Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Confidently Beautiful with Ciera
Choosing Joy
Joy isn't about perfection or fake positivity – it's about finding deep soul satisfaction even in the midst of chaos. We explore the power of intentional joy practices and how they can transform our experience, even on the hardest days.
• Joy differs from happiness – it's deeper and not circumstantial
• Harvard study shows people who focus on joy are 30% more likely to report higher life satisfaction
• Personal joy practices include music to combat overstimulation, sunshine breaks, and gratitude journaling
• Joy is a choice we must make daily, especially during difficult times
• Quick "joy reset": step outside barefoot, close eyes, breathe deeply, and think of one grateful moment
Email me at confidentlybeautifulwithciera@gmail.com if you have an inspiring confidence story to share on the podcast. Connect with me on Instagram @confidentlybeautifulpodcast and please leave a review – it helps others find our community.
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Hey friend, welcome back to the Confidently Beautiful podcast. I am Ciera and today we're diving into one of my favorite feelings joy. Not the fake it till you make it kind, not the perfect, life is great, wonderful. Kind, I mean like the deep feel, it in your soul, kind of joy. Joy doesn't mean things have to be perfect and you have to look perfect and everything in your life has to be perfect. It just means that you're showing up in the middle of the chaos and joy reminds you that life is still good, even if you're running on caffeine and dry shampoo, which I often am. In this short and sweet episode, I'm going to share a few sweet, beautiful answers from you, my listeners, about what brings you joy and how it can change things for you. I'm also going to share some of my personal moments where joy has snuck up on me in the middle of the messy days and has totally flipped the script, because sometimes we forget how powerful a little joy can be. So, whether you're folding laundry or maybe you're out on your walk soaking in some sunshine, this one is for you and let's talk about how joy changes everything.
Ciera:First, what is joy? Joy versus happiness, how are they different? Joy is deeper. It's not circumstantial Joy you can feel, maybe in those hard moments when you're not feeling quite so happy. It doesn't matter what your circumstances are, you can still experience joy, motherhood. Often joy can be small and it can come in like those overlooked moments of motherhood In the middle of the hard days. Then we might have like these little moments of joy where we just feel it. Joy is the serious business of heaven, according to CS Lewis. A Harvard study found that people who intentionally focus on positive emotions like joy are 30% more likely to report higher life satisfaction. That's a pretty great statistic in my opinion, and so if I can be 30% happier with my life and more satisfied with my life, then I would want to bring as much joy as I can.
Ciera:My personal examples of what brings me joy and how I can bring joy into my life is number one music. There are often days when I am overstimulated. After a really long day I can easily be overstimulated with all the noise the talking around me with my kids, the fighting oh, the constant fighting. The TV sounds that is a huge one for me. That can be very overstimulating to me, and especially when there is clutter and there is stuff everywhere. So if this ever happens to me which it happens so much more often than I wish it did, but I have found for me a really, really easy fix is for me to tell my husband you are in charge, I am not going to be able to hear anything. I put in my AirPods, I turn on the noise canceling and I turn up the music and I just clean and I can just focus on just doing what I need to do to just calm my space around me, and after that I always feel so much better and so it really does bring me joy, like it brings me joy to like feel that. And so joy doesn't have to be brought on by a really big grand moment. That's nothing huge. It could even just be for 20 minutes that I am tuning out the noises around me and I am just enjoying my music and just cleaning, which to me, is so calming and peaceful to me. If I can clean in peace, without anyone talking to me, then I can just feel so much better and I know that the end result is going to bring me a lot of joy.
Ciera:Another one is sunshine. Sunshine feeds my soul If I can just step outside and just breathe and just feel the sun on my face, or even just stand near a window or sit near a window where the sun is shining in and I can just feel that sun on me, then it can change my mood so quickly. So whenever I'm feeling that like overwhelm, I just step out into the sun and it brings so much joy and so much peace to me. I've done this with my babies, like if they're upset, just stepping outside, like it just instantly can calm them and it does the same for me. So it's my I love, love for sunshine and that just feeds my soul when I step out into the sun. And journaling is another one Gratitude and joy practices, even if it's like a short 30 seconds or maybe five minutes. If I can do that like, I can feel so much more joy and studies have shown that it's linked to better sleep, lower stress and stronger relationships. If you take just even five minutes to journal something that you're grateful for or something good that has happened to you, then it can improve your life so much.
Ciera:One thing that I have started doing is my confidence journals, so these are available in my shop. I will include a link below. But these are confidence journals. So these are available in my shop. I will include a link below. But these are confidence journals that just are very simple and they say today I felt confident when and then I just say when I felt confident what is something that happened today that either I did or that happened to me, or a situation that I was in that grew my confidence, or that I had a moment where I felt like I was shining. This has been a really good practice for me because it's been having me notice more things about myself and about what I am comfortable with and what I'm not comfortable with, where I do feel confident and where I need to improve, and it's been a really good self awareness reminder and practice for me. And if it can link to what that statistics said about improving my sleep and lowering my stress and building my relationships, then I am all for that and that is definitely going to bring me more joy. So those are the three things that I do to increase my joy.
Ciera:I asked on my Instagram what brings you joy? I asked on my Instagram what brings you joy and I got some really great answers. Some people said birds and sunshine. Some people said my kids laughing. Some people said being with my family. And how does joy change things for you? One person said that it energizes her. I loved that because it really does. Joy really does bring an energy.
Ciera:A quote that I really love is joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It's not something that necessarily easily comes to us like. It's a choice that we have to make every day to feel joy, especially in those moments of life when things are really hard. Joy is a choice even when your life feels heavy. It doesn't erase all the hard things, but it can give the power to move through them in a different way. You can move through things and it can give you the courage to move forward and to move through the heavy, hard moments with a different attitude and a different perspective. Some other awesome quotes that I found about joy as I was doing my preparations for this episode were sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. Joy is not in things, it is in us. That's by Richard Wagner.
Ciera:Here is an idea of a joy reset that you can do if you are ever feeling overwhelmed or feeling like you just don't have any joy. This goes along with one of my things of getting sunshine and what I love to do is step outside, even if it's just for a few seconds, and just close my eyes. It's awesome if you can. There's like studies and science that if you can have your bare feet on the ground, like in the grass, that can do so much more for you. It just really grounds you to the earth. So I just step outside barefoot, I close my eyes, I take a deep breath and if you can face the sun or the sky and like just feel like those sun rays on your face, then just breathe that in and then just think to yourself one thing you're grateful for. This can bring an awesome joy reset If you are feeling overwhelmed or sad or just having a really hard time coping with some things. That's one of my favorite joy resets is to just step outside and do that for 30 seconds.
Ciera:I would love to hear what brings you joy this week. So DM me, let's have a conversation. I love the conversations I have in my messages and maybe even like post to your story. Tag me share this episode with somebody that you think could use a little bit of joy. I want to remind you that you're worthy of joy right now, not just when everything is perfect, because it never is perfect. You're worthy of joy right now, in this moment.
Ciera:Another thing that would bring me joy today is if you would leave me a review. I love reading my reviews for my episode, and not only does it bring me joy, but it also brings other people joy, because they can read your reviews and actually find this podcast and I would hope that this podcast brings people joy and so if they have reviews that they can read and they can know that this podcast is for them, that helps them to get my podcast onto more people's feed so that when they are searching for confidence podcasts or motherhood podcasts, this one can come up. I want to read one of the reviews, because I love them all. This is from Emily. She said I binge listened to every episode and was sad when I made it through the last one. I loved the sincerity of the host and learned some super helpful life hacks. My favorite episode so far was the one about morning routines. I can link that in the show notes. I can't wait for Monday to get here so I can listen again. Good stuff. This was actually from a couple years ago. This was one of my very first reviews, when I used to launch the episodes on Mondays, but now it is on Tuesdays. So now Tuesdays can be your joyful, happy day when you get another confidently beautiful podcast episode.
Ciera:So I believe that joy can change everything. I don't think that it can change our circumstances, but I think it can change everything inside of us. It can change the way we feel about ourselves and the situations that we are in, even if they are not ideal. So find a little bit of joy this week and I will talk to you again next week. Stay confidently beautiful. Do you have an inspiring story of confidence? Whether you've overcome a limitation, rediscovered yourself after a loss, or built confidence through something as simple yet super powerful as gardening, I want to hear from you, or maybe you know someone whose journey would inspire others. I'm looking for real, relatable stories to feature on the Confidently Beautiful podcast. Let's celebrate the beauty of confidence in all its forms. Email me at confidentlybeautifulwithsierra at gmailcom and let's chat about sharing your story with my incredible community. I can't wait to hear from you. Thanks for listening. Connect with me on Instagram @confidentlybeautifulpodcast and share this episode with someone in your life who could use a little reminder of just how amazing they already are. Stay confidently beautiful.