How to Have a Joyful Day

Have you experience a day when everything seems to go wrong ? You work on task A and it goes wrong, you move to task B and it also goes wrong. You speak to person C and she doesn’t give the response you expect. Definitely a bad day right ?

Well, not exactly. I think there is no such thing as a bad day. It is you who determine whether you have a good day or a bad day. No matter what happens outside there, it is still you who decide what is the effect of those events upon you. If you think you are having a bad day, then be it. But the good news is, you can decide to have a good, even a joyful day. And there are at least two things that will make it easier for you to have a joyful day:

1. Be grateful
   Be grateful on everything. There is always something good you can get behind all those things which seems bad. If someone gives you unexpected response, then now you know her character better so you can get better response in the future. If the task you do goes wrong, you can learn what’s wrong with it that you shouldn’t repeat in the future. All those things are signs of progress, so be grateful for them. At least, if you still can’t find what you should be grateful for, you can be grateful because this thing teaches you to be grateful :). Once you have this attitude, your day will change from bad day to good day, even to a joyful day.
2. Focus to giving rather than receiving
   Why are we dissapointed ? Maybe because we expect something for ourselves which is not fulfilled. Why do we have a bad day ? Maybe because we expect to get something but that doesn’t happen. Many times we have the so-called bad day because we are focusing on receiving something for ourselves. This is a vulnerable attitude. If you focus on receiving than there is big chance that something won’t go as you expect. Maybe you expect to receive 10 things. If you loss even one of them you can still be disappointed and have a bad day.
   Hoping to receive 10 things is like starting your day with -10 score. When you receive one of the things the score will move to -9. If you receive all of them then your score will be zero which is not a bad day. But there is much greater chance that your score will stay negative at the end of the day.
   If you focus on giving instead, you start your day with a score of zero. You give something to someone, and your score moves to +1. You won’t be dissapointed, instead you will experience the joy of giving. You will end your best day not just with a score of zero, but may be +10 ! Hence you have not only a good, but a joyful day.

Of course, these two things are easier said than done. I am still learning myself. But why don’t we learn together ?