Episode 81: What If Joy Includes…This?

What if joy isn’t found in a perfectly smooth, problem-free life—but in the middle of the interruptions and disappointments? In this episode, I share how our expectations can quietly steal our joy, and how shifting from resistance to acceptance can change everything. From sleepless nights to plans that don’t go as hoped, what if none of it is in the way of your joy… but actually part of it?

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Full Transcript:

Ep 81-What If Joy Includes…This?

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 80, The Acceptance Paradox.

I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hello, welcome back to Think New Thoughts. So glad you're here today.

Today we're going to talk about joy and joy as a circle that actually includes everything in your life, rather than joy as something separate that only includes the happy fun parts. So let's begin by exploring the idea of expectations. What is an expectation? It's how you picture something in your mind, how you think something is supposed to be.

Maybe you have expectations like it's not supposed to rain while I'm on vacation, or maybe no one in my family is supposed to be sad on Christmas day. Maybe you have expectations like babies aren't supposed to cry if they've been recently fed, or teenagers are supposed to be polite and kind 24-7. So you can have whatever expectations you want, and sometimes they come true, but a lot of times they don't.

And so expectations can be a setup for a lot of frustration because when it rains on your vacation, when Christmas isn't perfect, when your baby cries a lot, when your teenagers are sulking, you might feel like you got robbed if you believe that it's not supposed to be that way. If you're believing I was supposed to have this perfect, joyful experience, but then the rain, the crying, the complaining came in and ruined my joy. And when those things come along, it can definitely feel that way, but I want to invite you to challenge that thinking.

Is it really true that you were supposed to have a perfect, joyful experience where nothing went wrong? I was really thinking about this recently when I was up in the middle of the night dealing with some blood sugar stuff. I really value sleep. I try to get good sleep because it helps me to feel calm and clear and grateful and abundant in my life.

And I also have type 1 diabetes. And sometimes it's kind of like having a baby. It cries in the middle of the night and I have to attend to it.

So the other night, my blood sugar was really, really high before I was going to go to bed. And so my husband and I were trying to figure out like, okay, do I actually go to sleep? I've given some insulin a couple of times. It's not bringing it down.

So we're troubleshooting kind of trying to figure out what to do. We decided, okay, we're going

to set an alarm for two hours from now. We are going to go to bed.

And then I'm going to set an alarm for two hours from now. I'm going to wake up and check my blood sugar, see if it's gotten any lower and then decide what to do from there. So two hours set the alarm and then actually realized my sensor had lost its signal.

So that's like what tells my pump, what my blood sugar is. And that wasn't working at all. So I ripped that out.

I put in a new one and then decided, okay, I'm going to try to go back to bed and we'll kind of see how this goes. And a few hours later, my phone and my pump were sounding the alarm for a critical low blood sugar. But actually it was a false alarm because the sensor that I had put in wasn't calibrated appropriately.

And so it was saying that I was low, even though I wasn't anyway, yada, yada, yada. You don't need all of the details, but suffice it to say, suffice it to say it was a eventful night that involved my glucometer, finger pricks, infusion sets, sensors, my pump, and all sorts of different alerts in the middle of the night. And while we were dealing with all this, there was a point where I was thinking, you know, I worked really hard to get caught up after spring break and to set myself up for success.

I work really hard to be able to live a joyful life and get enough sleep and all this stuff. And then diabetes just comes in and wrecks it. I'm going to be so tired tomorrow.

Have you ever felt like that? Like here I am trying to live this joyful life and all these things keep coming in to ruin it. But then I started thinking about the idea of resistance, which I've been talking about actually a lot on the podcast and in some other places, and just started kind of reminding myself like, okay, you can resist this pain and add additional pain, or you can lean into it and accept this as it is. And it's not really that fun.

It's not really that enjoyable and you probably will be tired tomorrow, but you can stay in that clean pain. That's just part of being a human. Or if you want to, you can add additional emotional pain on top by resisting it and thinking that it shouldn't be happening.

So my husband and I ended up having a really great conversation about clean pain and dirty pain and all this in the middle of night as we're figuring out blood sugar stuff. So let's review that for a minute. Clean pain versus dirty pain.

This is something I talked about back on episode 25. So you might want to review it if you haven't heard this in a while, because it's such a cool idea. The basic concept is there are going to be things in life that are just part of your journey that are painful, physically painful, emotionally painful.

You're going to experience loss. You're going to experience sickness. You're going to experience pain.

And that is clean pain. It is part of what we signed up for. When we came onto this planet, it's part of the necessary experiences that we need to have in order to grow and become.

So thought work and the tools that I teach are meant to help you live the most joyful life that you can, which some people think means we're just trying to avoid all the pain and only focus on the good stuff. And that's actually not totally true. What we want to do is embrace the clean pain, but then not add dirty pain on top of it, not add the resistance that says this isn't fair.

And I shouldn't have to experience this. And this is ruining my joy. These kinds of beliefs, add additional pain on top and create unnecessary suffering.

So when you are facing something that is challenging or painful or hard, instead of resisting it and saying, here comes this thing to ruin my great day. You can say, okay, this is my journey. This is my curriculum.

This thing that I'm facing right now is part of my joyful life. It's not in the way of it. It's an integral part of it.

The day before all of my blood sugar stuff had happened. My husband ended up with a migraine that was really intense to the point of vomiting. The next day, my daughter woke up with a puffy eyelid.

We were trying to figure out what was going on and if we needed to take her in to see a doctor. And it seemed like with all of that stuff, it's like, ah, we're trying to live this joyful life, but now we're having all of these problems. But here's kind of a fun question to think when you're in those sorts of situations, what if joy includes this? If you believe that we're meant to experience joy in this life, I completely agree with you.

And also I find it so helpful to believe that joy doesn't mean 100% happy, exciting, pain-free moments 24 seven. Joy actually means 50 50 pleasure and pain, sickness and health, sunshine and rain, birth and death. Life is meant to be 50 50.

That's what joy is. So if you expect 100 zero, you're going to end up creating a lot of extra pain, extra dirty pain to go on top of the 50% of your life. That's not going to be sunshine and roses.

But if you expect 50 50, then you can accept the pain. You can accept the inconveniences, the mortal limitations that are part of the deal and leave it at that rather than adding additional unnecessary dirty pain on top. Do you know the scripture in James chapter one? It's one of my favorites.

This is the NIV translation. Consider it pure joy. My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

There's another translation that says count it all joy. When you fall into various temptations,

knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. So I just love that count it all joy.

There's a song that I've been listening to a lot lately. It's by Natalie Lane and it's called count it all joy. I'll link that in the show notes.

If you like this idea and you want to be able to sort of program your mind to think it more often with a song, but I love the idea of joy as this all encompassing ring that everything else fits into rather than joy as this teeny tiny little circle that we're trying to have everything cram into and feel like it doesn't fit. Joy is this all encompassing, it covers everything. Count it all joy, even the hard stuff.

So think about for you, what is something that you have been feeling like is in the way of your happiness? Maybe you've been struggling with your health. Maybe you have an expectation of one of your kids that they are not meeting and it's driving you crazy. Maybe you've experienced a loss or a disappointment and take a minute and consider how much of the pain that you're feeling is actual pain and how much of it is dirty pain that you've added on top with thoughts like, I shouldn't have to experience this.

I'm not supposed to ever feel pain. So this isn't fair. Both types of pain are painful.

They're both real. We feel them in our bodies and in our minds. We experienced that as pain.

But what I want you to know and remember is that the dirty pain that we layer on top by resisting it and thinking that it shouldn't be so is optional. And when you're ready, you can decide to gain relief from that by changing how you're thinking about it. I love this quote.

It's from Jenkins Lloyd-Jones. I actually first heard it from Gordon B Hinckley when I was growing up, but found out that he was quoting this guy Jenkins Lloyd-Jones. Here's the quote.

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don't drop. Most beef is tough.

Most children grow up to just be people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old-time rail journey.

Delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride. So here's a question I want to invite you to consider.

When you're feeling frustrated or sorry for yourself or like your challenges are in the way of your happiness, here's what you can ask. What if joy includes this? What if this is part of joy? What if this thing that you would really prefer not to have to deal with is in fact vital to your joy? I believe it is. I believe all of it is.

And when we can shift from resisting pain and frustration and inconvenience into accepting it,

that completely changes how you use your energy. It changes how you feel, and it changes how you experience your life. And it opens the door to so much more joy.

So that's my challenge to you this week. Try welcoming the pain rather than resisting it and see what changes for you. Cheering you on as you give it a try.

Hey, if you enjoyed this episode and you've been feeling a little worn down in motherhood, I created something for you. It's called the three shifts that change everything. A simple guide for moms who want to enjoy their kids again, whether your kids are little grown or somewhere in between, this guide will take you from worn down to wise, from discouraged to empowered and from frustrated to anchored.

I'd love to share it with you. You can download it for free at EmilyRicksCoaching.com. And there's also a link in the show notes.

Thanks so much for joining me today! I'll talk to you next week.

Shownotes:

Here’s the Count It All Joy Song by Natalie Layne that I mentioned in the episode. It’s so good! :)

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