Successful Living > Real Life Lessons > 12 Steps To Joy

Real Life Lessons

12 Steps to Finding Your Joy!
by -John Lipinski

1. Begin to tell the truth to yourself about what heals you and what hurts you.

2. Take active steps to build self-nurturing activities into your schedule.

3. Consider ways to minimize the activities that disempower you. Do you really need to work on that committee? What would it take to release the person you feel you have to save?

4. Make a list of the talents or activities for which you are most acknowledged and rewarded. For what do your friends praise you the most?

5. Make choices on the basis of the peace they bring. If something is for you, it will feel like it fits. You will be able to breathe with your choice and sleep peacefully at night.

6. What would you do even if you weren't getting paid for it?

7. Follow your intuition. Aliveness and success follow imaginative impulses. Joy does not pander to rational processes.

8. Can you not do it? The voice for joy will keep knocking at your door until you heed its call.

9. When in doubt, don't. Practice acting from the strength of your heart rather than your calculating mind or fear.

10. Let it be easy. Struggle is a sure sign that you have lost sight of the joy path. Struggle is a red flag that you need to retrace your steps and choose the path with heart.

11. Watch for signs.

12. Launch out on faith -- take a risk. The greatest successes begin with a leap of faith.