02 Apr The Joy Prescription: Three Things You Need to Have More Joy

We need three things in order to have more joy. It’s like a joy prescription. I want to talk about the work. The real work. The bravest work any of us will ever do. Love and accept who we are.

I use JOY as an acronym — Just Own You — and what it means to just own you. Because at the heart of our work, for our lives, it really is about owning who we are, loving who we are, and having the courage to go be that in the world. And with that as the foundation, we can build our best lives.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. That’s the prescription.

But if it was really that easy, don’t you think more of us would be doing it? Don’t you think more people would be authentic and genuine to who they are?

I want to walk you through something I recently did in a retreat — conveniently called the Just Own You Retreat.

I want to share the essence of joy, the three key pieces we need in order to have more of it. And in order to make them more palatable, like cod liver oil in pill form instead of a spoonful. I’ve created three personas that can help us on our own journey to creating our best life and finding our most joyful and fulfilling life.

The three things we need: grace, love, and joy. Together, they form the map from clarity to confidence to courage.

One of the things I love most is weaving the science with the soul, because it’s one thing to know something, and it’s another thing to have it embedded in how we live.

Gabor Maté talks about how we come into this world with two core needs: the need for attachment — to belong, to be loved, to be cared for, and to be connected. And the need for authenticity — to be true to ourselves, to be genuine.

And here’s where it gets hard, and even heartbreaking at times: when those two needs come into conflict. When being real might cost us our sense of belonging, we will almost always choose attachment. We learn to fit in, to please, to perform. We shrink, we soften our edges, we swallow our truth. We don’t say what we think. We don’t express ourselves fully.

I often say that we are adult software running on childhood algorithms.

Because those early emotional impressions form the foundation of who we are, and then our more logical, thinking brain layers over top of those childhood patterns of reacting. It can make life extra challenging.

What Maté calls the personality — what we show to the world is often a mix of genuine traits and adopted survival strategies. Not always our true self, but oftentimes the loss of it, and the layering of patterns and conditioning over top of that loss.

Brené Brown says it another way: that shame — that desire to belong, and when we don’t experience it, that shame keeps us small. It whispers, and sometimes shouts, two messages:

I’m not enough.

And if we can get past that: Who do I think I am?

Those two questions form the armour of our lives. And that armour shows up as perfectionism, productivity, people-pleasing, performing, and so much more. All of it is armour. And it keeps us from being real and from being seen.

The Just Own You work is about taking the armour off slowly — not all at once, not recklessly, but gently, curiously, and with support.

Grace is the one who finds you in the messy middle.

Picture her with strong arms, big biceps, and steady eyes. She finds you on the ground, gravel in your knees, tears streaming down your face. She doesn’t rush in to fix you. She doesn’t judge. She just kneels down beside you, cups your face in her hands and looks at you.

I see you, she says softly. I see you.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not too much.

Grace is the essence of clarity. She helps you pause long enough to see yourself clearly, honestly, and compassionately.

And here’s what I know: so many of us are moving so fast, so caught up in doing, so caught up in running away from the truth of who we are, that we never stop to see the goodness of ourselves at all.

Clarity isn’t about having the answers. It’s about being willing to look. Building awareness of who you are, your essence. What matters to you? What are your values?

At the retreat, I asked participants to write for 20 minutes — gut reactions, no editing to prompts like the greatest joy in my life is, the biggest lack in my life is, my greatest fear is, my superpower. And I watched something unfold. People who had been moving at a hundred miles an hour, successful, driven, stopped. And in that stopping, Grace arrived.

I want that grace for you, too.

Try this: Write for five minutes without stopping. Pick up your pen only to punctuate or move to the next word. If you can’t think of what to write, just write can’t think of what to write and start again with the question:

Who am I?

Not what you think you should be. Not what you wish were different about yourself. What is genuinely coming clear about who you are, what you want, and what you need.

Let Grace find you there.

Once Grace has helped you see yourself, Love arrives.

Love is a lap and a swinging bench on her porch. She’s got pillows and throws. She doesn’t say much. She’s like a quiet grandmother — she listens, she abides, she holds your hand while you talk.

Love holds up a mirror and traces every part of you — the beautiful parts, the broken parts, the brave parts. All of you. And she helps you see the goodness of who you are. She reminds you: You don’t have to be perfect to be good, dear one.

She reminds you that the places of brokenness — the ache, the cracks — that’s part of what makes you precious. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending pottery with gold. The break isn’t the flaw, beloved. The break is where the gold goes. And where the gold grows.

Love says: I love you not because you’ve changed, but because you are here. Human, tender, real. Divinely designed to be just you.

And that is the foundation of real confidence. Real confidence isn’t performance. It’s not a persona you put on for a presentation. It’s not self-acceptance as an act. It’s the heart of self-compassion. It’s the willingness to stand in the fullness of who you are and say: This is who I am. And I can embrace all of who I am.

Psychologist James Gilligan writes that the self cannot survive without love, and the self starved of love dies. The absence of self-love is shame. That feeling of I’m not enough. I don’t belong. Who do I think I am?

We all know that feeling.

Kristin Neff, one of the leading self-compassion researchers, says the first component of self-compassion is to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend — with kindness. I take it a step further, because I know how hard I can be on myself. I say: talk to yourself like you would a suffering child who just fell off their bike.

You’re not analyzing their gait or wondering about their cadence. They fell. They were trying. And you meet them where they are. That hurts. You recognize the suffering and you pick them up.

Here’s what’s amazing about our brains: if you have a voice inside your head that is genuinely encouraging, your brain can’t always tell with certainty that it’s internal and not external. So be your own loving friend. Notice where you tell yourself you’re not enough. Notice where you move from fear instead of love.

Rumi said it beautifully: Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move.

That’s the invitation of Love — to move towards yourself, towards others, towards the goodness and truth that resides in you. From the place of wholeness, not woundedness.

And now we meet Joy.

Joy is grounded. She’s a little fierce and alive. When she arrives, she reminds you, “This is your truth.“ This is what matters. This is what alignment feels like. Don’t ignore this.

Joy is not fairies and pixie dust. And it might sound trite in a world that’s suffering, but it’s what we need. It’s what we ache for. Joy is strong. Joy is grounded. Joy is truth personified.

Joy shows up when we act or experience something that aligns with who we are and what matters to us. I wrote about it in my book, Finding Your Joy Spot — how joy shows up almost like little sparks, what I call joy spots, pointing and saying, “Here. This is what matters.” This is what feels meaningful. And when we combine those little joy spots, we start to find and come back to the essence of who we are.

Joy knows what you’ve been through. She knows what you are made of. And she takes you out of the small spaces where you’ve kept yourself safe, where you’ve hidden, where you’ve kept yourself small to fit in — and she throws her arms open wide and says: Look what’s possible if you choose courage over comfort.

And she says the words that are the whole point: Go. Be you.

Not a better you. Not a fixed you. Not the you who has it all together. Just Own You. Unfiltered, alive in your fullness.

Joy and courage are so deeply connected. Think about a moment when you did something that took real courage. Maybe you said something honest that needed to be said. Maybe you stepped into something new that scared you. Maybe you simply showed up as yourself, no mask, no performance, and you let yourself be seen.

How did joy show up in that moment?

I know, and I’ve seen it over and over: joy lives inside and on the other side of courage. It doesn’t always arrive before. It doesn’t always come as a reward after. But it comes sometimes in the act itself. Sometimes it’s just a little gurgle of your truth in the showing up.

So the question isn’t Am I ready?

The question is: What would I do if I had more courage to be me?

I often ask my clients: What would you do if you were 5% braver? Write that down. Sit with it. And let Joy take you there.

Here’s the Prescription

Clarity. Confidence. Courage.

Grace. Love. Joy.

I see you. I love you. Now go Be you.

Just Own You.