Take a Joy Break
I clicked on the Facebook link because anything that simply says, “Happy” draws my eye.
In minutes I was dancing around my home office in my PJs. I challenge you to watch Pharrell Williams’ song, “Happy.” Bet you’ll end up smiling and dancing.
Did you know research shows that simple joys like dancing around the room in your PJs are important to our overall happiness?
Studies indicate that our experience of happiness in life, to a great degree, is made up of simple daily joys. It’s a matter of learning to be in the moment enough to enjoy simple pleasures as they occur. Not so easy in our fast-paced military lives.
Many of us have a lot of joy in our lives, but we race right by what is good as we move on to the next task, the next item on our daily to-do list.
We can greatly improve our overall, daily quality of life and energy by participating in and appreciating simple joys.
Quite frankly, if you are a military spouse acting as solo parent while your spouse is deployed, short simple joys might be all you get. They can change your daily experience if you let them, increasing your energy and decreasing your stress.
I know this sounds simplistic, maybe even trivial, but it isn’t.
Start with this simple exercise. Do it right now. Take out a pen and a sheet of paper.
As fast as you can without overthinking, write down anything that brings you joy. Keep going until you run out of ideas. Now count each item on your list and see how many you have.
Research on this is outlined in You Don’t Have to Go Home from Work Exhausted! by Ann McGee-Cooper, PhD, and her colleagues. This is a book I highly recommend, whether or not you work outside the home. It is full of great ideas to increase your daily energy.
One thing the authors discovered was that most busy adults usually come up with ten to fifteen items before running out of ideas, when asked, “What do you do for fun?” How’d that match your list?
Researchers did this with 10-year-olds. 10-year-olds easily came up with 55 items before running out of ideas!
Holly and I had a 14-year-old boy in one of our workshops when we did this exercise with the group, and he came up with thirty-two items, way more than any of the military spouses there. We think there’s a transition that takes place as we grow older.
What does that say to us as adults? The responses we get from audience members include:
● “It means we are boring.”
● “We have forgotten how to have fun.”
● “We don’t have time; we have too many responsibilities.”
There are two common problems for most of us:
1. Some of us actually have forgotten what is fun.
We are so caught up in our work, chores, and responsibilities, that we have forgotten to have fun.
2. Many of us don’t allow ourselves to have fun.
We say things like, “I’d really like to do that, but I should do the laundry,” or “I’d really like to do that, but I should mow the lawn,” or “I’d really like to do that, but…”
Look back at your list right now, and circle items that would take you only five to ten minutes to do and enjoy. When we ask audience members how many have the majority of their items circled, we only see a few hands.
This is typical of most busy adults. When asked what they do for fun, most adults come up with items that take an hour or longer or a half day or longer to do.
Now think about your typical day. When you have free time in your busy day, does it come in big chunks of time of one hour or longer or a half day or longer?
For most of us, any free time we have comes in five minutes here, ten minutes there. That applies even more so during deployments.
The fact is, if you take a five- or ten-minute break and fill it with something that is not fun for you, you are going to return to your work or chores with less energy and joy.
Common things we fill our breaks with? Complaining, worrying, making lists of chores left undone, coffee, cigarettes, sugary snacks. Not energizing breaks!
Research shows that if, instead, you fill your short break with things you enjoy doing, you will return to your work and your chores with more energy.
If you fill your break with something that is playful or that makes you laugh, you come back with more creativity and increased problem-solving abilities, as well as added energy and reduced stress. Oh, yes, and joy too, which would be reason enough to do this.
I recently spent seven hours in a pre-op room with my husband, as his surgery was delayed from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Greg finally got up from the bed, put his earbuds in, and danced around the room, backless robe flapping in the wind. I couldn’t stop laughing.
When I finally asked “What are you dancing to?” he replied, “Having the Time of My Life.” A simple “joy break” as we call it in our house, and to my mind a much better reaction to stress than anything else.
