Joy is the human desire, Joy is us, Joy is our true primary emotion. It is not an achievement, it is not a thing. It is what we get when we remove the impediments of joy, which is anxiety and fear, to restore connection.
An infant’s early connection with his parents creates the capacity for well-being and joy as an adult. One of the primary agendas of most human beings is to get the connection going again. Our romantic experience is a taste of that infant experience before the fall, before the caretaker (eg, parent, helper, guardian) turns away. We tend to fall in love with people who are similar to the parts of our caretakers we had the most difficulty with. Why does that happen? This may not necessarily be true for everyone however most people go through this as shared in a research study shown by Harville Hendrix, Phd. It happens because the mind does this to repair and recover the original ruptured connection with someone who is similar to those persons with whom the original connection was ruptured. How can we fix this connection ?
We must have safety to repair connection, without safety we will be anxious and if we are anxious we will be defensive. When we are defensive it will interrupt our connection because it was the ruptured connection in the first place that created the anxiety. Relationship is fundamental. Safety can be created in conversation. Conversation is the most common experience human beings have, perhaps even more than eating. Human beings love talking.
There are some foundational tools we can use to fix this connection. Such as Mirroring which is deep listening. To connect, you have to not only listen but to move inside your partner’s movie and see it the way they are seeing it. Secondly, Validation- Means “I see your truth”. This is a huge transition into connecting to walk in another person’s shoes. Whether it’s a partner, a client, mother, your own child or anybody else.
We have to simply see the sense other people make and leave it alone, it’s theirs. Be empathetic with their feelings. Human beings are constant work, our emotions fluctuate depending on our situations. How we deal with it affects our emotions of joy. Being aware through practices we are familiar with such as yoga, meditation, coaching or healing helps us better cope with our emotions.
“What we pay attention to becomes larger and we have a choice of what we pay attention to”.
