The Joy Formula

How to recharge your JOY and live life with an abundance of happiness

If you are navigating anxiety, depression, numbness, or a lack of motivation, this is especially for you ❤️

My Worship Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ymqW6Yjv7Iw5ZbTan2uuU

Have a beautiful and blessed week! 

Transcript

0:00

Hello, hello. I have so missed you. We are back, ladies. How are you? How is your summer? My Wednesdays have not been the same without you. It has felt like something has been off these last two weeks. I am back home. I'm so excited to get back to the podcast. So excited to be back on YouTube. And I just cannot believe that it is already halfway through 2026. What a crazy quick year it's been. So, how are you, ladies? I hope that the last two weeks have been just so refreshing for you. I hope that you've been gathering some fun summer plans and just enjoying your time with God, enjoying your time doing inner work. And if this is your first episode, hello and welcome. I'm Alexis. I'm a feminine energy and inner work coach, and I love Jesus. And about nine months ago now, which is insane to say, this podcast began, The Fruitful Feminine. And I was really craving a place to share my faith. It is the happiest, most beautiful part of my life, my relationship with Jesus. And I thought I want every single person to have this and to know about the Lord. And so I created this podcast to talk about Jesus and also to talk about how to be the best version of ourselves as women. But of course, men and women are welcome here, but ladies, this is extra focused on you. Okay, today, this episode is going to be about happiness, but not just happiness, joy. There is a difference as we will get into. And I haven't decided the name, it's going to be something about the joy formula or the medicine for joy. I have three main points that we're going to break down that will bring joy into your life. And then I'll give you about five mini bonus ones at the end. Why I chose this episode specifically is because I've been wanting to talk about happiness and joy for a while, but also because I I feel like I'm on such a high and a low coming down from my trip. I just went to France for the first time and I'm still speechless. I don't have words to describe how beautiful, how refreshing it was, how just seeing God's beautiful earth and seeing the different culture there, tasting the food there, oh, I so miss it. But I have two vlogs coming out. So if you want to see what that trip was like, I will have those coming very, very soon. And I learned a lot of lessons on that trip. Half the trip was with my friend, and the other half was solo. And I was just reflecting on how different that trip was for me because it was my first solo trip where I realized I'm not stressed. I'm very type A, oldest daughter perfectionist in the DNA. And trips for me have always felt almost like work because I have moments where I have to release control. Challenges come up that I fear or that stress me out or worry me. And for the first time, I'm flying back home from the trip and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, so much went right, but also so much went wrong, including that flight that I was on. And I just remember thinking, but I have peace. This is mind-blowing. I have peace, I have joy, and we need to talk about it on the podcast because there is a level of happiness that you get to feel when you have a relationship with God, and that happiness is called joy. All right. What's the difference between happiness and joy? Where happiness is a feeling, joy is a state of being. You can feel happy from a kiss, you can feel happy from a bite of food that you eat, you can feel happy from a conversation. However, the thing about feelings is that it is fleeting. It's almost like what they say about love. I don't think that feeling of love, like that ecstasy, high, the excitement, I don't think that's love. I think love is the action. Love is the verb, it's not the feeling. And that's similar to how joy is. Joy is the state of happiness where you are happy despite the circumstance. Joy is independent of your circumstance where happiness is dependent on it. So when things go wrong, your happiness goes wrong. But when you're full of joy, things go wrong, and you have happiness that doesn't make sense. Another contrast is that because happiness is a feeling, it's going to be fleeting, meaning it's not something that is permanent. Where joy, not that you'll always feel joyful, there's ups and downs in life, of course. However, that feeling isn't fleeting. It's like a state where almost like the chemicals in your brain have just switched to make being happy and excited about life to make that your normal state. And why this is so important today, especially, is because research shows that only 71% of people around the world report being happy. And I know that that sounds like a high number, but even if you think about your friend group, let's say that you have a friend group up from school of 10 people. There are three people that are not happy in their life. They're waking up and they're like, oh, another day, just trying to get through. That is not normal. That is not what God wanted for us. And this episode, especially, is for my girls who are struggling with anything mental health related. I have been here with anxiety myself, but I'm talking anxiety, depression, OCD, overcontrolling behavior, um, getting stuck in thoughts, feeling frozen, feeling traumatized. That is not the state that you should be in. That is not what God wants you to live your life in. And so today I hope that that can be broken and that joy can start to pour in for you. Back on that research, so 71% of people globally report being happy. Only 11% of people globally report being very happy, which to me is just another word for joy. Joy is like the uh step above happiness. And I hope every single woman listening and man can by the end of at least this this month, this quarter, this year, can say, I am in that 11%. The sad thing is not even every Christian is in that 11%. I do guarantee though, it is people who are living with the Holy Spirit inside of them, have given their lives to Jesus. I guarantee that makes up the majority of the 11%. Why? Is because joy is a fruit of the Spirit. What I mean by that is that when you say the prayer, the Bible says if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved. It's not hard. It's simply an invitation for Jesus to come and lead your life and to be your Lord and Savior. We make it hard because we think, no, no, no, it can't be this easy to become Christian. It can't be this easy to give our life to Jesus. It is. The world has programmed us into thinking that emotions come with a huge, huge weight or a huge, huge sacrifice. There is a sacrifice, but it's a different type, which we'll get into. But the moment that you say that prayer and you accept Jesus into your life, you also invite the Holy Spirit in. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, they're three different, but they're also three in, they're also one in the same. And I know that this can be so confusing. We'll have to do a whole episode about it. But God is the same as Jesus, is the same as the Holy Spirit, but they are different. God, he is our Father, He's Yahweh. Jesus is the Son of God, but He's also God incarnated in human form. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God. He's known as our advocate, our helper, you know those gut feelings that you get. That's the Holy Spirit speaking to you. And so they're three different, but they're also all God. Well, the Holy Spirit, when you invite the Holy Spirit into your life, this is why you start to desire things that you didn't desire before. It's why you start to feel something weighing in your consciousness that you didn't feel before. For example, maybe you used to gossip all the time, but then you invite Jesus into your life and you become Christian, and then suddenly you're feeling guilty when you gossip. That guilt is from the Holy Spirit saying, We are living inside of you now, and this grieves us. So your desires, your appetite, your state of being start to change when you're living with the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit comes and plants all these different seeds of you, which sprout up into fruits of the spirit, which I love that the name of this podcast is the fruitful feminine. When you are fruitful, you will feel joy. One of the fruits of the spirit, I believe there is 12. I really should know this, but I'm I'm blanking right now. One of the fruits of the spirit, guess what it is? Joy. There's love, there's patience, there's faithfulness. Joy is also one of the fruits of the spirit. Meaning that if you do not have the Holy Spirit living in you, you cannot have joy. There's a verse that I love, and I believe it's John 15, 4, where God says, Remain in me as I remain in you. No branch can bear fruit on its own. It must remain in the vine. And you too will not bear fruit unless you remain in me. And so God is saying, I am a vine that when you connect to me, I will give you all these fruits: love, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, joy. But when you are disconnected from me, you will not have any of these fruits. You will not be able to bear these fruits. Can an apple tree grow bananas? No. An apple tree can only grow based on the vine and the roots that it has. And so when you are connected to the world, when you are connected to, this is so dangerous that I see happening so much. When you are connected to something that you believe is a source of power, such as the universe, um other false gods, when these are the vines that people are connected to, it may feel like there is fruit that is being produced at first, but then something will start to happen where thorns sprout up, and you're thinking, why am I dealing with anxiety attacks all of a sudden? Why am I um why am I having these bad habits? Like, why do I have these desires? It is because that vine that you connected to disguised itself as being a healthy root, but actually it is a poisonous one. And that is what the enemy is very good at. So, anyways, getting a little bit off topic now, but joy is a fruit of the spirit, and so the more you remain in God, the more joy gets to remain in you. Moving down to the formula now. I said that there's gonna be three different parts here. So the formula or the medicine to have joy. Number one is service. I've been waiting to talk about this verse because every month there's five Bible verses that I will remember because it is so hard for me to remember things. I felt like when I was a kid in school and we had a test the next day, I could remember anything on a flashcard. Who remembers Quizlet? I don't even think the kids use that anymore. That's so crazy. Well, now as an adult, I've had to retrain my brain because when I I talked about when I went through this huge battle with anxiety in about 2024, I needed the word of God. Like I needed to replace the thoughts in my head with scripture. That is the only way that I got free. And so every month I've decided I will memorize five new verses, and it has changed the wiring of my subconscious because now my mind is swimming in all of this scripture. It's like the Bible, it is full of life. The words give you life, and so when you memorize scripture, it changes your brain chemistry and it fights against the truths that are actually hurting you. So when you believe something like I'm unworthy, you go back to scripture that says you are perfectly, wonderfully made. And God called you worthy. And so one of the verses that I memorized, I don't even know why I chose this one, but it was one of the verses for May. And it's Isaiah 58, 10, and it says, Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. So when I first read that, I was thinking, okay, this is great. If you help those that are in need, that light, actually, God's light that is in you, it will shine all around and people will be helped. So God wants us to help others. But then I'm writing out the verse and I'm looking at it, and I'm looking at that last part, and I think, oh my gosh, God just gave us the secret to happiness. It is serving other people. He there's so many parts of the Bible where the Bible never says this is how you cure depression. It will instead say, feed the hungry, help those in trouble, then your light will shine out from the darkness. And the key part next, and the darkness around you. Meaning the depression around you will disappear. And what was previously hurting you and holding you back will turn into something that actually brings glory to God and a tool that you get to use for light and for good. And I just thought, this is crazy. I'm obsessed with scripture and obsessed with reading the Bible so slow because every word, every detail, it is so intentional. And I thought, whoa, this is a cure for depression. And of course, I want to say this lightly because I do believe some people, not most people with depression, some people have chemical imbalances in their brain that actual medicine helps. I don't know why, I know for sure it's a result of the fallen world that we live in, just like every sickness and disease. But some people have actual chemical imbalances where others are going through a spiritual attack and labeling it as depression. Well, God tells us how to fight that attack, and it's through service. 1 Peter 4 10, it says, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to service others as faithful stewards of God's grace in various forms. So God tells us we each are given a gift. When you invite Jesus into your life and the Holy Spirit is living in you, the Holy Spirit gives you a gift. Some people have the gift of encouragement, some people have the gift of prophecy, some people have the gift of teaching, of healing. Have you ever met someone who their hands heal you? Whether it's a masseuse, whether it's a person at a hospital, whether it's someone at your church, that's not because they have magic hands. It's because the Holy Spirit has given them a gift of healing. These gifts are very real. That is why miracles are still done in the world today. The Holy Spirit is moving. You have a gift, and the gift, the purpose of the gift is to service others. 100% self-service kills the spirit, and the only remedy for this is to service others. You know how people who are depressed, psychologists and doctors will always tell them, go and volunteer. Research has shown that when people regularly volunteer who are depressed, they see a 40 to 50 percent reduction in depression rates. And one of the aspects of this is due to something called helper's high, which I love that science and psychology, it's it's already confirming everything that God has said. I just imagine God's in heaven, like, yep, wish that you guys figured this out sooner. So there's something known as a helper's high, which is these altruistic acts, they stimulate the brain's reward centers. You feel good for helping other people. And so whether it's volunteering, whether it's helping a friend that's in need, you must prioritize serving others if you want to feel joy. Because if you only service yourself, what you are doing is feeding the flesh 100%, and that is going to feel so icky for the body. What is feeding the flesh? So we have the flesh, which is the body, and then we have the spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, and our spirit living in union. When we're only feeding the flesh, that looks like overconsumption of social media, constantly eating. Um, it looks like no self-control, no discipline, an openness to sin, feeding the flesh, because the flesh naturally will desire to sin. It's just how we are as humans, ever since Satan entered the world. And so we have this constant battle where our body wants to sin, but our spirit doesn't want to. Our spirit wants to follow what God has told us. It wants to be faithful and obedient to God. And so we have this battle that's going on. And the more that you serve others, the more you pull attention away from your flesh and your spirit gets filled. And when your spirit is filled, you stretch, and there's more room for the Holy Spirit to fill your spirit with joy. If you remember our episode on fasting, I had talked about how fasting and praying, it starves the flesh, but it fills the spirit. Fasting, it is mind-blowing to me, not just not eating, but fasting and praying. Because if you just starve your body, but you're not praying, you're not reading the word of God, you're also starving your spirit, that's gonna hurt. But when you starve your body and you say, Okay, body, your desire, I'm gonna say no to you for the whole day. Spirit, I'm gonna say yes to you. Come and fill me. I want to hear you, I want to draw close to you. The most full of joy I have ever, ever felt in my life was the day after I finished my three-day fast in March. I felt like a different woman. It was crazy. I had so much energy, I had so much happiness. You know how when you sleep for nine hours, you just feel different? That is how I felt. And I realized, oh my gosh, there's so much joy available to us that I am not accessing as much as I could. And volunteering, serving others, serving the Lord, that is a way to access more joy. You know I love Myron Golden, he had a YouTube video that he had made once, and this was pretty, pretty savage what he said. But it was sometimes we need the harsh truth. He was talking about how so many people claim to be depressed in the world today. And I do believe there is a heaviness in the world, but we are not meant to be carrying this heaviness. Myron Golden says, people who think they are naturally depressed, he goes, You're not naturally depressed. You're just naturally ungrateful. And I thought, woo, that is some tough love. And there are so many moments of my life where I thought, I don't think I've ever been deeply, deeply depressed, maybe once or twice, but it wasn't something where I felt like it was a whole season. But I remember feeling those low lows, and he knows what was at the center of both of those low lows myself. I was constantly thinking about my problem, what had happened to me, everything that went wrong. And for example, one of the lowest lows that I had was after my first breakup. I felt so much pain. And I just remember I felt. I felt rude to people. I felt short with people. I felt uninspired in life. And I just felt like, what's the point of living? I hurt too much. Well, I, if I had opened my eyes back then, I would have woken up and saw first of all, God woke me up today. Second of all, I have legs. I can go and run. I can walk. I can I have a voice. I have freedom. Like I at this time I was living in the U.S. night, thought I can scream out Jesus' name if I want. You can't do that in every country. I can create whatever career I want. I can heal. Like I have time to heal and to read books. And I had so much to be grateful for, but I couldn't see it because I was so stuck in my heart hurts, the breakup sucks. I was at the center of that depression. And it's just the smallest things. When I was in France last week, there was a town that I stayed in where it was such a cute, charming village town, and there was a lot of older people there. And a lot of the people needed canes to walk around, and they moved really, really slow. And I just remember thinking, God, thank you that I'm not even going to think about how far I can walk today. Thank you that I don't even have to question, can I do 20,000 steps today? I know that I can. Thank you that I have this body that is healthy, that can move, that can dance. There's so many things that we forget we have. And it's just like joy. We forget we have access to it. And sometimes we need something to remind us. Serving that will remind you every time. It takes you out of your head and out of your circumstance, and it makes you grateful, and it also just gives you empathy for other people. And when you are serving someone who that's their only meal that they're going to eat that day, or you are listening to a friend who's going through a heartbreak, you look at that and you compare it to your problem and you go, All right, I'm not even going to stress about this problem. It is nothing compared to what this person is going through. Service crushes depression and it also crushes anxiety. I had talked about how when I was going through that anxiousness, it felt like it came out of nowhere. It was 100% a spiritual attack. And I talk about how I fought that battle, how I completely broke the anxiety that was swimming in my mind in an episode called, oh, of course, I'm drawing a blank right now. Um, how to fight. Oh, okay, I'm totally blanking on it. Something about the spiritual battle or spiritual warfare. Yeah, okay. So sorry, ladies. Um, it's called spiritual warfare, how to win the battle for your soul. If you search that with the fruitful feminine, please watch that. If you have not and you are struggling with something like anxiety or depression, I will give you all of the spiritual tools in there from the Bible about how to fight that battle because I cannot imagine going back into that. I feel so free, so alive, but for a whole year I had like it felt like I was anxious to talk on YouTube all of a sudden. It felt like I had no motivation to go out. I was so scared to create. I just felt, I felt so much fear of the future and of what people thought of me. And so, anyways, one of the things that I did was service. When I would sit down to make a YouTube video, and all of a sudden this anxiety would come up. I would say, wait a second, I am not here to serve myself. I'm only anxious because I'm caring about what people will think of me. How about I'm here to serve the glow girls, I'm here to give them a message that they need. Anxiety, get out of here because I have women to help. And immediately the anxiety is gone, and I could sit down and just film and feel so relaxed and confident. So if you take something that you fear or you're anxious about and flip it to a way that actually you're serving other people, you're gonna let the anxiety go. Even with this podcast, when I when God told me I want you to do a podcast, I was like, Do you know what my agenda looks like? I already was doing so much, like every minute of the day was filled, and I thought, how am I going to spend two to three hours out of my work week also doing a podcast now? And hey, God is the God of unlimited resources, and He somehow stretched my time. And anyways, when I was so anxious for months, I was like, Yeah, I want to do it, but I don't have time, I'm scared. When I sat down and I'm like, okay, I'm putting my time, my fear above other women getting messages that have saved my life. No, Alexis, we're not gonna do this. Then I sat down one day, I decided, all right, I'm making the podcast by the end of this week, and here we are, nine months later. God is so good. So, service crushes anxiety and depression. The more like Jesus we look, the less like the world we look. And Jesus, he tells us, I came not to serve or not to be served, but to serve. He says, I came to give my life as a ransom for many. This is in Matthew 20, verses 28. And so if Jesus tells us he came to be a servant, not to be served, not to serve himself, but to serve others, how about I start doing that? Jesus tells us to be humble. Jesus tells us not to gather stuff and possessions, not to be angry, not to be impatient. Okay, what if I started to do all these things that Jesus says? What if I look at his character and try to follow that character myself? He's kind, compassionate, he doesn't judge other people, he just welcomes people with open arms. The more you start to look like Jesus, the less like the world you will look. And guess who was probably the most joyful person that ever walked on this earth? Jesus. The more you look like him, the more joy you will have. The world tells you gather stuff, focus on validation, focus on image, focus on relationships, even. Yes, we should focus on relationships, but it's it's different than what the world teaches. When you can look at how you are following the world and say, I'm going to flip this around, you will also notice that you have less depression, you have less anxiety, you have less need to control, less need for validation because the fruits, I don't even want to say fruits, I want to say weeds of the world begin falling off you because you're not connected to the vine of the world anymore. And it's so funny how we find our life by losing it. Like when we look at everything in the world and we say, I'm not gonna follow this anymore. I'm not gonna follow the pressure to get drunk at parties, I'm not gonna follow the pressure to sleep with men and hook up with men before marriage, I'm not gonna follow that. When you, in parentheses, lose your, or in quotations, lose your life and become uncool to the world, that's actually when you find your life. And I love what Jesus says. It's in the verse, Luke 9, 23 through 25, I believe. He says, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way. You must take up your cross daily and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you even benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your soul? So, number one medicine to receive joy is service. Number two, this kind of has to do with the verse we just talked about about picking up your cross daily. Number two is suffering. And I know that this can sound scary. What do you mean I need to drink suffering as my medicine to have joy? I'm not talking about the type of suffering where you procrastinate and self-sabotage because you fear doing something. I'm talking about the type of suffering that is maybe a better word for it is endurance. If we take exercise, for example, when you exercise, you trigger natural chemicals in the brain to be released. So now when you exercise, you put yourself through 50 minutes of suffering, your brain is flooded with mood-boosting neurotransmitters such as endorphins, such as dopamine, serotonin. And it's so beautiful how this works. It's so beautiful that food, exercise, sunlight for vitamin D and mental health, all of these things that we get to do when we are healthy, all these things from the earth, they heal us. And when your body is healed, now you have a strong vessel for the Holy Spirit. That's one of the best, best ways that having the Holy Spirit live in you will impact you is you stop craving junk food. When you realize that your body is the temple for the Holy Spirit and that the healthier you are, the stronger vessel you are for Him, your body is not just for you anymore. And remember, in number one, we talked about at the center of everything that is that makes us feel heavy and low, it's a focus on ourself, like a 100% focus on ourself. That's also why the the talks on the internet about self-love and notice how I don't talk a lot about self-love, because self-love will only get you so far. Yes, it's important to love yourself, but only focusing on self-love kills relationships, kills compassion, and centers you. And when you are the center, things are gonna go very, very wrong because we are not meant to be the center. Imagine we did that inside of a marriage or a friendship. We are careful to not do that inside of relationships, but what about with God? What happens when we are the center, not God? And so when you realize God is the center, I'm just a vessel, I'm a temple for Him, you care for your body different. You sleep because you need energy to follow the purpose he's given you. You eat healthy foods because you need energy to feel good and to feel happy. You exercise because you need to take care of your mood. Yes, God will give us joy, and that is the spiritual medicine or formula, but also, like I was talking about with depression earlier, there are chemicals in our brain that we are responsible for deciding what gets to be flipped on and what gets to be flipped off. So you can wake up and say, I'm going to move my body because I want endorphins to be released. I want those feel-good chemicals to swim in my mind. It's kind of like faith versus works. Yes, we believe in God for the miracles, but also we must do the work. I'm reading the Old Testament right now in Joshua, and when the Israelites, when they are fighting for their promised land, God already promised them, I have all this promised land for you. But when God sent scouts into the promised land, into the area of Canaan earlier in Numbers, when the scouts go into the promised land to see what it looks like, to scout things out, the scouts come back and they tell the whole Israelites, there's hundreds of thousands of Israelites traveling through the wilderness at this point. They had previously escaped from Egypt as slaves. The scouts come back and they tell the Israelites, no, no, no, this land that God has promised us, we saw giants there. We saw, we saw our enemies there. The enemies are too strong for us. And Moses is leading them at this time, and Moses is going, Scouts, what are you doing? God told us that this land belongs to us. He told us that we will conquer it. Why are you now filling all of the Israelites with this fear and talking about the giants that are there? And so what happens? All the Israelites get scared, they believe these scouts, minus two, Caleb and one more scout was like, guys, God's got our back. But all the Israelites get scared and they lose their faith in God. And God goes, Okay, none of you guys get to see the promised land. They were so disobedient, they were so unfaithful to God so many times. God goes, You guys are going to wander around in the wilderness for 40 years. None of you living now over the age of 20 get to touch that promised land that I have for you. And so God stays true to his word. None of the Israelites go into that promised land. Fast forward 40 years later now. And so now Joshua is leading the Israelites into the promised land. And when they get to the promised land, what I was thinking is God's just going to give them the land. Like they get to go into the land, they get to build their homes, they get to build their gardens. No, no, no. They had to fight the people that were living there. The people that were living in the promised land, they were so full of sin. They were so unfaithful to God. They had lots of false gods, pagan practices. And I didn't realize that, yeah, the Israelites had the faith. They knew we trust God now. We were just out in the wilderness for 40 years, or our parents were, but we trust that that land is ours. They had to do the work and fight the battle. All the Israelite men had to form as troops and fight for their promised land. And why I brought that up, I know that's a whole other side story, is because something changed in my brain when I'm reading that to say there's a way that you fight different when you are faithful. You fight knowing the battle is already won, but you also fight knowing there's still work to do and I will still show up. And so the same goes with taking care of our body and our mind. Yes, God has given us the blueprint for how to live with joy, but we still must do the work. And part of this, number two, is through suffering or endurance, I should say. When I was in Paris, it was such a vibrant, alive city. I cannot wait to show you the vlog from that trip. Paris, it is a very, very busy city, and I had booked some things that I wanted to go and see. For example, one of them was the Palace of Versailles. I've always wanted to see it. The only problem is that it's a one-hour train ride away from where I was staying. And I have never been on the metro before. I don't know how to get the car, use it. I grew up in Las Vegas. We don't have metros like that there. And so when I get to Paris, this is about two weeks ago now, I was freaking out. Like, how am I going to get to the Palace of Versailles? I'm so scared. The metro scares me and confuses me. You pretty much, if you've never been on the metro, you go down into this tunnel and you get a ticket. The ticket is good for any direction, any train. You go through this gate area, and then you see four to six different hallways, all with different destinations. And it doesn't tell you, okay, you're staying in the west side right now. You need to get to Versailles. Here's how you do it. Nope. You have to figure out every step which train to switch, all of that. So, anyways, I'm not going to stress you out with that story. I had to figure out how to get through this challenge. I messed up so many times on the metro and I practiced before going to Versailles because I said I am not going to be late and miss my booking. And thank God I didn't. But there was a point where I had gotten on one of the metros and I start moving, and I thought, oh my gosh, I got on the wrong one. So I get off that metro, hop on the other one, going the other direction. Then I'm looking at my map and I'm like, oh no, the one that I was just on was the correct one. So I get off, get back, and then by that time I needed to buy more tickets, and I was just so stressed. But there was a high that came after because I thought I did that. I came to a city that I do not speak the language, I figured out how to ride the metro, I got to my destination, and I am so proud. I feel so happy. There's a high that comes when you face a challenge, when you do something that is so difficult. And when our life is this flat line, which we'll talk about this more in a second, the world we live in has made our lives like a flat line. But when we do this, we don't feel anything, and it's so scary. Why I think this has happened is because our life is too easy. Do you remember the movie WALL-E? If you haven't seen it, pretty much it's a movie about the future where the world is trashed, our um our economy, like our ecosystem, everything is just trashed, and there's a lot of robots that live on the earth. And humans are living in these electronics, uh not wheelchairs, but they kind of look like wheelchairs, and they don't have to lift a finger, they don't have to work, they don't have to think. All the humans do in the future is they sit in these electronic chairs, they're super, super overweight, they're ordering food from the tablets on the chairs, they're getting their massages, they're just watching TV like they're brain dead. They have zero challenge. And I remember seeing that movie as a kid, and I thought, oh, that'll never happen. Look at the world that we live in. People are running to Chat GPT. How do I, how do I cut an onion? How do I, and I'm so guilty of this too, with so many things, but we don't even struggle enough to go to a YouTube video that is two minutes long to watch how to cut an onion. We want right now, like two seconds. I can't do two minutes anymore. Our attention span gone. Not all of us, but a huge majority of the world. They're asleep. There's no struggle, there's the same routine every day, there's no deeper craving. And the thing is, when there's no struggle, there's also no desire to expand your consciousness. There's no desire to learn, there's no desire to get closer to God. Complete independence and isolation strips you of the greatest gift that you will ever experience, which is intimacy with Jesus. When we are so reliant on ourselves and we're so in this mode of removing all the struggle, well, now why would we need God? That's also why God puts us through suffering, I think, is to humble us and say, remember that you cannot do this on your own. There's so many times, I love that Bible verse because it's so humbling. It says, if you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. Almost every time where I get into the mindset of, okay, I'm good, like I am living very good, I haven't sinned, I'm doing great, and then something happens that I thought, all right, God, I need you. And so suffering is good, more endurance, I should say, than suffering, but suffering is good because it triggers contrast. When you are sitting and doing a plank for two minutes, now when you're standing and not doing a plank, you appreciate just standing. If you had never if you had never done the plank, you wouldn't feel that standing feels as good as it does. So suffering creates contrast, which increases gratitude for the good. When I fast and then I eat my breakfast the next day, I am so grateful for my breakfast, but only because I suffered the day before. And I love this about research, it shows that there's actually a perfect stress level. When we have too much stress, it's bad. And we and when we don't have enough stress, it's also bad. Because our perfect stress level, what it does is it signals our brain, we need to still be on alert. We're not in the mode of hibernating, but we're also not in the mode of survival. We just need to be on alert. That alertness feels good for our body. Because if we think from an evolutionary standpoint, when we used to be hunters and gatherers and live in tribes, our ears were open to sounds of tigers in the forest. We were our eyes were open to signs of storms coming in the sky, so our bodies. Would get into these states of alertness and stress to keep us alive. Fast forward all these years later, when we don't have any of these signals activated, when we're just laying on the couch every day, we're like, oh, life is good, there's no danger, there's no struggle. Deep down, our body is going, eventually, there's going to be a predator that comes, and we're just laying on the couch where all of our senses are doled, that's gonna be a problem. And that stresses our body out even more. And so there is a good, healthy level of stress. If you have no stress in your life, I would be a little bit careful. You need stress, you need challenge, you need suffering to feel alive. If you can't feel anything because you're numb, you're also not going to be able to feel joy. Something interesting too, a little side note is I love intermittent fasting. And something powerful about intermittent fasting is it keeps your body in this alert mode. Because your body is thinking, okay, we haven't had food in a while, so we need to stay on alert for food, that increases your energy so that your body can hunt for food. And so, with intermittent fasting, when you have this extra energy boost because you're hungry, your body has more energy, more stamina. My best creative work, I do it in the morning while I'm fasting because I know that's when I have the most energy. All right, so uh conclusion here is suffering is God's way of breaking our reliance on ourself. So we've got service, suffering, what is number three? We're keeping with the S theme here. Last but not least, and then I'll give you some bonus ones, is sacrifice. My definition of sacrifice is dying to the flesh. So, an example, waking up early when you would rather be sleeping in late. God has convicted me so many times that I need to wake up early. I don't know why, but I just know that the best version of me that is serving him the best wakes up early. Another example of sacrifice is, for example, this podcast. Doing this podcast when I could be sleeping or swimming. Yeah, maybe it hurts to sit down and be like, all right, I'm going to start writing my notes, I'm gonna film. That doesn't hurt as bad as it would to be sleeping in right now. And in my in my nightmares, I'm thinking about the podcast that I know I should be creating. In my nightmares, I'm thinking about how I'm choosing to honor myself over honor God. That hurts more. So, a sacrifice, it's a dying to your flesh, and it's simply just delaying gratification and pleasure. Like I said, the most joy that I've ever felt in my life was after that three-day fast. I thought I want to do this at that time. I was like, I want to do this every week. Uh, it was very challenging, but also it was so beautiful, and I will be doing another one, just not this week. Um, introverts. I'm gonna talk to you for a second because I'm also an introvert. Connecting with other human beings, and I know that the word that just flashed across your mind right now is sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice. It is still a bit difficult for me to choose talking and socializing with others more than time with myself or God because I massively recharge on alone time. When I was doing this solo trip, I was so convicted. There was a day where God told me, speak to strangers today. I was like, ah, but I'm vlogging. Nope. Speak to strangers. And so, anyways, that day I met, I was sitting across this woman and her mom. We were on a boat headed to another island, and I was sitting across from this girl, this gorgeous sweet girl, and we just I leaned over to her and I said, Where are you from? And we start talking the whole time, and she ended up telling me her life story, and I was kind of kind of coaching her a little bit. I try not to coach in public unless someone asks, but for what we were talking about, it was it was important. She was 20 years old, and so many things that she was going through I had also been through. And we're just talking about it, and then she introduces me to her mom, and we all start talking, and it was beautiful. It felt so healing, and I I just remember thinking there's so many times where I'm like, okay, how do I end the conversation now? But that was my flesh wanting to center myself and recharge with alone time. I committed, I'm going to keep talking with her. I had the rest of the night to myself, and it felt so rewarding afterwards. And the rest of that day, I met so many friends that day. And the crazy thing is, I wasn't even trying to, I just sat down, and sometimes strangers would just start talking to me. And then I thought, God, you're so good. Because something in me changed to be more open to inviting strangers in. And the conversations, like you'll see it in the vlog. It was so beautiful, and also it I went to bed thinking, I feel so happy right now. I just feel so connected, so alive. Every time I deeply connect with others, I feel so happy, even as an introvert. My extrovert girls, I know you feel extra happy. It is because we are meant to connect with human beings. That is why COVID destroyed us so much. That is why this remote working, technology-filled, scrolling over consumption generation, we are starving for connection. And it's also why when you spend time with really, really good friends or you go home for the holidays, you feel so happy. We are meant to connect with other human beings, but it is a sacrifice because sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes it's awkward, sometimes it's heavy. Sometimes you're with a friend and they're telling you something heavy that they're going through. And it is such a gift that they're opening up that way. Where I've said, you know what? Let me be there for my friend. Let me take the time for this FaceTime. Let me say no to work right now so that I can go and see this friend. I love that quote that says, Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. If you want good friends, you must sacrifice and be a good friend. The women who I consider my best friends, they have the most sacrificial hearts. The way that they show up for me is just like it makes me so emotional to think about. One example is one of my best, best friends from high school. There was a time where I was in a really scary situation with where I was living, and I called her and I said, I know this is random and I will explain later. I hadn't told my friends what was going on. But I said, I will explain later. I need to move out of this place. Can you come with me? Because I know I will not be hurt if you are there. But can you come with me and just be a buffer and be there for support? I need to move all my stuff out right now. She goes, Of course. Can you pick me up? I picked her up, we went, and I just remember that day I was crying to her, like, not even about the overwhelming situation, but I was just crying to her, like, you dropped what you were doing to come with me. That sacrifice meant so much to me. And immediately she moved up in my mind as this is one of my closest friends who I will always treasure. Sacrifice does that for people, it it bonds you to people. I get a lot of questions. Can I talk about friendships? We have a whole episode on friendships on this podcast. If you just type friendships, the fruitful feminine, it'll come up. And I also have some on YouTube. Friends are so important, so much so that Jesus tells us, not Jesus, well, yes, Jesus, but God tells us this in Proverbs. He says, sweet friendships refresh the soul and awaken our hearts with joy. I love that verse so much. The rest of it it says uh something like a good friend is like the anointing oil of, or a good friend yields the anointing oil of God's presence. A good friend literally carries the fragrance of God's presence. How beautiful is that! And so good, healthy, safe, sweet friendships, they refresh your soul, they give you that boost of energy, and they awaken your heart with joy. If you don't have good friends right now, that is okay because you will always have one friend, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit calls himself your friend, your advocate, your adversary, your defender, your protector. Also, you have me, you have the glow girls, and you have women or men who are waiting out there, waiting to meet you, so that you guys can deepen a friendship. There is so much sacrifice required in friendship, and so sacrifice, um, suffering, service. One more point here on I put this under my introverts note. So there's a story that I love, love, love, and it's in the book of Luke. And this story to me represents those sweet friendships. You're like my closest, closest friends are Christians who love Jesus and are filled with the Holy Spirit. We are the closest because the love that they have for me and the love that I have for them for their spirit, it's a different type of love. It's it's spiritual, it's so much deeper than just a regular friendship in the world. However, I do have friends who are also not believers or who are believers of other faiths. And so I think that that is important too. You can learn, you can talk with them, and you never know what seeds will be planted in them. And so, anyways, my friends who are Christian, when I think about how, like, how is this love different? I can't really describe it in words other than I feel loved by them the way that God loves me. It's a beautiful type of love. And so the story in Luke, it's where um Mary visits Elizabeth, and Elizabeth and Mary, they were cousins. Mary, the mother of Jesus. And Mary, right before visiting Elizabeth, she had had the encounter with the angel who tells her, Mary, I know that you're a virgin, but you're going to give birth. You're going to give birth, you're going to name him Jesus. And when Mary gets this news, I have a feeling that she was already pregnant at the time that she goes to visit Elizabeth, but the Bible doesn't confirm it. However, when Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, Elizabeth at this time was already pregnant with a baby who was John the Baptist. And so she is pregnant. And when Mary comes over to see her cousin Elizabeth, it says that the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaped with joy at the sound of Mary's voice. Oh, I just love that. I get chills hearing that. The spirit of John the Baptist, which was already filled with the Holy Spirit, recognized the spirit inside of Mary. And what I don't know, I can't wait to ask God this in heaven. I don't know if he leaped for joy with Mary or with Jesus inside of Mary. Because both of them had the Holy Spirit either way. What I'm bringing this up is to show that your spirit leaps with joy when you encounter the Holy Spirit in other people. That is why sometimes you meet people. I have met people and I look at their eyes and I ask them, Do you believe in Jesus? Because I can see it in them. Like there's something in my spirit that recognizes their spirit. And it's because you share the same spirit of the Holy Spirit. So we're kind of going off on a tangent here, but I just love that story. I think it's so, so, so beautiful. And one more note is that when John leaped with joy in Elizabeth's womb, it says Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. I love how the Holy Spirit moves. It's a transfer of that spirit. She couldn't feel the Holy Spirit until John in her belly leaped, and then she felt it. And I think that's what's so beautiful about spreading the love of Jesus, whether it's through service, whether it's through sacrifice for a friend, you transfer the Holy Spirit to other people. And they feel that love. And it doesn't make sense to them, but they know that it feels good. So service, suffering, sacrifice. This is the medicine to begin to feel joy. And a conclusion here before I give you some bonus ones is that remember how we talked about anxiety, self-service, too much pleasure also. These three will steal joy. So if you are feeling anxious, if you're feeling a lack of joy, look and see if there's any anxiety that you're swimming in. Watch that episode Spiritual Warfare that I talked about, how to win the battle for your soul. Look and see am I serving myself too much or am I engaging, indulging in pleasure too much? A great question would be to ask where can I give up pleasure for delayed joy this week? What's one area that I could give up pleasure, instant pleasure, so that I can feel that delayed gratification and joy later? Maybe if you're feeling anxiety, maybe it looks like answering and being obedient to what God has told you. Maybe it's to leave a relationship, to start that project, to there was a time for me where with Book Club for the Feminine Glow, there was a book that we were reading. That this book was not very, not very feminine glow branded. It had a lot of violence, it was really graphic, and I did not expect it for the book. I thought it was going to be very cute and light. I started reading it, and immediately the Holy Spirit was like, change the book. I was like, but the girls already bought the book. I already sent the email that this is what we're reading for the month. Change the book. And so I said, okay, but I had to sacrifice my pride to send a new email and say, ladies, we're changing the book. I had never changed the book before. I had never sent an email. I had never shortened the time that they had to read, but I was like, I want to honor and be obedient to the Holy Spirit more than I want to honor my pride or keeping things perfect. Because I know if we had all finished that book and then met, I would have felt heavy. And guess what? As soon as I sent the email instead of rechanging the book, the anxiety that I had went away. So when we ignore the Holy Spirit's promptings, that creates anxiety. Now, some bonus ones, some bonus, uh, we'll call these supplements for joy is gratitude. Of course, like we talked about, gratitude, just appreciating what you have around you. Service helps with gratitude the most. Number two is purpose, which we have an episode also called How to Find Your Purpose on here. When you are living in your purpose, naturally you will have joy because you're living in alignment with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit's going, she is giving us a path to work with, she's giving us this space to give her the ideas to do the project, and now you have more space to be filled with joy. Creating, also similar to purpose. When God says that he made us in his image, what he is also saying is the more you live like me, the happier and more joyful you will feel. And what is something that God does? He creates, he created the earth, he created the animals, he created humans, he created you. When you are creating, that is when you are living in alignment to your purpose, and it's when you're mirroring how God is. When we're not creating, we feel I okay, personally, when I'm not creating, I feel dull. That's why I also can't do a vacation that's like a month long because I miss creating. Sitting down today to do this, I'm like, oh my gosh, I forgot this feeling. It feels so good. So creating time with Jesus is so essential as well to feel joy. That's one thing that I did feel was off about my trip, is I wasn't usually I read the Bible for like 20 to 30 minutes every morning. On my trip, it was about 10 minutes that I was reading the Bible. Also, my prayers were shorter. There were so many things that I was doing on this trip where I prioritized it more than my time with God. And lesson learned, I need to prioritize God just as much as I do. I don't need to take a vacation from God. I felt something was missing. I felt that his presence was missing. And it changed how I felt so so much. I never realized how much happiness comes from studying his word and spending time with him. And another one, this is a bonus one, stuff. Oh my gosh, this is the thing that has broken off of me the most this last year and a half. So, ever since fasting and praying once a month for one day, every time I fast and pray, I have this habit where I want to go into my closet and clean stuff out. I hate being weighed down with stuff now. I don't like having so many clothes, I don't like having so many shoes, bags, things in my pantry. Like I feel stuff weighs me down so heavy. And when I'm journaling about this, I'm I put the connection together that the closer I've gotten to God, the less stuff I crave to have. Yes, there's some things that I love, like my blender, I love. My goua shot tool, I love. But I think we live in this world that's like get a vibration plate, get a dry brush, get a blender, get a juicer, get this, get that. And it like it's so much stuff. And when I was traveling, I noticed people in Europe they don't really have a lot of stuff, they don't have a lot of cars, they don't have a lot of clothes, they wear the same things and just recycle it, even with food, like they don't put a lot of seasonings in the food. Yet they're so happy there, they're not weighed down with stuff, and the less I need, the happier I am. When I travel, I usually don't take all my vitamins, I'm not drinking my teas every day, I'm not bringing my dry brush, things like that. And I'm so happy and free. I'm re-wearing the same clothes, and I just think there's something to this. Like material items do weigh us down. I'm not saying you can't have any materials and be a and you have to be a minimalist, but be careful not to fill yourself with stuff because that's feeding the flesh. And so, stuff, the more stuff you have, the less joy you have. So, this is the conclusion of this episode. I am so happy to be back with you. I'm so joyful to be back with you, actually. I love you each so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you for clicking play and just always leaving your kind comments and being so excited for these episodes. I love having you here. My girls who have been here since the beginning, extra shout out to you. It's been almost a year, which is insane. And I love each of you so much. I already miss you and can't wait to see you next week. I hope that this helps you. Please share this if you know anyone who is feeling a lack of joy. And I'll see you in the next episode. Bye, everybody.