THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND JOY, AND WHY IT MATTERS

Joy and happiness are both wonderful experiences, yet there’s a subtle difference. Learn to cultivate it internally, and stop looking outwards to find it.

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BY: KALEIGH MCMORDIE, MCN, RDN

As humans, we seek to find joy in our lives. But here’s the thing: joy is actually a choice we can make. It’s an attitude that we adopt that helps us live the life we want to live, and put out the energy that we choose. It allows us to be grateful for our triumphs, big and small. It’s being content and working for the things that matter, and letting go of those that don’t.

So why does this all matter?

Before we talk about that, let’s discuss what joy actually is. Merriam-Webster defines joy as:

1. The emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires
2. A state of happiness
3. A source or cause of delight

But when you dig a little deeper, there is more to joy than a state of happiness. Happiness is temporary. It is circumstantial, brought by good situations or events. And while happiness is good, it depends on external factors. So the saying, “money can’t buy happiness”? Not true. Money can buy happiness, but it can’t buy joy.  

Joy comes from within.  

It is not tied to events, things or circumstances, like landing a new job, buying a new car or celebrating a birthday. Joy is more like an attitude. It comes from a spiritual place, no matter what your spiritual belief might be. It comes from inner contentedness and worthiness. From feeling connected to self and others. Joy is present regardless of circumstances.

That’s the real difference between happiness and joy.

If you struggle with self-doubt, perfectionism, or building meaningful relationships, consider what is holding you back from feeling truly happy. In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown discusses how as humans, it’s difficult for many of us to really feel joy because it requires us to be vulnerable. That in order to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable, we immediately combat joyful feelings or situations with a foreboding that something bad must be right around the corner.
We either live life expecting the worst, or we rehearse tragedy in our minds. By doing so, we constantly ‘prepare’ for the pain of what might happen that will take away our joy. It keeps us from fully experiencing joy, making many of us “joy starved.”

Why? Because really experiencing and feeling joy requires uncertainty and emotional risk.

We have to be vulnerable, and that can be scary as hell to most people. But living a life without joy is no way to live at all.  Through acknowledgement and forgiveness, the first place to start is self-acceptance. By making peace with yourself, you will begin to show yourself the same compassion you give to others and cultivate positivity internally.

Because a life of joy is what allows us to celebrate the little things so happiness is always created within.

 

Clipped from:

https://wellseek.co/2018/04/23/difference-happiness-joy-why-matters/

 

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The difference between happiness & joy. And why it helps to know. 

 

There’s a difference between the definition of happiness and the definition of joy. It’s valuable to be aware of this because when things get tough, logic might want you to default to despair, or utter sadness or worse, you might think you have to choose between hardship and joy, or support and separation, or light and dark.

Consciousness is not an either/or equation. It’s about bothness.

The capacity to expand into bothness — the awareness of your joy in all circumstances — is so much of what it means to evolve.

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, wracked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
– Agatha Christie

   

Happiness is like rising bubbles — delightful and inevitably fleeting. Joy is the oxygen — ever present.

Happiness is always passing through. It can claim your full attention for the ten seconds it takes to swallow a sip of incredible coffee. Or it can stream through your being for weeks on end. But happiness can’t hold the same space as sadness, or anger, or the range of so-called “negative” emotions for very long. This is why it’s transitory.

 

Joy is the fibre of your Soul.

It’s the stuff of your essence. And since you, your Soul, can never be annihilated (yes, that would make you eternal and omnipresent), your access to joy never vanishes. Because joy is so foundational to your true being, every other state or emotion can rest on top of joy, it can accommodate everything.
This means that it’s possible to grieve with your whole heart, and still sense your joy. You can feel rage, and be aware of joy waiting patiently for you to return, and take deep comfort in that.

You can get fired, dumped, dumped on, and pulled through the eye of a needle, and still feel held by the container of joy — the truth of your existence.

When you arrive at this awareness (you’ll likely have to go through the wringer to get there), your logical mind is going to be confused.

“I’m going through hell. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me…so what’s this mighty warmth I feel within? I must be losing it. I must be in denial. I should get back to misery.”

Stay with the misery. Stay with the mighty warmth emanating from within.

“I’m aching over this loss, so can this aching gratitude in my core be real? Am I betraying my memories? Am I denying my pain?”

Not at all. You’re expanding.

When you see joy beside the agony, you have the keen vision of a Soul warrior.

It has never failed that when I have been through the most heart-breaking passages of my life — betrayal, financial hardship, divorce, dreams dashed — the pain brought me to the floor of my being, and what was there to be found?

The simple joy of being alive. So cosmically basic it’s mind-blowing: the joy to be here, connected, animated, breathing, blessed, resilient, to be broken, to be open, to have what was, what’s left, what’s coming. The joy just to be part of reality.

Happiness. Love it when it comes.

Joy. It’s the love that lasts no matter what.

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http://www.daniellelaporte.com/definition-of-happiness-and-why-its-different-from-joy/