On your path to joy, be prepared for pushback. You are making time for reading, exploring, taking classes, attending seminars and concerts, writing and communicating with new people. You have disrupted the pattern of what was your ordinary day.

Others in your life may want to interrupt your set times for reading, walking, writing or visiting places in the community. You will need to defend your boundaries.

You may be the one who wants to postpone or cut short your explorations and new activities to revert to your old patterns. Moving on to your new choices is sometimes fun and sometimes frightening.

Your feelings of isolation, dullness, bewilderment, and fatigue can rise at any time. When they do, old choices rise up strong.

You may not recognize your path to joy yet. Now is your time to become a spiritual explorer in the pragmatic world.

The appearance and details of the path to joy are different for each of us, yet the pattern and method are similar.

To explore, start with these steps.

Choices exist in this world. Do you know what your choices are? Your path beckons.

First is your choice to either keep living as you are living or move toward freedom and change.

If you continue to follow your routine in a life that is unhappy, neglect your yearning and fulfill the expectations of others, you will maintain your status quo and gradually feel worse. If you can’t find your way to change, you may try to distract yourself with activities and substances or temporary and short-lived thrills.

When you emerge, you see nothing improved, and your life may have disintegrated more during your absence. If you move to free yourself, you disrupt the known system of your life. You might say that requires courage, perhaps more than you think you have.

The caterpillar may lead a joyous life, but at the end of the life cycle, it goes into reclusion for transformation. That may be joyous until the change is complete. Now, the new being works its way into a different life as the worn-out chrysalis crumbles.

A quiet self-talk statement to keep yourself centered and awake is this: I can find my path to joy.

Bored? Restless? Lonely? Feeling guilty about wasting time? Overeating? Starving? Numbing yourself in bars? Sex becoming dull? Are people uninteresting?

You weren’t always like this.

The world is full of choices and new paths for you.

Yearning for a more joyful and fulfilling life is a major indication that you are unsatisfied where you are. It's time to move into a new way of being in the world. How do you get motivated to begin? How do you change your desire to action?

You want to feel alive again. You want to wake up in the morning with a smile. You want to be eager for the day and what you will experience.

Regardless of your age or situation, within you is your knowledge of joy. You can have it again.

Welcome to your new beginning on your path to joy. Searching for and finding your path is a task we face periodically throughout our lives. Growth and development never stops. The experience of loss and completion never stops. The need to feel alive and meaningful never stops.

Read and follow these steps, and you will find yourself on your path to joy.

(Example of healing self talk and the power of journal writing. Printed with permission)  *pix

Christmas is coming, and I’m alone. I feel abandoned by a world of people who are happily busy in gayety and plans for more.

Is this true? Do my feelings reflect reality?

My family is punishing me for not being obedient. I am stretching my heart and mind into realms that intrigue me and offer me new satisfying direction. That's belittled.

I’m not included in celebrations. I’m invited to events with 20 minutes notice. I don’t respond.

I am no longer stripping myself of energy, time and money to perform people pleasing behavior for people who are never pleased.  And I feel frightened, alone and sometimes desperate.

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Welcome to more personal power in recognizing and dealing with abuse. The November 28, 1019 New York Times article, “The Wisdom Your Body Knows, You are not just thinking with your brain,” brings together information that can clear your fuzzy manipulated thinking when you are confronted with an abuser of any kind.

Information on the workings of the vagus nerve is new to me. I’ve seen brief articles that recommend sleeping on your right side, meditating, doing deep breathing exercises and more to nurture your vagus nerve. But I didn’t comprehend the significance of vagus nerve activity until I read David Brooks’  New York Times article.