There is work necessary to normalize uncertainty and change and reframe it into a space that can be seen and experienced as safe enough to function well, exciting and ripe with opportunities. There is transformative behavior change necessary to lead your innovation team and co-create with joy in uncertain contexts. Especially in organizations that have unconscious hierarchy and power structures in their culture (which is true for most places I have worked at or seen). Again: a coach can be a tremendous asset in speeding up that transformation towards building innovation into the DNA of your team.

Listening to and trusting our inner wisdom

One of the easiest (because we all have free access to it) and yet often hardest (because we all struggle with it) tools we have to navigate life joyfully is to listen to and trust our inner wisdom. We can simply sit down, pause and start listening to what is present for us in our body, mind and emotions. Any tension, pain or joy we feel in the moment is a signpost helping us to make sense of our life and experiences. All we need to do is start paying attention. The easiest way to start accessing this is by practicing mindfulness meditation. Find a time in your day to simply pause, slow down, be still, breathe and start paying attention to what comes up.

When I first started doing this, it was hard. I felt like I’m “doing it wrong”, I was worried that my lack of ability to simply sit and watch my breathing without having my mind wander off might mean I can’t meditate. A lot of distracting thoughts, emotions and sensations came up. All of this is perfectly normal (and I wish I had known that back when I started). Now I sit down and I look forward to that inner sense of peace, relaxation and joy I have access to when I spend time simply being in the present moment. It would be a lie to say this happened over night (or works every time), but I am more than grateful to know, that I am able to get there with patiently sitting through all those thoughts, emotions and sensations that need to show themselves while I am on my way to access my joy. It is completely worth the journey. It’s how I learned to get to know myself, how I learnt to pay attention to the amazing signals available to me from my thoughts, emotions and body, and how I know I can easily (and for free) relax and enjoy life.

The good news is: we live in times where all we need to get started with a meditation practice is setting an intention and making a little bit of time to listen, start learning and practicing. Maybe starting with some guided meditations is a good way to go, maybe doing it together with somebody to create a sense of accountability for the practice will help, or maybe you even have the ability to go to a retreat and start there. It’s great to have an experienced teacher guide you with your first steps in meditation (it’s kind of like a meditation coach). There are also plenty of free apps (e.g. Insight Timer or Head Space), and many different styles of free meditations on the Internet. Science is showing how a mindfulness practice reduces stress, builds resilience, helps you focus better and is a great way to a happier life. Who would not want to have a joyful, resilient, present way of being with the people and situations life presents to you on any given day?

At work a meditation practice can allow you to be present, to lead and co-create with joy, to be focused in high stakes negotiations, to be clear on how our purpose and values should shape our behaviors (and find the gaps where our aspirations and actions are not in alignment), to be prepared for that big presentation, and to be able to stay joyful in the face of uncertainty, change and challenges. I found that I am able do this from knowing what it feels like to be happy with myself in the moment (even if I temporarily forget that during my day).

Remembering that life is a miracle, one we can choose to enjoy every day

Whenever I remember that life is this precious miracle to be allowed to experience, it opens the door for tons of gratitude. How amazing to be living on this planet that happens to have oxygen, water, sun light, gravity and natural resources to enable human life. How amazing that in the billions of years since our solar system started, we are in this short moment of evolution with the presence of humans on Planet Earth. Our bodies are these beautiful vessels allowing us to move around, be in relationship with each other, breathe, eat, create new life, think and experience life with all our senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, emotional and gustatory. We’re able to make sense, listen, think, learn, feel, create, set intentions, play, communicate, help each other, nurture, heal and love. We can learn about and intentionally build a more nurturing, loving state of being for ourselves and the humans around us. And we can absolutely find moments of joy, beauty, happiness and connection in every single one of our days. By paying attention to these and feeling gratitude for them, we can start feeling joy every day. Our brain will build the related neural pathways. And ultimately our body will incorporate the emotions of relaxation, joy and happiness (or whatever it is you choose to focus on intentionally) into our general state of wellbeing. Why wouldn’t you want to center joy?

Photo by Catalin Pop on Unsplash

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If you would like to explore this more: reach out for a free discovery session with me.
I coach, speak, do workshops and blog about #leadership, #product leadership, #innovation, the #importance of creating a culture of belonging and how to succeed with your #hybrid or #remote teams.

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