Live Encore: Journaling to Cultivate Joy

1. Introduction: Every single person is really on their healing journey so that they can have more joy, that's the bottom line. We want to feel happier every single day. What I hope that you take away from this class is that joy is possible for you, joy is accessible for you, and it may not look like the person on Instagram or the person on television, but as long as you feel good, that's all that matters. Hello everyone, I am Yasmine Cheyenne, and I am a teacher, a speaker, and I help people create their own self-building practices. On Skillshare, I mostly do journaling and writing workshops that help you dive deeper into your guild part. In this class, we're going to be digging into cultivating joy and choosing joy. We did this in my last class, but in this class we're going to take it a step further and talk about what we gain from when we choose joy, not only just the joy part, but naming what tough for us, and then looking at how we can bring that joy actionably into our lives on a more regular basis. I decided to do this topic because this was the number one thing that I get asked about healing, when does the joy come? I think that the reason why most of us connect to a self-care practice or a healing practice is because we want more joy in our lives, but it can sometimes feel inaccessible. We'll walk through three exercises that you can do. It doesn't have to be long, it can take 10 minutes or less. To begin this class really, you don't need anything. If you have a phone, you can use the notes section of your phone, or you can use your voice memos. But if you love to write, you can get a piece of paper and a pen and also feel free to use your computer. I want this to be something that's really fun and easy and accessible, and that you don't feel like you have to stop your life to do, and so I hope you walk away feeling empowered to bring joy into your life today. I just wanted to let you know that this class was originally recorded live, and I was interacting with a live audience and chat feature while recording. If you're ready to dig in, let's get started. 2. Joy is For Everybody: Hi, everyone. Welcome, today's live session with Yasmine Cheyenne. I'm Katie, I'm a producer with Skillshare, and I'll be hosting today's session. Welcome Yasmine, we'd love to hear a little bit about who you are and what you do. I'm Yasmine, I'm a Skillshare teacher, but I'm also a speaker and a writer, and I primarily help people cultivate their self-healing practices. Which basically means I help people create tools for healing that are accessible for you. Because the thing about healing, and journeying, and self-care is that sometimes it feels like it's only for some people but doesn't make sense in your own life. That's what we'll be doing today. Helping you create something that you can reach for that meets your own needs, not the needs of others. When you talk about joy, what does that mean? Because I'm sure that people got different connotations. Yeah. When we talk about joy, I think it's important to start with what isn't joy. Obviously, we pretty much know what isn't joy, sadness, grief. But it's also comparison, judgment, wanting something that other people have. Some of the things that happen on social media can be things that drain our joy. What we're going to be doing today before we start, is getting rid of those things or naming those things. Because it's hard to get rid of but naming them so that we can make more space for what joy is. Which is: laughter, excitement, fun. I think it's important to talk about this because sometimes we feel like joy is only for some people: rich people, famous people, people on TV. We think that we have to do something to get joy. We think that we have to buy things to get joy, and yes, there are things we can buy that bring us joy, like this Skillshare membership. But there are other things that we can do to create joy in our lives that are free. I feel like as we grow, we forget about what those look like, and so this class is going to be for really anyone who is looking for ways to bring joy into their lives. Ten minutes a day, focusing on what am I feeling right now? What do I need today? Now, what do I need for 2020? Because that could be a list that could take an hour. But what do I need today? Then how can I give it to myself? In my own life recently, which I'll talk about when we get into the exercise, but I use this exercise and it's why about roller skates. I got to be honest with you. I was terrified because I'm in my mid-30s, falling isn't fun anymore. I was like, "Oh, God, do I remember?" It was so funny to me that honestly, forgetting how to skate, and having to learn how to skate again was so much fun. Obviously, that's an example where I bought something, but it was through this joy list that I remembered that I like roller skating, and I forgot that I liked roller skating, and I was looking at people on social media saying, "Wow, I wish I could do that." Then I asked myself, "Why can't I do that? Why can't I put on skates and go outside?" Those are the things we'll be talking about today. What you're going to expect after this class is to be able to repeat this over and over and over again. I mean, the great thing about it is, this is going to be recorded, so you can always tune into it on my profile and use it. But even if you don't have the time to come on and listen to me, give this whole skill. You'll remember how to do this joy list, and the joy list that we create today will give you a lot of ways to look into, okay, it's not just about creating joy, but also what am I looking for when I say, "I want joy from this particular thing." What emotion does that attach to for me? What is it allowing me to really connect to within myself or my relationships beyond just roller skating is fun. It's actually, I feel happy, I feel free, I'm moving all of the things, and it makes me feel young again. I haven't done anything like this in so long because we've been inside, so really connecting to the emotion behind the joy. This is going to be hard, but I think it's important to name that if you took my class before, we did this before, so you might be thinking, "Okay, why are we doing this again?" One, the world has drastically changed since then. My joy list that we did in the last class was like, "Let's go people watching, let's go to New York, let's do this." Nobody is doing that anymore. I thought this was a perfect time to be able to really look at, what is joy look like for me right now, today in this moment? How can I make this a part of my everyday routine? Lastly, I really want you to be able to participate with us. You need a pen, you need a piece of paper. If you don't like to write, because sometimes I don't like to write, even though I'm a writer. You can use the voice note section of your phone, if you want to speak it you're on mute so we won't hear you. Or you can use the notes section of your phone, and you can just type it out, or Google Doc. Don't think that it has to look like mine. I just have mine the way that it is so that you guys can really clearly see what I'm writing. Let's get into it. 3. What's Blocking Joy?: To get started, we're going to talk about the things that are really tough, the things that take up space and we're trying to bring joy in. We're going to do the letting go release list, also known as things I can control and things I can't control. When we are trying to make space for joy, it's really important to talk about what are the things that we can't control. Make space for the things that suck, that are tough. It would be really hard for us to say that we're just going to sit here for an hour and talk about joy and act like we didn't just experience the last eight months of 2020. It's really important to name those things because then we can do things with them. We can use them for ways to, this is something that I can't do, this is something I can do and how to perhaps use the things that we can control to put into our joy list. I'm going to be journaling live with you here. Some things that suck today that I can control. What had happened the other night. I don't feel like making dinner, that's why it sucks, if you are wondering why it sucks. Things I can't control terrible twos. My daughter is having terrible twos, and it is wild. Can't control it. I can make her happy. I can help her to feel good, but I can't control the experience that she's having. I just have to process through it. Something that I can control right now that sucks is I'm bored and it's the holiday season. Usually, I wouldn't be home right now. I'd be with family, I'd be with friends, like we're doing something. I'd definitely be traveling. Even though I'm off work, although I'm working here with you guys, I'm not doing what I would normally be doing, and even though I thought I'd be able to power through, it's tough, but something that I can't control that's happening, travel, I could but I'm not. That's something that I can't control and it's just the fact of life right now that's really tough for so many of us. I'm going to do one more just so you guys can have a clearer understanding of what this list does. Things that I can control that still suck. Social media. This is always on my list. You can really begin to get into a place of comparison if you spend too much time on social media and depending on what you're seeing on social media, but it is always something that we can't control, and I like to always name this because this is something that I think everyone is experiencing that can suck sometimes. Things that I can't control that suck right now. Homeschooling. I am thankful to be able to spend more time with my kids, but I have not done algebra in a long time, so I'm learning how to do all these things that I have to ensure that my daughter understands, and it's really tough and I can't control it. Why is this list important? Before you start a joy list, usually what comes to mind is, I have to do laundry, I have to clean, I have a job. This is ridiculous. What am I actually going to be doing with this joy list? It's important to name these things for two reasons. One, when you see the things you can control list, you remind yourself, I can have something nice tonight or I can just heat up an egg and call it a day because I don't feel like doing that, and one of the things I can't control is that I'm an adult and I can decide what I eat. You can do something to create some joy which you're going to be doing in the joy list. But we can deal with being bored. Social media, the people who are starting to perhaps trigger you, or cause issues, or cause comparison, you can unfollow them. Or if you really love them and you don't want them to know that they're triggering you, you can mute them. There are so many things that we can do to control some of these things. But the things that we can't control, acknowledging this is incredibly tough for me right now. I would prefer to be with my family, it's perhaps even be on this call. I'd prefer to be with my family, I'd prefer to be with my friends or maybe in the Caribbean than to be doing what I'm doing right now. I can't control it, but I'm going to give myself a space to acknowledge that this is incredibly hard for me right now. This is how we begin to make space for our emotions so that we can have space for joy. Because sometimes it can feel like joy doesn't have a place in our lives because all of this stuff is taking up space, but we haven't really made that it's taking up space. Do you ever wake up and you're like, I just woke up, how could I feel crappy already? A lot of this stuff from the day before sometimes isn't there from the day or week before that we haven't really given ourselves the chance to deal with. So this is a really great exercise to do when you can feel really overwhelming. This is the first part. I want to check in and see if anybody has any questions, if anybody has anything that they want to share, if anything came up that I mentioned that you'd related to. You can do it in the chat. Evelyn said experiencing joy does not require denial. Absolutely. I love the thought process of being able to hold both. Joy doesn't mean that you're going to wake up every day like you did maybe when you were nine or 10, and everything is just amazing no matter what. When you're an adult and you make space for all the emotions, and all the responsibilities, and everything that you have to do sometimes looks like happy from 1:00-3:00, something around from 3:30-4:00, happy again from 5:00-6:00. Making space for us to really have all of the things that are present for us rather than feeling like we have to just pretend or perform or fake it. Because we don't want to be for formatively joyful. We want to be genuinely joyful as much as we can. Jane says holding both makes me human. Yes. We can be in grief and still find space for joy. We can be in grief and still find space for laughter. I'm going to read this one from Alex and I'm going to go to the next one. But, they say, I think it's great how you said and connected for these things that have, yeah, Barbara's, the previous days are much more how staying in touch with ourselves and acknowledging these sometimes hidden things, and how writing about it actually helps us acknowledge that, yes. Most of us are getting up and just in it, in the grind where you are working more even though our home, we're doing more even though our home, and it's one of those things that when we make the time to stop and say, you can go to 20 if you have the time, but what are the three things that are really tough that I can control and three things that I can't control, and just give yourself the space. Sometimes the exercise might stop here. Just to give yourself the space to acknowledge, this is where I am right now. Maybe you don't have a friend that you can talk to right now. A lot of people are struggling with their own problems and they don't have maybe the space to hold to hear out what's really tough for you right now, or maybe you are nervous about sharing. This is the first place that you can begin to build that muscle of vulnerability and sharing it with yourself with amazing what comes out when you put things in this list and see how you relate to putting them in and then reminding yourself, this is something I can't control, even though I've been trying to use my energy to control it. We're going to give ourselves the space to truly, as Jane says, but this is something I say all the time. We redefine what it looks like for us to choose our joy. 4. Finding Small Joys: Now we're going to dive into the joy list and we're going to take it a step further by talking about the emotion that connect to the things that bring us joy so that we understand why we're feeling what we're feeling when we're joyful. I want to give two examples of how you can do this. After we just finished the list of things I can control and things I can't control, you can directly look at the things I can control list and start your joy list from there. So I'm going to do that. The first thing on my things I can control list was what I have for dinner. What I have for dinner, I can control because I can dictate that. So asking myself before I write this in my joy list. What brings me joy that I haven't had in a while that I can create, what brings me joy that I haven't had for a while that I can actually eat? Or perhaps what will bring me joy right now, is not having to spend an hour and a half cooking dinner. I just want to have, I don't know, pancakes, something easy. Giving yourself the opportunity to remind yourself that the joy can come from me deciding, the joy can come from me reminding myself that I actually have the authority, because sometimes it can feel like I'm just stuck where I am and I don't have the choice to make the decisions that I want to make and I have to do this thing. It comes from us reminding ourselves sometimes that I actually don't have to do what I'm telling myself that I have to do tonight. Dinner can look many different ways, just like how when we were redefining joy, we are reminding ourselves that joy can look very differently too. So for my joy list, I would put on there tonight because that's what I'm actually doing, we're having pancakes for dinner because it's been a week and that's going to bring joy. That's what's going on my list and it's probably also going to bring my terrible tooth, maybe some joy. It's probably going to bring [inaudible] sugar too but that's fine. The second thing on my list was, I'm bored for the holiday season. One of the things that I committed to for myself was after I do this because I said I was going to take Wednesday and Friday off, which is something I've never done for the holiday season, I usually even still bring my computer when I'm traveling. I'm going to go roller skating after this class. There's still going to be a little bit of sunlight and it brings me joy, it's something I already own. Another idea that I could do, because I'm bored right now is play a board game with my husband later on when my kids are asleep, that always brings us joy. Then the last one was social media. This is something that I've been doing a lot this year because I haven't been wanting to feel bad about perhaps not spending as much money because everything that's going on right now, maybe not being able to buy certain things or be there for certain things. So I've been following accounts that bring up any kind of comparison, any kind of negativity, and just reminding myself that people I follow on social media should make me feel good. When I go to my feed and I log on Instagram or Facebook or wherever it is, I should feel good about what I'm seeing. I should be laughing, I should say, "Wow, that's great." I should be feeling some type of inspiration, at least for me. I don't want to log onto social media and for that to change my whole day in a moment and I can't undo it. I like to really have control over what that looks like for me. 5. Bringing in More Joy: Now that we've gone through a tough stuff and we talked about the joy lists. We're going to go into how we can actually bring this joy into our lives. You don't have to do everything, but we'll be talking about ways to bring it in every single day. I want to show you a completed joy list that I did and how we take this to the next level, this is a little bit different, this is what is bringing me joy today that I plan on doing today. Roller skating, where that actually connects to for me is it's movement and it's fun. Caring for my plants. Is it fun to care for my plants? Yes. But what is it also for me? Meditative. I'm reminding myself, although I think meditation is great, I don't have to sit down for 25 minutes and meditate. If you're like me, you might even go to a place of, "I didn't meditate today, so I didn't take care of myself today," so you're being harsh on yourself or really tough on yourself for not taking care of yourself. Reminding myself that when I cared for my plants today, that was meditative and I did give myself that space. I like to watch QVC. I don't buy anything, I just enjoy watching. I watch QVC, it's people watching for me today. I don't get to people watch, I don't get to go to the park, I don't get to see people. QVC is live, it's real, they're hilarious. That's something that I do it's like going to the mall. FaceTiming friends and family, I get connection from that. I get laughter from that. Sometimes I plan that because to be honest, people do not have time for calls and things like that, and so you might try to call someone for connection and they may not have the time and you can feel bad "Wow, I did the reach-out thing and they weren't available," so I try to plan as much as I can for multiple calls throughout the week. That's just me. Some people are like, "I love the idea of not talking to people multiple times throughout the week." But it's really good for me to stay connected with my friends and family, so I've had to schedule that. Then playing with my kids and that's connection. I make that time a time where I'm just playing with them. Things that I usually wouldn't let slide, I let slide. Jumping on the couch is fine, jumping off the couch is fine. I give myself a 45 minute, no rules. I might be why I have terrible [inaudible] , but I gave myself a 45 minute no rules so the kids can also let go because they don't want to be inside. This is weird for them too, and so I give myself that space to do that. But the brown here is where I really want you to really connect to, that's different than what we did before. Where we're really looking at, what emotions do I get from, or what positivity or what joy, or what am I feeling in my life by doing these things? How can I continue to bring those things into my life? Caring for plants? Is there anything else that I do that makes me feel that way that isn't yoga or meditation. I am not saying any of those things are bad. I'm just saying most people are okay with the yoga meditation, if there's something else. I just want to give you options. One of my clients it's dish-washing, that's her meditation. She loves it. She loves that it's quiet. Nobody else wants to do it, so nobody is in there, and she gets her alone time. Really making it something that makes sense for you. I want to really check now and see if anyone has started to create things on their joy list. I want to go to the chat to see Kristy because I like that you used the brown pen to remind yourself, "Why would I find the time to do this?" That's such a good point Kristy, those are the whys, you might think, "It's just watching QVC," it's people watching, it's laughter, it's fun, it's shopping. You don't have to buy anything, you're just window shopping or TV shopping. Olivia says, "Learning new things like taking online classes and listening to the Podcasts. I never had time to this before." Yes. Podcasts are great. I like to multitask in the sense of if I'm roller skating, I'm listening to a podcast, or I'm listening to music, or I'm doing my voice notes. I find that to be really helpful, combining some of these together and not making it like, "Oh, I have to find two hours to be able to complete this list." This is a list that you can grab tomorrow when you don't have time to do your joy list, maybe you just have time to do your things-I-can't-control and things-I-can-control list. You speak those in your voice notes, you grab the joy list that you already did and you say, "Where can I find one of these things that I can do today?" I want to bring you this list, Bringing More Joy. That you don't have to complete, but I wanted you to see where you can go a step further if you have time or while we're in this session. Planning to speak to people more often brings me joy, that's what I gathered from my joy list. Creating time to play, that's what roller skating is, that's what FaceTiming friends and family is, that's what playing with kids is for me. I'm acknowledging there different ways to meditate, redefining what wellness looks like and what self-care looks like and not saying that I have to do these particular things. But if I don't do them, it's not a about, if it's not yoga, if it's not meditation, then it's not self-care. We're redefining it for ourselves. Then making movement something fun. This list is reminding us the actionable steps I need to take to have the joy. If I'm going to just choose the one thing from my joy list, this is why I'm doing it. This is what it does for me. 6. Q&A: Now, we can open up to some questions from the live audience. Yasmin, what would you say for somebody that's struggling to think like, "I just don't know how I'm going to find this extra time." What would you say to someone that are overwhelmed by the idea of trying to fit something else in? I actually just spoke to someone in my course comments about this who's a flight attendant, and she was like, "I don't even know what time zone I'm in, so finding the time to do this is ridiculous." I completely relate. I used to be in the military. It would be really hard for me to try to find time to do this. That's why I say, "I'm taking you through this slowly so that we can have time to do this. But this really can just be 10 minutes. You're going to have to do some of the hard work for yourself and figuring out where that 10 minutes works. But these are the times that most people find the most helpful." Ten minutes before their evening routine because usually once the evening routine gets done, nobody wants to do anything. Or 10 minutes in the beginning of the day. If neither of those work, voice notes. That's where voice notes come in. You can put your AirPods in, take your phone with you, turn on a voice memo note, and speak this out loud. What are three things that I can control right now? Write name them. What are three things that I can't control right now? You can say out loud, "When I'm roller skating and I'm moving, I'm having fun, I'm scared I'm going to fall, and it's fun, and it's thrilling, and that's why I'm finding joy right now. How can I schedule that into my day?" Just pick one of those. We're going to pick one. I'm not going to have time for all of this today. This will be great, but I'm not going to have time for this. The thing that I'm going to be doing today is playing with kids for sure, and the roller skating by myself for maybe 10 minutes. But that isn't going to change my evening, it really changes my evening to know that I'm putting that stuff in place. When you're talking in your AirPods, no one's going to think that, "Oh, who is she talking to herself?" They're going to think you're on the phone. It's completely okay to do it outside, it's completely safe to do it in your car as so long as you have your AirPods in. Then the last re sort which I did mention to her in the comment is the shower. You get into shower, maybe not with the AirPods in case you drop them, but you put your phone towards the shower and you just speak it out loud and the people in your house are not probably going to come in. But it's just those little places that you're definitely going to find the time. I have a 9-5, I have a business, I have kids, I have a husband, so I'm with you. It is really hard and that's why I think it's important to acknowledge that sometimes my self-care is in the shower, or on my walk, or while I'm doing the dishes, or I'm pausing my voice memos so that I can go and help with home schooling and do this and do that. I think it's so important to recognize that we're all handling and juggling so much right now. Knowing that I had this to come back to and if for some reason I'm given an hour to sit down, and do this great. But if I don't, I can give myself 10, 15 minutes. Anything more? Great, anything less? Great too, I still gave myself three minutes. Yasmin, how often do you do your joy list? If I have the time, I like to do it 2-3 times a week. I like to do the joy list particularly on the day that I do not want to do anything to do with joy. If I wake up or if I'm having a tough day and I'm exhausted, the last thing that I want to do is a joy list. Those are the days that I really try to push myself to do it. On those days, I am most likely using voice notes. I'm most likely not, I want to be clear that I am most likely not taking the time to write things down, especially right now with kids at home, husband home, everyone home, I'm not doing that. Then I'm listening to my headphones and I'm washing dishes or doing something that gives me the space to give to myself and then also create that time. On a week where I don't have 2-3 times to do it, I definitely grab my own joy list and use that for as long as I need to. Until I looked at this joy list and I say, "Everything on here looks boring. I don't want to do anything on this list, this doesn't bring me joy, " then I would redo it. I hope that helped me answer your question because that was a really good one. Somebody's asking, how can you balance joy and grief as they seem so contradictory? They are very contradicting and I think it's important to recognize that when we have grief and we think about grief sometimes, we think about it as death or something like that. There is grief like that, but there's all kinds of grief. There's grief of losing a job, and getting a new job. There's grief and success, leaving life behind that you had and coming into a new one. There's all different types of forms of grief and remembering that you can have those periods of this is incredibly tough for me, I don't want to be going through this, and still make space for you to come up out of it. I like to call it for a moment to give yourself that joy. Joy is something that we have to intentionally choose. It's not something that necessarily comes naturally where we say, "Oh, joy is just going to be there waiting for me when I finish with grief." Unfortunately, sometimes it's not, and when those moments happen, we're in grief or like the year we've been experiencing, joy has been something that for me, at least I've had some really be intentional about how am I going to give myself joy today, even if it doesn't look like what I thought it would look like. For as long as I can and in those moments, making space for it and then recognizing that I might go back into grief, I might go back into sadness, and I might go back to being tough. But reminding myself when every time we practice that intentional choosing of joy, we remind ourselves that it's possible for us and we begin to build that self-trust and do it again and again. That's really what we're doing. We're building that muscle of trusting ourselves to continue to choose it each and every time that we remind ourselves that we can. Is it normal for a joy list to change often? This is a great question because I think it's important to recognize that what brings you joy is going to change most likely from day to day, especially today, because we have so much time with ourselves than we normally would. It's completely normal for your joy list to change. It's just completely normal for you to wake up, and say none of these things on my joy list is something that I want to do. I would really much rather just do something else and give myself the space to enjoy maybe a walk, or maybe I want to have a latte, giving yourself the freedom to decide. This is what my joy list was yesterday, now I need this today. Really intentionally choosing joy is advocating for yourself with yourself. Like this is what I'm going do for myself even though you, yourself is saying that we have this joy list we should be doing. I'm saying, today we don't want to do that, and sometimes you've got to have those tough internal conversations with yourself where we're trying to do the right thing by being there for ourselves. Sometimes being there for ourselves is just doing what we need in that moment versus making it something else. Long story short, yes, change it as much as you need to and make it work in a way that feels good for you. Yasmin, can you give us some more tips on how to choose joy without ignoring the hard stuff? I actually think this exercise is a great way to execute that because you give yourself the space to name what's really hard right now, and what's really tough right now. I want to remind you that, yes, we walked through this rather quickly because we're on a class, but you can fit in that for as long as you need to. The things I can control lists, if there was something deeper like social media, maybe there's a particular account that's triggering knew that can turn into a journaling prompt for you to begin to write or speak out loud why you feel triggered, or why you feel upset, or why that was brought up for you, and what you need from that. It doesn't have to be a quick exercise if you have the space to really allow yourself to go deep. The same thing for the things I can't control is reminding yourself, like for me, if I use the home schooling example, I'm not a teacher in that sense. I'm not a math teacher, so it's hard for me because I'm doing something that isn't natural for me and I'm doing the best that I can. Perhaps, talking to a friend about it. Maybe that one really hurt really bad and I recognize, I want to talk to a friend or my therapist or something about it. I allow myself to really process those things as I recognize that they really are painful for me. But at the same time, when we do that, things I can't control, can control is one of the things that I think is so powerful about it, that can get really hard when it comes to grief and sadness is we don't often learn. After we process grief and sadness, or acknowledge grief and sadness, we don't have to stay in it. When we decide to do our joy list or do something that brings us joy, it doesn't mean that we're forgetting that the grief or the sadness ever existed. It doesn't mean that we are pushing them to the side. It's still present. But we're just giving ourselves a moment to come out of it. Sometimes we can feel bad. Why am I laughing and enjoying myself right now? It's called comparative suffering. I shouldn't be joyful right now because the world is really having a hard time. I shouldn't be joyful right now because I'm grieving this, and reminding yourself like I can do both. I can be grieving and present to what's happening that's really hard for me and others, I I can also give myself the space to have joy because when I have joy, I fill myself up, so that I can be there to process the grief, the sadness that I'm experiencing, and that others are experiencing. If I don't give myself that time, then I won't really have the freedom or the energy to be there like I really want to be for myself or anyone else. I think that's one of the most powerful things that this exercise can do for you in your life, especially if, perhaps you don't have the funds for therapy and things like that. This is how you can begin to access your own emotions with yourself until you have the time to reach out to a coach or a therapist. Or if you're already seeing someone, this exercise can help you bring that to the session for you. 7. Final Thoughts: That's it for this class, but it's important to know that it doesn't stop here. I hope that you walk away feeling empowered to bring joy into your life today and every day in ways that are easy, accessible, and although it might not be actually easy, knowing that bringing intentional journaling is something that you have the power to do. I hope that the one thing that you take away from this, it can look however you want. It doesn't have to look like what we just did in this course. This class really gives you the opportunity to see where we're going, how we're getting there, what happens when we arrive, and what happens after we get there. But you can condense that at any way that feels really good for you, allowing yourself to really take the moment and saying, I'll just name one thing that I can control, one thing that I can't control, and one thing that's going to bring me joy today. Then this is the last step after that, how am I going to give it to myself today? If the answer is I can't give it to myself today, how am I going to give myself something that brings me joy today? It doesn't have to be what I really desire like, maybe it's the tennis bracelet that brings me joy. That's not going to happen today. What can I actually give myself today that's going to bring me joy? Trying to make it as lighthearted and easy as possible when you're thinking about the joy, but being as compassionate and realistic and honest with yourself as possible when it comes to the tough stuff. Because it's not just, oh, joy, and we'll just move on. I know it's really tough. I know it's really hard and really giving yourself the space to acknowledge that. I'm not overreacting. This is really tough right now and I don't know how I'm going to get through this. I'm just doing what I can to bring myself joy to help me through the day. That's the reality that a lot of us are in with where we are in the world right now. One of the most powerful things about this work is the community aspect. When you see other people that are going through the same things as you or maybe experiencing similar things, you realize I'm not alone and you feel connected, and so I would love to hear from you. Please share your joy list or any comments that you have about the class in the project gallery, and connect with other members at Skillshare. I'd like to thank every single one of you for showing up for yourself today. This work is fun, but it's not easy. It's tough to do this. Please feel free to check out my other classes at Skillshare, audio course and a writing course. I look forward to chatting with you guys again soon.