Create Harmony

Choosing Joy: How Focus Shapes Daily Life

• Sally • Season 1 • Episode 153

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We return from a brief break to reset our focus for the new year, using a simple story to show how attention shapes experience. We launch our Winter Well-Being series with practical ways to realign pace, soothe a revved nervous system, and find warmth in quieter days.

• the baker and flood story as a lens on focus  
• how attention shapes lived experience  
• joy and peace as subtle, powerful forces  
• moving from high alert to steadier rhythms  
• small practices for grounding and reflection  
• living seasonally to protect energy in winter  
• the difference between mental health and well-being  
• cozy routines, gentle decluttering, and community  
• winter-only joys and how to notice them  
• newsletter extras and Instagram day-to-day shares  
• seasonal subscription boxes with guided meditations

Seasonal subscription boxes are on sale now—go to mycreateharmony.com to learn more and order your winter box


To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome! You are listening to the Create Harmony Podcast. So I want you to start out by imagining a space where the pace is unhurried and the noise of the day just begins to fade into the background where you can listen for the soft rhythms of life to guide your heart. So, right here, what we do is notice small wonders in life. We notice things like cold hands wrapped around a warm mug, or finding some money in the pocket where you forgot it, or the hush of a winter morning. We think about the good feeling of warm socks on a cold day, or how nice it is when a stranger holds the door open, or a good book that is so good you forget time. We let the turning of the seasons shape our own rhythms, reminding us that there's time for growth, there's time for rest, and there's beauty in every stage in between. So just settle in, get your favorite cup of tea, and join me as we explore everyday joys and abundant blessings that are waiting in our lives for us to discover them. So this is episode 152, and we are back after a few weeks away. I am your host, Sally Burlington, and we've been off for the past few weeks that I've been taking some time to savor and celebrate the holiday season. We're at the beginning of a brand new year, and here at Create Harmony, as we always are, we are in search of joy. But before we get on to joy, let's begin by talking about focus. So where you put your focus becomes your lived experience. So to illustrate this, I'm going to tell you a story. And I want you to notice while I'm telling the story, what is it that stands out to you? So here's the story. There's a small town tucked between a river and a long stretch of quiet road. And every morning the baker opens his shop before sunrise. And the smell of warm bread drifts through the streets, and people say it makes their problems feel lighter, at least for a few minutes. Kids stop by on their way to school, sometimes with enough money and sometimes not. And on the days that they don't have enough money, the baker pretends he baked too many rolls and he hands them one anyway, and this is a good thing. But the town is also slowly emptying. Shops are closing one by one, friends are moving away, and they've promised to stay in touch, but they really didn't. The old movie theater has shut its doors, and the marquee just stays frozen on the same faded title for years. Now one summer in the town, the river flooded. Gardens were ruined, basements were soaked, and a bridge that people rely on every day was knocked down, and everyone was angry and they were tired and scared about what would happen next. But then something strange happened. People showed up. Neighbors who barely knew each other before were suddenly stacking sandbags together, they were sharing food, they were laughing at how muddy they were all getting. And when the water finally went down, not everything was fixed. Some of the houses still had damage, and the bridge took months to repair. Life didn't magically become easy, but the baker kept opening his shop, and a few new families moved in. Someone even repainted the movie theater marquee, even though the building was still closed. It wasn't a miracle, but just small, stubborn hope. Now here's the thing. After listening to that story, I want you to think about, remember at the beginning I said, think about what you focused on while I was telling the story. And if you focused on the baker and the smell of the bread, the quiet kindness, the way people came together when they were experiencing the flood and they came together and helped one another, you have one experience of this town. That's your one lived experience of this town if that's what you focused on. However, on the opposite side, if you focused on the flood and the closures, the losses, all of the people leaving and not staying in touch, then you're having a very different experience of this exact same town. Same story, different focus. Now we don't control much about the world around us, and we all know this. Sometimes we like to think we control things, but we really don't control much about the world around us. But the one thing that we have total control over is what we choose to focus on. No one else decides that for us. And there is plenty that is unpleasant in the world. You don't have to work hard to focus on that. But here at Create Harmony, we are practicing gently shifting our focus toward peaceful and joyful living whenever possible. Joy and peace aren't rare, but they do require extra special attention. And sometimes they feel kind of elusive. We think of joy and peace as something big or magical, a big vacation or some magical moment, something that arrives fully formed. And sometimes they are. Sometimes joy and peace are just like that. But often they show up quietly. They're subtle in ways that seem pretty ordinary or maybe even boring if we're not paying attention. We're often drawn to what's louder, what's flashier, what's more intense. And sometimes we make a pe mistake a peace for something that's just too simple to even matter. But I want to push back on that. I believe that joy is one of the most powerful forces available to us. And I believe that peace is abundant and accessible if we learn how to notice it. So here's an example from my own life. The past few years around my household for me has been pretty full. We moved a few years ago. We've been building a pool in our backyard. In the past two years, both of my children have graduated, one from high school, one from college. There was a couple of big birthdays thrown in there, a lot happening. I've taken on some extra work projects, some leadership in my church, lots of things on my plate. And I do not regret one bit of it. To do that successfully, I've had to live at a pace that was faster and fuller than what feels ideal for me. I didn't have nearly as much time for the grounding habits or the contemplative practices that I really like to do. Either I didn't have time or I didn't have energy. And my nervous system moved a little closer to a state of high alert. And I know you're probably going ahead and picking up on the irony because what I talk about all the time in peaceful and joyful living is slowing down your life, savoring these moments, and I really believe deeply in it. But like everyone else, I've been going through a season where those things are harder to access. I was doing a lot, but not being very much. So now we're at the beginning of new year, and I'm able to release some of the things that have been on my plate, some of that intensity. My plate's a little lighter this year, my mind is getting a little quieter. So I can begin to let go of high alert. But here is the challenge that I have been dealing with. When you spend a long time in that faster, more agitated state, your body and your mind have learned to hold on to it as familiar. And even when life slows down, even when your calendar slows down, your nervous system is still trying to rev up. So I'm sort of trending towards a more agitated frame of mind. So this year, my intention has been to expand on my spiritual and grounding practices. There'll be more meditation, more journaling, more prayer, noticing the subtleties of daily life. And this is going to require some effort and probably some mild discomfort. Because when you try to reinforce new habits and new ways of focusing, it's a lot like when you're trying to care for your body. It's like returning to healthy eating or regular movement after you've had a long break. When you try to do that, it takes a little bit of effort. It's there's some discomfort involved. So I began that shift in the month of December. It wasn't even the new year there. And I began that shift by taking those past few weeks off from creating content, from stepping away to really find what I deeply needed. It was deeply needed for me and healing. And in that space, so many new ideas for create harmony emerged. I have so many exciting things that you'll hear more about as the year unfolds. So the beginning of the new year, it's, I mean, I started mine in December, but beginning of new year is a natural time for this kind of adjustment. And you may already be making a short list in your mind. Habits that you want to shift and rhythms that you want to soften, things that you want to do differently, new ways of being that you would like to try. So as we begin this year together, I invite you to raise your awareness and to remember you are the only person that gets to choose what you focus on. And one powerful way to do that, I'm gonna suggest a few ways that you might start. So one powerful do way we do that here at Create Harmony is by living in alignment with the seasons. So our bodies naturally respond to changes in daylight, shorter days, colder temperatures, more serious weather. And when days are longer and brighter, we often have a lot more energy. We have more outward momentum, just like nature. There's more blossoming and blooming in that time. But in winter, our bodies ask for something different, for more rest, for more warmth, for more inward attention. So when we live seasonally, we work with our biology instead of pushing against it. So this supports both our physical and our emotional well-being, and it helps us keep from being burnt out all the time. The seasons also teach us to that change is normal. It's necessary. There's a rhythm to things, a cycle. There are times for growth and outward energy. And then there are times for rest, reflection, there are times for letting go. And embracing these cycles helps us be just a little gentler with ourselves during slower seasons and a little bit more present with ourselves when we're in those high energy seasons like spring and summer. And so that brings us to a tradition we do every winter as we're living seasonally here at Create Harmony. We do a series we call winter well-being. And this whole series is about supporting ourselves during our quieter, darker months, nurturing our bodies, tending to our inner lives, and just finding a steadiness when the world feels too loud. And I want you to notice something. I didn't say winter health or even winter wellness. What I said was winter well-being. So that's a little different. Like mental health involves your overall state of mind, your emotions, your thought patterns, your coping skills. It's usually entangled with things like therapy and medication, your background, your brain chemistry. Everyone has mental health and it changes over time. But mental well-being, on the other hand, is about how we feel day to day. It is about our sense of balance, our feelings of safety and connection, and our ability to enjoy just the everyday moments of life. So for me, winter feels a little bit more brittle. It's a more harsh environment. And I have to be mindful not to dwell on what feels so heavy and so unsettling. So well-being is the way that I do that. I focus on well-being. This is influenced by your rest, your routine, your connection with others. It's all about self-care and really noticing joy. So let me say that again. Well-being includes processes of self-care, connecting with community, and noticing joy. And when we layer winter into that, the invitation becomes pretty simple. How do we find warmth in darker days? How do we create a feeling of coziness, steadiness, a feeling of being tucked up together during our winter season? So this series is going to be a little bit like chicken soup for the soul. We'll talk about winter self-care. We're going to have some cozy routines, some bedtime rituals, some moisturizing things, indoor movement, and how to get your body going and move during a more dormant season of year. There'll be some gentle decluttering and some personal reflection. We'll be urging you to let go of what no longer serves you and welcome in new things as we begin this new year. We'll explore community and how to stay connected during a season that can feel a little isolating. And all along the way, we will notice winter joys, those things that are only available to us in this quieter, slower season. You're going to find all this winter well-being right here on the episodes of our podcast, but we will also have a more expanded version in our monthly newsletter. Our newsletter is free. You just need to go to the website and subscribe, and you'll get a little bit more winter well-being content. And we'll also be sharing things on Instagram day to day of how we are cozying down in our own houses. So if you're new here, I am so glad that you found your way to us. And if you've been here for a while, you already know this season is something extra special. And we are going to walk through it all together. So now as we draw draw our time together to a close, I want to tell you, I want to remind you of something that we talked about a lot during the holiday season, but it's a good way during a quieter month. It's our seasonal subscription boxes. They're on sale right now. And here's how this works: this is a cozy collaboration with our friends at Petal and Pink Mental Wellness Boutique. They have all sorts of mental wellness journals and books and gift items and fidgets and things to help you feel grounded and settled. And our partnership, as part of our partnership, we've created these seasonal boxes. There's one per quarter, one for each season. So right now we're on the winter box. And in the winter box, you get a link to five guided meditations, and they're all cozy related. They're like picturing yourself drinking a cup of tea or sitting by the fire or baking bread, doing all kinds of warm and settling, snuggly experiences. And then there are gift items in the box as well. So you have like a hand warmer mug and some tea and a candle making kit and some cozy socks, just all sorts of things to reinforce that feeling of self-care and centeredness. So if that sounds like something you want to take advantage of now that you've started your new year, something you want to welcome in, then you need to go to mycreateharmony.com to learn more. And you can order your seasonal subscription box right now. And then there'll be another box that'll come in the spring with refreshing spring content, one in the summer and one in the fall. So you don't want to miss it. So thanks again for joining us. We're so glad you're here starting the new year with us together. We'll have more winter well-being going on over the next coming weeks. You don't want to miss it. And until next time, peacefully, you know, we have to get a bunch of people.

Contributor

Sally Burlington

Host