One of the most popular Christmas songs is called “Joy to the World.” This week on the podcast I’m talking a little bit about what that means to me. And what my personal theme for 2024 will be.
The Who, What, Where, When and Why of bringing joy to this world. Especially around the holidays. Thank you for joining me.
Please like and subscribe here and also visit my links page to see all of the other places we can connect https://www.joyfulicity.com/links
One of the most popular Christmas songs is called “Joy to the World.” This week on the podcast I’m talking a little bit about what that means to me. And what my personal theme for 2024 will be.
The Who, What, Where, When and Why of bringing joy to this world. Especially around the holidays. Thank you for joining me.
Please like and subscribe here and also visit my links page to see all of the other places we can connect https://www.joyfulicity.com/links
One of the most popular Christmas songs out there is called Joy to the world. And this season, I want to talk a little bit about what that means to me. Welcome to the joy Felicity podcast. I'm your host, Laura Wakefield. My parents gave me the gift of joy as my middle name, literally on my birth certificate. My name is Laura Joy Wakefield. I was named after my Aunt Joy, who ironically lived a life of great sadness. As a young woman, she was vivacious and beautiful and had a terrific sense of humor. But life handed her some tough breaks. And she turned to alcohol for solace, which didn't go well. I'll leave it at that. But I do have memories of joy breaking through the bitterness occasionally with her, and I treasure those, she could be so warm and funny at times. And I loved her very much. As a young girl, kids often tease me about my middle name. Honestly, kids tease each other about pretty much everything. But I can't count how many times people would hear my middle name was joy and break out into songs, singing Joy to the world, or make some comments about joy in one way or another. In the insecurity of youth I hated that. I wished I just had an ordinary middle name that people would just ignore. But as I've grown older, I've come to see it as a blessing. And a reminder to me of a mission dear to my heart. If at the end of my life, even one person says that I brought a measure of joy to this world, and to their life and heart, then I will have led a blessed life indeed, full of love and purpose. Joy is my middle name. And I've made it my online screen name and the heart of the work I do. Because I think it matters. The world needs more of it. My aunt needed it. You do? And I do. Everybody does. So I wanted to do a little bit of a who, what, where, when? And why about giving the gift of joy this holiday season, we talk a lot about gift giving around the holidays in particular, but how do we give and extend the gift of joy? So let's unpack that just a little bit for a moment. Who should we give this gift to? Like I was saying literally, everybody, do you know anybody out there that couldn't use a little more happiness in their life and a little more joy, everybody. And the funny thing about giving this gift that's different than a lot of other gifts is the more of it you give, the more of it you seem to receive. It magnifies itself as you give it away. So what a beautiful thing, it's not something that we have to be careful like with some gift giving, we have to be careful not to spend too much money or to overextend ourselves, but with joy and happiness, it's just the kind of gift it's renewable, you can give it and give it and give it and give it without ever running out. So look around at the people that you come in contact with, of course, the people that are closest to you, what's the point of any other gift other than to light up the face of somebody that you love. So that's really at the heart of most of the gifts that we're giving it this holiday season is to try to bring some joy into the lives of the people that we love through things that they want things that they need, oftentimes their physical gifts. But when we get to the heart of why we're even bothering to do that in the first place, it kind of sheds light on the kind of gifts we ought to be considering giving. So there's the what of the joy. It doesn't have to cost money it can some gifts can be wrapped and put under a Christmas tree. And those gifts are wonderful. I wouldn't want to downplay those. But joy can also be 100% Free, give the gift of your time, gift, the gift of your attention. People are starved to feel seen and known and wanted and loved. Those are the kinds of gifts that really light people up. A physical gift can be wonderful. But they generally are somewhat expendable, like they will either be used up or worn out or forgotten or the excitement will die down. So give gifts from your heart this year. In addition to those things, perhaps. But again, these ones are totally renewable. The gifts of time attention, smiles to people that you don't know well, as you go out into the shopping centers, doing your Christmas shopping. People are stressed out there because they're spending money they probably don't have. Most people at Christmas time actually are under a higher level of stress than normal. So try to give the gift of joy while you're out there. Be kind to the people that are working in the stores. They're exhausted. Be kind to the people that you see the young man Other than struggling with her kids in the stroller, give her a smile, give her some help if she seems to need it. These are such simple things to do. But mostly it begins with being aware that this is probably the most important gift that you can give the world is your own personal joy, and trying to light up other's lives and just share that with other people. Where everywhere you go, there's so much pain out there, there's so much stress, there's so much sadness. And as you start to pay attention with this question in your mind, who in this environment that I'm in at the moment, whether it be school or work, or the shopping center, or wherever you are, who here today might need the gift of joy, who here today might need the gift of my smile of my kindness of my patients. That is a huge gift to give, especially to the employees that are out working extended hours during the holidays, give your patients I worked retail for many years, and I worked at HoneyBaked Ham for a while very stressful place to be at the holidays. All the customers are coming in stress, the employees are exhausted and stressed when people would treat us with kindness. And just wish us happy holidays. And thank you for our extra work and all those kinds of things, the simplest things really would make a difference in helping us get through different shifts. So just remembering that the gift of your patience can bring joy to somebody's life, it really can be that simple as just not snapping at an employee that makes a mistake, or not pushing to get ahead of everybody else in line, just being patient, being friendly, being happy. Bringing that little bit of happiness into a room with you can make all the difference in somebody else's day. Because you might be the only person perhaps that smiled at them that day. Or you might be the only customer that thanked them for what they're doing and told them they were doing a good job, you literally sometimes might be the only person in that human's life, that was kind to them. It is a good time, if you have the funds to give extra to all the various causes that you can around the world to be more aware than usual, perhaps about all the need that is out there in the world and to share the resources that you are blessed with whatever those may be, whether they be financial, or you're a counselor, maybe give away some of your time, to people that can't afford to pay for it or whatever profession you do to be maybe extra generous and try to do some pro bono work at the holidays, that can make a huge, huge difference. Sometimes we're not really sure what to do, maybe it's a stranger, and we don't really know them. But we can just see that they are feeling down and out. Sometimes the answer is simply to ask, Is there something I can do for you. And it's not always as simple as just saying to someone that you can sense something is wrong, either that they maybe need more from you. It's a little bit of a funny thing to just say, Hey, let me know if there's anything I can do because a lot of people aren't going to reach out. But to go right to them and say I'm right, I'm here. Can I help you right now? Is there something that I can do to help you and then be willing to actually follow through and do it, the holidays can be a very painful time. Whatever problems that we have tend to feel magnified, whether they be loneliness, or sickness or whatever they are financial things. They seem to magnify in our minds and our hearts at the holidays, I think because there's this idea that we're supposed to be having this wonderful, magical experience, like in a Hallmark movie, everything's supposed to be perfect. And of course, none of our lives are perfect. And so all those imperfections, the holidays seem to shine extra light on those sometimes. That's one of the ironic things that this can be one of the least happy periods of time and people's years. So literally anything that you're able to do to live somebody's burden to lighten their load just that little bit. But I think sometimes maybe even more importantly, to just let them know that you think that they are great if there's an employee at your favorite grocery store, for instance, that always goes above and beyond and you've noticed that or or your mail carrier or you have a particularly friendly UPS delivery person that you interact with all the time. This is a great time to tell them. I just want you to know what a great job you do and how much I appreciate you. Because sometimes people feel like their jobs are fairly thankless and they just kind of do all this stuff every day and nobody notices So just knowing that somebody noticed their hard work can go a long way to lifting someone's spirits and bringing a little bit of joy into their day. When do we do this, every chance we get every chance we get. And just having this spirit of questioning in our minds who needs this today will open your eyes to things that you might not have otherwise noticed or seen, you know, we walk around with our heads down just going from task to task. Take a pause, and look around with that question in your mind, who needs just a little lift today? And when you start to ask the question, it will start to manifest in front of you, it's kind of miraculous, when you're looking for something, you suddenly see it. And it will come to you more rapidly than you expect. That person, you'll notice them at the mall, or at work, you'll notice something different about their mannerisms that day. And you'll just know, you'll just know that that's the person that needs me today. Why should we do this because the holidays have become fairly commercialized. Sometimes we forget that underneath, all of that should be love. Underneath, all of that should be some faith and desire to give to humanity to the people around us. Underneath all of that the only purpose for any of that should be to build connections should be to show other people that there's hope in this world, that there's joy in this world, that there's faith to be found. There's a lot of problems, but there's also so much good. And if we get too caught up in the commercial aspects of the holiday seasons, whichever one of the different holidays that we personally celebrate, there's kind of a, an overall feeling of the holidays that we all collectively celebrate. But at the basis of all of those, whether they are founded in religion for you, or just simply in being alive, and a person, let's try to get to the heart of what really matters. And that can be again, it can be manifested in a lot of the holiday traditions. And it can be manifested in giving monetary gifts or physical gifts, it can be manifested in the lights and the decorations, and the baked goods and, and all of the different things that that we think of and associated with the holidays. But the heart of all of that, underneath it all is to create experiences, that friends and family and coworkers and neighbors can share together. Why? So it can fill us up with all of those feelings of of happiness and just closeness to other people. So that we have like, for the year ahead, we have all of that stored up within us to continue to give, it shouldn't end in December, all those feelings of leaning toward late like, I think that sometimes we associate them so much with this time of year. But when you get to the heart of what they're really about, you realize that this shouldn't just be limited to the holidays. So I love the song Joy to the world, not just because it has to do with my middle name. But because that is talking about what was at the heart of that particular as a religious song. And it's about basically that faith can bring joy into this world. And I think that that's just such an important thing to remember this time of year especially, is it that's really what it's about is not just experiencing joy ourselves, but finding ways to share that with as many other people as we can. And remembering that there's many, many different ways that we can do that. And some of them are so very simple. It's just a matter of having the desire to do so. And paying attention to where we see the opportunities because they're around us all the time. It's just we can become so distracted that we don't notice anymore. And we don't even realize that that you know, two seconds that we might have taken to help that person. We don't take it because we just didn't even notice that they needed to help. So that would be my challenge as we wrap up 2023 and are heading into a new year to spend the rest of 2023 This next week. Really focusing on who around us in this world. You Could use a little bit more joy, and how we might be able to be vehicle for even a small portion of that for them. And just see how different the holidays suddenly begin to feel, when seen through that lens. I'm going to be taking a week off next week from the podcast to spend some time with my family. For me, as my kids are growing up and moving away, that's been a big thing that the holidays represents is that many of them start to come home. So while I have them with me, I really want to focus on them and pay attention to them, and have some of these experiences within my little family here. But looking forward to 2024, what are you looking forward to what are your goals. And by goals, I don't mean rigid things that you're, you know, going to beat yourself up about if you don't accomplish them. But what's going to be the overall theme of 2024. For you, for me, 2023 was all about authenticity, and reclaiming some authenticity in my life. And that's manifested in many, many ways. The theme that I feel emerging for 2024, for me, personally, is about health, physical health, mental health, spiritual health, and really focusing on that for myself and for my household. Having some sort of overarching theme for the year in your mind can be very, very helpful because it kind of gives direction sometimes we feel like we're just getting up and spinning our wheels every day, or we're so overly goal focused on specifics, that we're constantly failing and behind and very rigid in that but having an overall theme, and idea of what needs attention in my life this year, what needs attention in my home this year, can be really beneficial. And for me, it's all centered around health, primarily physical health are some things that I kind of have not been focusing on that I know that I probably should have been doing a better job at. So now that I've kind of been stepping it more into my authenticity and into coming to really love myself again, the next logical step is if you love yourself, let's start taking care of yourself, that physical body that you have, and, and your mental health as well, and all of those kinds of things. So I'll be talking a lot about that theme in 2024. But I just want to thank all of you for your support. As you have listened to this podcast and downloaded the episodes and shared your thoughts and feelings with me and to my guests that have joined me on this show. This has been a truly remarkable experience since I started this earlier this year. And I'm really looking forward to continuing this forward into 2024. I have lots of things I want to share with you. I'm really especially looking forward to the guests that I'm going to be having on the show and the things that they are going to have to share. But I wish you all a very happy holiday season. And I'm wishing you all joy, from my heart to yours. From my family to yours. Let's bring some joy to the world and let it begin with us. Have a great day everybody. Thank you for joining me today on the joy Felicity podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and share and come follow me on all major social media sites at Joy Felicity or on my website, Joy felicity.com. You can follow the link in the description for this episode to all of the places that we can connect. Have a great day everybody and remember, dare to dream. Plan to play live to learn