In this blog I’ll share with you about how, even under the most difficult of circumstances, our tragedies can be transformed into triumph through the power of a deep, inner quality of life: JOY!
While, the past year has been difficult for most of us, in life generally not everything goes our way and things don’t always work out as we planned.
We may feel that some days are disasters. Other days may be even worse.
Who doesn’t want to be happy? But happiness comes easily when everything goes our way. JOY is different. It’s deeper. Joy is an attitude we choose, regardless of the circumstances.
As a leader in both the corporate world and in faith communities I invest my life encouraging people to look beyond their circumstances and to discover meaning, purpose, direction and hope – solid reasons to get up in the morning and say “Something good is going to happen to me today!”
I want people to be inspired by a vision of the difference they can make in the world.
Dr. Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, was imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II because he was a Jew. His wife, children, and parents all were killed in the holocaust. Standing totally naked before the gestapo who had stripped him of his clothes he drew upon inner reserves of joy.
As they cut off his wedding band, Viktor said to himself, “You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me — and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!”
Even under the most difficult of circumstances, joy is a choice that transforms our tragedies into triumph.
Let us not confuse happiness with joy. Happiness is a buoyant emotion that results from the momentary plateaus of well-being. Even happy circumstances often fail to bring us lasting smiles and laughter; so, where’s your Joy to be found?
This is bedrock stuff; a confidence that operates, irrespective of our moods; certainty that all is well, however we feel.
Even under the most difficult of circumstances, our tragedies can be transformed into triumph through the power of a deep, inner quality of life: JOY!