Lisa Valentine Clark recently shared on the Magnify podcast that joy “is our birthright. It is our intended baseline from loving heavenly parents.”
After her husband’s death from ALS in June of 2020, Lisa has learned that to have the joy we’re meant to have in this life, sometimes we need to work to create it, especially when we’re going through difficult times.
The following three steps are helpful ways Lisa has found to create a baseline of joy in our daily lives.
Step 1: Use Hope to Glean Joy
During times when joy is hard to feel, Lisa trusts in hope to spark joy. But, she explains, “You have to create hope. It doesn't just appear. And it's been the hardest work I think that I've ever done.”
In a particularly difficult time, when she felt like the joy and happiness she’d known before would never return, Lisa found that one way to create hope was to borrow it from others. For her, this looked like believing trusted friends when they said something positive or pointed out the good in a situation that she couldn’t find herself.
Trusting that “all things shall work together for your good” (Doctrine and Covenants 90:24) is another way hope can help us find joy in our lives.
“I didn't see the big tragedies [coming] that have happened in my life. ... And I was surprised by them,” Lisa explains. “So, couldn’t the opposite be true? Couldn't something so wonderful and great happen? I think that's the attitude where hope is born.”
This kind of hope for “good things to come” leads to lasting joy that settles in our souls.
Step 2: Accept and Add
A second way to create joy in our lives, Lisa explains, is through “being present in the moment and happy about what we can do.”
Lisa explains that her husband, Christopher, was an example of “accepting and adding” to keep joy in his life as his disease progressively took away his ability to function.
A gifted piano player who “could play anything,” one day he shut the piano and said, “My playing days are over.”
At first, Lisa urged him to continue playing the instrument he loved. His reply was, “I can tell that my fingers are getting slow, and it's just becoming frustrating.” Instead, he chose to give the time and capacity he had left to the things he was still able to do. “I can still teach; I can still direct plays; I can still write; I can still do a lot of creative things,” he explained. “I’m just going to focus on those now.”
Being present helps us see the good in our lives, which leads us to create more joy in small and big moments and everything in between.
Step 3: Fast-Track Joy with Gratitude
When joy feels hard to create, Lisa has learned that “it can be fast-tracked when you focus on gratitude.”
Creating joy doesn’t mean Lisa hasn’t felt tremendous grief. Rather, she has learned that grief and joy can co-exist, and gratitude has helped her hold both feelings at once.
“Looking for evidence of God's love everywhere is a gratitude practice,” she explains. “We know scientifically that you find what you're looking for.”
President Russell M. Nelson said, “Practicing gratitude may not prevent us from experiencing sorrow, anger, or pain, but it can help us look forward with hope.”
Lisa recognizes that there are different ways to find joy through gratitude. “Serving other people is an expression of gratitude. Being able to give to worthy causes is a physical way to show gratitude. Communicating and talking to people and giving thanks and giving them your full attention and time is a way to give a person your gratitude.”
Joy is more than a feeling of delightful happiness; it is a way of being that we’re meant to have (2 Nephi 2:25). Seeking hope, being present, and being grateful are three ways to create more joy in our lives, no matter our circumstances.
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