‘Tis the season so what could be better than a conversation all about finding joy? Grab a mince pie and a sneaky mulled wine and settle down with this podcast episode with the incredible Sophie Cliff. Sophie is a positive psychology practitioner and in this episode she shares a ton of helpful tips and tools for finding more joy in our everyday lives.
“It snapped me out of the sleepwalking”
We start by discussing what led Sophie to become a coach and how a family bereavement was a catalyst for changing her career and focusing on joy. Joy is an essential part of our lives and as Sophie studied more about positive psychology she discovered how much evidence there is for how finding joy can improve our careers, our health and our lives.
“Joy and happiness are two different constructs”
We delve into the differences between joy and happiness and how we can cultivate joy. Joy is something that can be sought out even if we don’t feel happy. Sophie explains concepts such as negativity bias and how we all tend to lean into the negative things rather than giving attention to the good stuff. Sophie shares helpful tips on how we can train our brains to be better at bringing attention to the good things already in our day to day lives.
We also cover how we are great at adapting to spikes in joy (such as from big events like holidays, weddings etc) to come back to the same baseline. It’s this adaptation that makes it so important to focus on small changes than raise our overall baseline rather than waiting on the next big event.
“Our lives are so busy we don’t realise something is bad until it’s really bad”
Sophie shares easy tools to put into practice ways of finding more joy in our daily lives. One simple way to notice joy more is to create a gratitude list at the end of each day. Gratitude lists are proven to have a huge positive impact. This is a really great one to do with little ones as well – I try to ask R at bedtime what her favourite part of the day was and it’s a lovely way to help her identify things that brought her joy as well as reconnect at the end of the day.
Another tool is to find the magic in the mundane, because it’s our average days that make up our lives so getting better at noticing the little things that bring us joy can help to bring up our joyfulness baseline.
“Intention is what keeps us connected”
We also talk about one of my favourite topics – the difference between intentions and goal setting. Goal setting is often playing into society’s expectations of us but introducing intention and thinking about how you want to feel and what will make you happier allows you to connect that big picture to what you need to do day to day.
Intention also helps build in intrinsic motivation to our goals so that we keep showing up. Research shows that having long term goals is important but it is the pursuit of the goal that brings the happiness rather than the achievement of the goal. So rather than the quickest way of achieving a goal we should be thinking about the most joyful way to meet that goal.
Most of us think that the fear of what will happen if we don’t show up is a motivator to get things done but the research shows the opposite to be true. When we are kind and compassionate to ourselves we actually achieve more. And the same is true with our children – we all know that turning something into a fun game is way more likely to get little ones to do something thank just telling them to do it.
“Lean in to what feels good”
It can often feel difficult knowing where to start and so Sophie shares tips on how we can lean into what makes us feel good and how to prioritise it. It’s not always about doing the thing that’s comfortable in the moment but about thinking about what is going to make us feel good at the end of the day.
Something that really resonated was when Sophie points out how we’re so good at taking care of children but not good at applying the same care to ourselves and considering whether our basic needs have been met. It’s something that I’m trying to remind myself to do more.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Christmas podcast episodes
- Sophie’s book Finding Joy
- Gratitude lists
- Toxic positivity
- Negativity bias
- Arrival fallacy
- Daily check-ins
- Difference between goal-setting and intentions
- Intrinsic motivation
- Practical positivity podcast
You can find Sophie at @SophieCliff on Instagram and at www.sophiecliff.com
