Recipe for a Joyful Life

Recipe Card (can be a visual of an actual recipe card for blog or content on website)

 

Preparation: Take stock of your current situation to know where you began.

1 Full cup of gratitude

2 hours of meditation

6 spoonfuls of daily practices (x2)

A hearty handful of boundaries

A sprinkling of laughter

Stir Clockwise while smiling and holding a vision of living a life you enjoy.

 

Repeat for no less than 10 weeks, then revisit your current state, your vision, and account for progress. Celebrate your accomplishments and continue until you allow purpose to set in. 

 

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Making a recipe card like this might sound kind of funny for something as ephemeral as Joy or living a Joyful Life.  But what if Joy wasn’t something elusive? Most of us chasing Joy think of it like the wings of a butterfly.  Something beautiful that you cannot touch. And like those wings, if you do touch them, they are destroyed.  

What if it was something you could actually touch and not only feel its tangibility- but build beneath you like the firm foundation of a house?  I’m here to tell you that you can, and the recipe is quite available to you with a little bit of commitment to the discipline of the practice of know thyself. 

First to my butterfly wing analogy, the reason many people think Joy and enjoyment are elusive, and that experiencing joy (like touching butterfly wings) destroys it, is because most people are chasing Happiness.  Happiness is an external fleeting thing that depends on factors outside ourselves.  And the other side of the Happiness coin is sadness.  Take, for example, you place all your expectations for happiness on a relationship with a significant other.  And you are in that relationship and everything is all perfect in your life because someone loves you and accepts you and wants to do things with you.  This is Happiness you say.  Then one day that person says I’m leaving, or that person dies, or that person changes because of some factor outside of your control and the relationship ends.  

Now you are sad.  You are sadder than you ever were before the relationship because for awhile you had The Thing you thought made you happy.  And in a way you are right.  You touched the butterfly's wings and it couldn’t fly anymore, and it died.  Now you have no more feeling of Happy - you have the memory of it, the longing for it.  But you no longer have it so that

attachment to this past state of Happy you lost now makes you Sad because it is draining your today (like a leak in a boat).  

 

I watch this play out with my partner every time he speaks of his past fiance who left him because he stopped fulfilling her narcissist needs.  He has this attachment to that belief in that with her, when he was in the peak of his health, in the peak of this happiness having all these activities with this other built purely on external circumstances that He was Happy.  And maybe he was Happy.  For a moment, because he bought her the right ring, he took her to dance in the right place, he provided everything she needed so that she could get on her feet, save for a house, make a down payment and leave him when she didn’t need him anymore.  And then his Happy came crashing down, when the lie was revealed and she left him because his usefulness to her ended - putting him in a pit of depression that caused him to harm himself with alcohol and other choices due to the severe sadness felt after the high of Happy.  

 

Now today, he isn’t in that depression anymore, we are in a healthy relationship of exchange co-creating together, but I can still see that attachment to a past version of himself when he believes he was Happy.  Because in that past he had health (and no liver disease) and he had for this brief moment some combination of external factors (fleeting as they were) that made everything “Perfect.”  So now, this attachment to a past version of himself when he was quote/unquote Happy inhibits his ability to fully experience his present moment and the amazing life he and I are creating.  He is working on it, and acknowledges his attachment challenges, and having physical limitations is a real obstacle,- which is why finding our inner source of Joy (and thus resilience) is so essential. 

 

Ok, let’s talk about Joy again and how it is different from Happiness.   Joy is not ephemeral and intangible.  Further, Joy is not Happiness.  Happiness is external and its opposite is Sadness.  So the happier you are, when the source of that happiness leaves you the sadder you get.  It is cause and effect and the hermetic principle of rhythm.  One extreme always swings back to the other like a teeter totter or those sets of silver balls that click on your desk.

 

Joy is built in your life from within and is not dependent on external factors. 

 

My recipe card is not facetious. It is true.  Just like laying a foundation and building something - you go through a specific set of actions consistently with commitment to yourself for the sake of yourself, and you can build a joyful life and create a tangible indestructible foundation of joy in your life such that when something awful happens you have the resilience and fortitude and unshakable joy in your life that you will recover and likely thrive in spite of the awful thing versus being thrown in a pit of despair and sadness. 

 

So let’s walk through this recipe. 

 

1. Gratitude - One Full cup of gratitude. “Thank you for everything you have given me, everything taken away, and everything I have left.” 

Gratitude is cultivated by practice but it bears the best possible fruit.  Scientific studies show that it rewires your brain creating new neural pathways such that it shifts your perspective.  Story after story shows people not only surviving awful situations but thriving through them because they have gratitude. 

 So you MUST have a gratitude practice to create a joyful life.  

2. Meditation - clearing the mind and connecting to source. We must clear away monkey mind so that we can know who we are and what we actually want free from the trappings of all the shoulds and programming of the collective consciousness.  

 Meditation is a learned practice as well, and there are so many methods - active, passive, moving, silent - they ALL HELP.  Every single one of them.  The key is you must do it. Study after study shows meditation as a game changer in anyone’s life who applies themself to it.  Same as gratitude it creates new pathways in the brain that allow stillness and new ways of perceiving and being which all equal new thought patterns and ways to access our joy.

 The recommended daily allotment of Meditation is two hours a day.  But commitment to a meditation practice, even if a few minutes a day is an essential element to a Joyful life. 

3. 6 Daily Practices - I call these Rituals that help you learn how to manage your own personal will and power.  Your will to not be pushed and pulled by the forces external to you for good or ill.  

In my practice as a Guide in the Lineage of King Salomon with the Modern Mystery School International we teach Spirituality as a science.  When you take the Empower Thyself Class & choose the path of Initiation we give you six daily practices to complete every morning and evening that combined with meditation will provide you the means to strengthen your will and thus understand how you are choosing or not choosing (i.e. exercising your will) in this life and how that is adding up to the fruits of what you see around you.

For me the six daily simple practices gave me the means to understand how much of other people’s stuff I was taking on as my own.  I learned by doing the daily practices that I didn’t need to take on these things as my own.  So I was able to energetically learn how to hold my boundaries without guilt or shame so I was able to let go of so much that was not serving me and start to consciously choose things that bring in more enjoyment to my life. It empowered me to no longer be a victim of my subconscious (i.e. to get out of my own way). 

4. Boundaries - which brought me a hearty helping of boundaries.  Initially, like everything else I’m talking about here had to be practiced until they became real and more natural for me to set.  

Boundaries take will. They take the desire to set them.  They take an acknowledgement and a discernment that we do not have to engage with the drama others put in front of us on giant platters.   Boundaries take an acknowledgement that even though we can do it, it doesn’t mean we should.  

Boundaries are not walls that block everyone out.  But they are an acknowledgment that you do not have to take on the thoughts or ideas of others or do everything that they want you to do. 

One can start by putting boundaries on your time.  Time blocking for meditation, for exercise, for fun time, for family time.  These are something you can fake until you make them because practicing will give you the results to realize you can.  And the first time you set a boundary it will feel weird and uncomfortable, but it will result in something freeing, releasing you of the other things pulling on your energy. 

5. Laughter is a practice that brings lightness to your life.  It truly is the best medicine. So find ways to laugh at the world, ourselves, together and with others.  

Laughter has always been a natural instinct of mine and I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with those who have phenomenal senses of humor.  But also my teachers I have chosen Know laughter is an essential practice for a joyful life.  So they purposefully add it as a tool to their teaching style because of the light it generates from within a human being.  

So, actively seek laughter. And practice laughter.  Especially if times are tough.  

 

6. Clockwise to stir it all together. 

 

Clockwise is the energy of building.  So I say always work your magick by stirring in a clockwise direction.  This makes for great recipes in the kitchen as well!  Blend all of these practices together holding a vision for what you want to have more of, or what you want to experience. 

 

7. Visual to pick a direction.  If you do not know where you are going you are never going to get there.  If you are always running away you are never going toward anything.  And you have to pick and visualize a destination to get there.  

So, an essential element of having a joyful life is visualizing some aspects of what that enjoyable life looks like.  So you can actually start moving towards creating that.  What are some things/aspects/characteristics of that life that you can start taking action toward by using all the other tools I just discussed?

And eventually after practicing all of the above in sets of 10 weeks or 3 months you are going to find yourself feeling not only joyful but purposeful. 

Last but not least in my recipe I note to Prepare by taking stock of your current state.  This will allow you to know your progress when you make it.  Which you will. 

For the six daily rituals and practices that help you build your will and to Know Thyself as the divine powerful being that you are you can access these by receiving the life activation and participating in the Empower Thyself Class & Initiation.  If you are local to me visit my website calendar on angellatterell.com  to see my next offering or call or email me to set up an appointment to chat about them further.  If you are not local to me, do the same and I will connect you to a guide in your area who can work with you.  

Meanwhile, anyone can practice gratitude with paper and pen and start a meditation practice.  I have tools for both including a workbook and frequent Wednesday evening meditations online that are completely free. 

If you want help with anything - I can help with that!  Reach out anytime and let’s get you moving forward to create your recipe for a joyful life!