In my ongoing attempt to fill in the grooves of any negative neural pathways I created in the past to maintaining new positive neural pathways, I stumbled onto something I adore! It is called “tiny slivers of joy”!
Chade-Meng Tan, known as “the jolly good fellow”, was a former engineer at Google. He helped build their mobile search function but is better known for his highly successful mindfulness* classes for employees.
He used to be a “pretty miserable guy” but in his early adulthood, found the path to being a much happier guy.Tan says that if you reshape your mindset with mental exercises you can add “thin slices of joy” to your everyday life. They occur in life everywhere!
Here’s an example, you are thirsty, you take a long cool drink of water. It tastes so good and in one or two seconds you have created your tiny slice of joy. It happens over and over throughout your day. You just have to take note. These slices add up throughout the day and the more you notice joy, the more you will experience joy. And once you start noticing it, you find that it is always there.
By looking for those slices of joy throughout your day, you are forming a new habit. The habit becomes natural and is automatic and it becomes easier to repeat that behavior without much thought.
Tan says these “slices” contain three parts — the trigger, a routine, and a reward. These are the three things required to build a habit. You have to train yourself to notice, what you don’t notice, you don’t see.
After reading and researching this concept, I have begun looking for those slivers of joy throughout my day. Yesterday driving home, I passed a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer with three horses inside. As I passed, all three horses stuck their heads out breathing in the passing air with their beautiful manes flowing in the breeze. I felt good all over just seeing this and said to myself, “Wow, that was my first tiny sliver of joy”
Start looking for and gathering yours. They are everywhere and there for the taking.
Joy to you, DeeDee
P.S. Tan latest book describes this concept, Joy on Demand
mindful things 