2023-02-27
59 分钟Microjoys really came to be about honing the ability to find joy in spite of everything else.
Grieving doesn't need to be one way.
The sort of foundation of microjoys is about learning to hold joy in one hand and grief in the other.
At any particular moment, fall to your knees heartbreak, but also joy that is bigger than you've ever known possible.
And sometimes you will experience that in the same breath.
And what grace it is to allow ourselves to feel that.
So have you ever had a moment or experience, maybe an entire season of life that was just so hard, so filled with struggle and maybe even grief, loss and uncertainty, that the very idea of feeling or accessing any kind of big or meaningful or sustained happiness or joy, it just completely left you and those well intended folks around you who tried to refocus your heart and mind on the good things and the gratitude.
It actually just kind of made you feel even worse, because the darkness, the struggle you were navigating, was so far beyond what simple advice and platitudes could even begin to help.
We've all been there on some level.
But what if, even in those moments where the big happy or the big joy just isn't accessible, there was still a way to dip into fleeting moments of lightness, or what my dear friend and guest today, Cindy Spiegel, calls microjoys, ones that give you just enough of a glimmer of hope and connection, ease, and maybe even laughter, that it keeps you going long enough to begin to emerge back into a state of more sustained and spacious possibility.
So Cindy is a speaker and bestselling author, founder of the social community, Dear Grown Women, a beloved storyteller turned writer, and an igniter of power conversation who has been featured in publications like Forbes, entrepreneur, Glamour, and more.
Her new book, Microjoys Finding Hope, especially when life is not okay, is really a revelation.
She first began holding on to what she calls microjoys during a devastating season that saw her mom pass from cancer, her nephew murdered, her brother struggling to recover from a stroke, and her own diagnosis of cancer, all while navigating a global pandemic.
It was a seismic pylon of suffering that completely vanished the prospect of any kind of meaningful or sustained happiness.
But that very season, it also led her to an epiphany about these things she calls microjoys, the practice of finding and taking note of fleeting moments of lightness, delight, surprise, serendipity, comfort and hope in her life, even despite the pain of it all.
That is what we're diving into today, both the notion of microjoice, what they are, how they show up, along with a myriad ways to access these moments and experiences.
And Cindy shares some really beautiful and moving and powerful stories along the way.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
It's always really kind of fun and interesting and different when I get to sit down with somebody who's actually a dear friend, kind of chosen family level friend, and have a different kind of conversation.