Don’t you deserve a Joyful Life?
If life is a journey, we may as well make it a joyful one. Google defines joy as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. What a way to live your life—with a feeling of great pleasure and happiness! Isn’t that what everyone wants? However, joy seems to be elusive for many. Living a joyless life is far too common. In a society where stress is a way of life, how do we make room for joy? How can we bring more joy to our lives while we minimize our levels of stress? In Journey to Joy: Insights and Actions for a Happier Life, psychotherapist, Susan Goryeb Simms, LCSW, helps you to find actionable answers to these universal questions and many others. Through professional and personal anecdotes, Susan takes the reader on a journey to joy. She shares wisdom gained through more than twenty-five years of helping individuals of all ages, as well as couples. Susan has devoted her life to helping her clients find their path to a more joyful life. This powerful but accessible book addresses topics like the importance of gratitude, forgiveness, love and compassion as well as the significance of intention and priorities. Each chapter ends with practical “Joyful Action Steps” to help you on your journey. Susan writes with warmth and understanding and acts as a guide as you find your way to joy.
Reviews
This powerful but accessible book addresses topics like the importance of gratitude, forgiveness, love and compassion as well as the significance of intention and priorities.
Absolutely loved this book! It’s a quick and easy read, with plenty of good tangible suggestions for creating positivity in your life. I’ve read other “self help” type of books, but nothing like this. Recommend HIGHLY!! #gratefultohavereadthisbook1
Journey to Joy helped me during a tough career transition in my life and revealed to me that what seemed stressful and chaotic was “everything falling into place.” Susan is accurate in stating that “something great is always around the corner” so simple, yet so profoundly true.
This book has been invaluable in altering my perspective in so many areas of my life, and I am definitely a more joyful and optimistic person because of it.
Excerpt from Chapter on “Change”
Ultimately, the goal is to recognize the opportunities for growth, beauty, and extraordinary experiences during our struggles. When you get to a point, in the midst of a difficult time, where you can say, “I know this really stinks right now, but I am excited to see what good will come from it, because I know it’s coming,” you are in a great place to live joyfully…
…Consider how we eagerly await the springtime. Spring is such a beautiful time of year. Everything that was dormant in winter begins to come alive. No matter how hard the winter is, we know that eventually, spring will arrive We are aware of this process with the seasons so as winter wears on we find relief in the knowledge that spring is just around the corner. Life is much the same way, hard times give way to good times, but we don’t know the beauty or the gifts that are on their way to us while we are struggling. When our lives are dreary and dull, we may not have the same expectation of something good coming that we have for the springtime.
If we always knew that something wonderful was headed our way, the way we know spring is coming, we might be able to feel a greater sense of ease. It won’t necessarily make us less frustrated with our current circumstances (just like we can still be frustrated when there is a snowfall in March) but knowing that there is an end in sight can help to comfort us through the struggle.
If we choose to live our lives with the knowledge that something beautiful is on its way to us, we can live with the same anticipation that we do for spring.
Other Recommended Reading
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)
By Don Miguel Ruiz In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. Find it on Amazon
Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living
by Shauna Niequist LIVE A LIFE OF MEANING AND CONNECTION Instead of pushing for perfection A few years ago, I found myself exhausted and isolated, my soul and body sick. I was tired of being tired, burned out on busy. And, it seemed almost everyone I talked with was in the same boat: longing for connection, meaning, depth, but settling for busy. Find it on Amazon
Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old
by John Leland A New York Times Bestseller! An extraordinary look at what it means to grow old and a heartening guide to well-being, Happiness Is a Choice You Make weaves together the stories and wisdom of six New Yorkers who number among the “oldest old”― those eighty-five and up. Find it on Amazon
Success in Life
Self-Compassion
Compassion Fatigue
- Compassion Fatigue, by Charles Figley
- Secondary Traumatic Stress, by Beth Stamm
- Trauma and the Therapist, by Laurie Pearlman & Karen Saakvitne