Summer Joy

Happy Pride Month. Happy Father's Day. Happy summer!

Can you feel the joy in the air? Restrictions are being lifted more and more...people are traveling and being in groups again...the weather is sunny and warm and beautiful. Life after this severe hibernation and separation is tingling with pent up celebration and laughter. Welcome back, friends.

I'm sure we all have a shared sense of how we want to spend this re-integration process with each other and society. I've already spent time at the beach and plan to make more travel arrangements. But on a higher level, I've made the personal decision to put down all of the reflections, lessons, and personal growth efforts to celebrate how far I've come - we've come - and really EMBODY JOY over this summer.

To embody anything - a feeling, an activity, a role - means we literally experience and express that thing through our whole body. All of our senses are connected and present with one another in each and every moment, and are firing in concert with our mind. It is the act of being in its most tangible, unified way. There's no thinking, let alone over analyzing. There's no questioning anything. It's exuding a quality in a way that requires total surrender and complete trust in ourselves and our circumstances.

Joy on the other hand is deeper than happiness. Happiness tends to be conditioned on external factors, like what's in your bank account or if you like your job or your spouse. Joy is a deep, momentary emotion or sustained feeling that also encompasses surrender and trust but too, a connection with something greater than ourselves. It doesn't matter whether that comes from a spiritual practice or a gratitude practice or the like. It is more of a byproduct of your lifestyle's values rather than good fortune.

So as we reach the apex of 2021... as we celebrate restrictions being lifted, inclusion and equality, and fathers, I invite you to ask yourself how you can embody joy too. Where can you let go and surrender to the external factors, deeply connect to that part of you that feels bigger, and then speak? Where can you trust yourself more to take the next best action rather than getting overwhelmed by the big picture? In what way can you step back from the minutia of the day to day to see where you really are?