Whoo Hoo! You’re Here! Welcome to the Inspired Joy Challenge!  

This is DAY 1 – Acknowledge & Reframe!

Through my personal experience and studies, I’ve come to realize there is a profound difference between joy and happiness.  

Happiness and Joy are wonderful feelings and both look the same but we actually experience them very differently. 

Happiness is an emotion we get from externally based things, events or people. Our experiences can range from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense pleasure.  It is a state of being – Happiness in our good fortune, pleasure or contentment coming from outside of us. Happiness can be created or even manufactured but it is not sustaining, it is a measured time frame. 

Examples of Happiness:  Winning the lottery, attending a party, going to a concert or play, going on a vacation, earning money.

Joy is a quality or state of being and living. Joy is based on our inner self, comes when you make peace with whom you are, and how you are in this world.   
Aiming for joy is more beneficial, and is not tied to external circumstances. Joy comes with having a deep personal understanding of one’s heart and mind, a peace with our deep convictions and values.  Joy is sustaining and long lasting.

Examples of Joy: The birth of a child, support of family and friends, enjoying nature and all creation on this planet.  Inner peace, gratitude, and an underlying feeling of deep love and reverence for oneself and everything outside of ourselves. 

Knowing how to create joy can be confusing for many people. It can be easy to resort to quick fixes like alcohol, drugs, sex, and addictive foods, or find fleeting moments of happiness from other places without truly experiencing it and cultivating it for ourselves.

In order to begin to create more joy on a daily basis, we must take the time to understand what pulls us out of our joy first.

One of the biggest things that derails us from experiencing JOY and takes our power away is the mindset focusing on COMPARISON.  

How many times a day do you look at what someone else is doing on social media and think… I wish I was there, or I wish I was doing that, or I wish I could do that or own that.. or make that…etc? (I think you get my drift).
  
Recognize that when you feel magnetized towards another person or admire something in them in a big way, they are simply reflecting your own self back to you, holding up a mirror for you to see yourself more clearly, and embody that quality in yourself more fully.  

From this awareness you can honor and celebrate both them and yourself! Plus, stay grounded in our own power and self-authority.  

So how do you practice remaining in our energy and cultivating our own power during the day? 

First and foremost, YOU MUST be willing to create change in your life. And affirmations are one way to do this. First, you may want to acknowledge in the mirror (speaking directly to yourself) that you are ready to create change.
Affirmations work by reprogramming your subconscious mind and changing the beliefs that you hold about yourself, your life, and the world. These beliefs affect what you are attracting into your life, but up until now have not shown up for you.
You see there is a huge disconnect between what our conscious minds think about ourselves and what our subconscious mind actually believes about ourselves. And 99% of the time, the subconscious mind is more powerful than the conscious mind. When you repeat a positive affirmation over and over, even if your conscious mind doesn’t think it is true, over time your subconscious mind begins to believe it to be true and then it begins to override your conscious mind.


This leads us to your first day practices.

PRACTICE FOR DAY 1:

1.  Notice when you start thinking about someone and begin to make comparisons or fall into negative thought patterns. (It has been estimated that an average brain has anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 thoughts a day and 70% of them are believed to be negative).

You are probably your own worse critique. Acknowledge these negative thought patterns and count them as they appear without placing judgment on yourself. 


2.  Begin to write out your negative thought patterns on a piece of paper on the left-hand side of the paper.  Then use the powerful words to reframe negative thoughts into positive affirmations for yourself on the right-hand side of the paper. I like to use the words I AM (then you fill in the blank)...to affirm that which you already are.

If you need an example of powerful affirmations to use, I’ve created a resource for you.

CLICK HERE to receive sample affirmations you can use. 

The GOAL is to say these in the mirror to yourself morning, day and night until this feels natural. 

Please join the rest of the challengers in the FACEBOOK GROUP and share the following:

1. Acknowledgement Exercise (let’s be vulnerable together):
Use the survey question to click on how many times your thoughts went into negative, self-sabotage or comparison mode? Then write “done” in the comments!

2. Reframing Exercise:
Once you write out the negative thought patterns and reframe them in the positives on the document, post a picture in the BFree Community group. Or, go ahead and post a picture of my document filled with affirmations if you are using that to get started.

That’s it for today! 

XOXO