03: How Do You Find Your Joy Again?

What do you do when the joy that once fueled your life suddenly disappears?

In this episode of The Joyful Rebellion, we explore what happens when you keep showing up, performing, and doing all the right things, but the aliveness underneath it all is gone. If you’ve ever felt disconnected from the energy that once made your work meaningful, this conversation will feel deeply familiar. Through the story of Olympic champion Alysa Liu stepping away from skating after losing her joy and later returning stronger than ever, you’ll discover why joy cannot be forced back through effort or discipline.

You’ll also be guided through a simple practice to help you reconnect with the parts of yourself you may have been rejecting. Because joy doesn’t return through pressure or perfection. It returns when you allow yourself to be whole.=

Chapters 

00:00 – What happens when joy disappears

01:30 – The story of Olympic champion Alysa Liu

03:00 – When performance continues but aliveness fades

05:00 – Losing joy while helping others find theirs

07:30 – The breaking point and questioning everything

08:45 – A spontaneous trip to Barbados

10:15 – Slowing down and reconnecting with the present moment

12:00 – Joy returning through simple experiences

14:45 – Being loved even in your mess

16:45 – Why feeling loved matters more than being loved

18:30 – The science of safety and belonging

20:45 – A practice for welcoming rejected parts of yourself

24:30 – Creating the conditions for joy to return

26:15 – The breadcrumbs of joy

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You’re not here to survive your life. You’re here to experience it.

This is your invitation.
This is your reclamation.
This is The Joyful Rebellion.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

What do you do when you lose your joy? Not just having a bad day. I mean, joy, the thing that used to come naturally, the thing that made you in your work meaningful, it's just gone. And you still perform and you still show up, but you've lost that aliveness underneath it all. I'm Monica Pandele, and this is the Joyful Rebellion. Last year I lost my connection to my joy completely. And the worst part, I am a transformational coach. I help people activate their aliveness. That's literally my work. But I couldn't access my own joy for months. And it turns out I'm not alone. A 16-year-old from Oakland, Olympic figure skater, she had to figure out the same thing. Alyssa Liu became the youngest US figure skating champion at 13. By sixteen, she's made history multiple times. She then retired because she lost her joy. For two years, she became a normal teenager. Driver's license, video games, dyed hair, hiking mountains. Discovering who she was outside of performance. This year she came back and won Olympic gold. And not because she got better at skating, because she got her joy back. The commentators kept talking about her infectious joy. If you watch the Olympics, you know what I'm relaying here. And that's what won her the gold. Today I want to tell you both of our stories. Maybe because you've lost your joy too. Or maybe because you're terrified of losing it, or maybe you've forgotten what it even feels like. Either way, let's figure it out together. Welcome back to Joyful Rebellion, a space where we reclaim joy as our power, presence as our practice, and play as our way. I'm your host, Monica Pandele, and this is the place where we explore what it means to be fully alive, to live and lead the life you love, desire, and deserve. This is episode three, and I'm delighted you are here with me to unpack some ways to reconnect with joy. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome! If you're returning, great to have you back. I hope you'll be inspired by what you'll hear. I'm recording this episode from the very place where Elisa, the girl I mentioned earlier, won her gold a few weeks ago. I'm here skiing surrounded by the wonderland of the Dolomites, feeling immense joy. And as I'm recording, I'm looking at the mountains, at the Sassolungo, one of the most beautiful ranges here in the Dolomites, and I cannot wait to get back up there as soon as I finish sharing this story with you. But last year I didn't feel like this all the time. Last August, I ran a program called The Aliveness Activation with a small group of phenomenal women, ranging from their 30s to their 70s. And it was incredible. The transformations we each experienced together felt so high, so deep, so life-altering. This is what I'm meant to be doing. This is my work. And fast forward a few months later, I could not feel like whole, like but part of me was missing. Like I didn't have enough oxygen. I couldn't feel energy flowing through me anymore. There was a heaviness that I couldn't pinpoint. And it kept deepening. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. I blamed it on perimenopause. And believe me, that hit like a high speed train. But underneath that, I was feeling something else, like a fraud. Here I was inviting people to be joyful rebels, helping them activate their aliveness, and I couldn't generate it myself. I couldn't access my own joy. And that's when things got visceral. I was battling with myself. And if you know me, I am someone who's authentic in all the ways. So when the battle got intense, Monica got intense. People who usually experience me as measured, as conscious, able to navigate emotions with ease, I wasn't that person anymore. I was unleashed, primal. Something deep in my body was taking over. Remember those saboteurs from last episode? The bodyguard was running at full volume. Tried to protect me by numbing me out, but this time I couldn't numb. I was too visceral for that. And I was noticing in my inner circle the people that I know they love me, they were having a hard time with me showing up like this. Some judge me, some ask me to shift into something else. And I thought, if I can't even access my transformation work when I need it most, what's the point? All these years of learning, of growing, of coaching, and it's not there when I actually need it, I was questioning everything. My work, my capacity, my worth. And in this state, a dear friend of mine, Natalie, called. She said, I am having a hard time. Do you mind coming to Barbados? To be honest, I didn't even really know where Barbados was in the Caribbean region. Twelve hours later, I was on a plane. And you know what I think happened to Alyssa Liu? By the way, she lives in Oakland, same city I've called home for about 10 years now. We've probably passed each other's on the street. Maybe we carried this struggle together. At 13, she became the youngest US champion ever. At 14, I think she was able to perform a quadruple and a triple axle in the same program. By sixteen, she was an Olympic medalist. But somewhere in all those facts and records, she stopped being a person. She became this elite figure skater. And when Joy died, so did the skating. Because what I'm seeing is in my work and in the conversations I'm having day to day, you cannot create from emptiness. I mean, you can still perform from depletion, we are all experts at it, but it's not sustainable. And you lose that something essential, that inner motivation, that determination that comes from deep inside, that ability to be present to the wonder and beauty that you're actually doing. I'm sure Lisa could still do those jumps, but she lost the joy of flying. I could still coach people, I was still leading, performing powerful transformational leadership gatherings, but I lost the aliveness I was trying to help them with find. So Alisa, she stepped away for two years. I got on a plane to Barbados. In that week I spent in Barbados, I did something I haven't done in months. I slowed down like a slow motion camera, increasing the number of frames per second I was present to. I was taking the reality in in a deeper way. One morning, I walked down the beach to this famous grilled cutfish shack, caboose. And at 11 a.m. Yes, 11 a.m. I found myself ordering a Bajan rum punch. Bajan means authentic from Barbados. You know the rhyme? One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak. Lime juice, sugar syrup, rum, a dash of bitters and holy water. And I remember thinking, what kind of responsible leadership coach drinks rum punch at eleven AM in the morning? And then I thought, who cares, Monica? And I sat there tasting it, really tasting it. The lime, the sweetness, the warmth of the rum, the chilling ice cubes. Just letting myself have this simple pleasure while having my toes wiggling in the sand, without making it mean something about my worthiness or my discipline or my identity as someone who has it all together. It was the rainy season in Barbados, which sounds terrible, right? But it turned out to be perfect because it would bucket down rain for hours every day. Torrential. And the ocean was so warm, this torquoise blew warmth. So my friend and I, we would just stay in water for hours in torrential rain. Salt water holding us from below, fresh water flushing and washing us over from above. Both of us just floating, talking about life, about struggles, about miracles, long, beautiful conversations. And I remember feeling like we were being washed clean. The salt water pulling out what needed to go, and the rain water basically washing it away. And the sand was so fine, I mean so fine, it got everywhere. And after playing in the waves, I would spend the next hour on an archaeological mission just to get clean. Discovering that sand could get into openings of my body that I didn't know could hold sand. And I got sunburned, like properly sunburned. Looking in the mirror, my skin was so red I thought, well, there's the proof I'm alive. This body's here, I'm feeling things. Thank God for aloe vera. And slowly through the rum punch and the rain and the salt water, the beauty of the nature around me, the sunburn, I started noticing something. I was smiling. Not because I figured it all out or because I've achieved some breakthrough. I was just smiling at the flowers, at the sun on my legs when it finally came out, at the little fish in the water, at my friend's infectious laugh, at being witnessed by my friend in the evening with waves in the background, sometimes crying, talking about life, about becoming, about choices. And I noticed something else. When my friend looked at me, sunburned, covered in sand, slightly tipsy at noon, she wasn't asking me to be different. She wasn't uncomfortable with my mess. She was just there. And that's what I've been hungry for, to be loved even in my outrage. Because when I was hard to witness, I questioned that. And what I realized in that warm turquoise water in the rain, my friend was loving me exactly as I was. And I was fighting it. Because I mean, how could I receive her love when I was rejecting the same parts of myself she was accepting? I couldn't. Not until I was willing to love those parts too. I needed to love myself. All of myself. Not the impressive parts, not the composed parts, all of me. I needed to accept all parts, the outrage, the depletion, the confusion, the parts that don't have the answer. Because self-love isn't about fixing yourself, it's about accepting what's already here. When we reject ourselves or parts of ourselves, we can't be whole. And when we are not whole, we can't be present. And when we are not present, we can't feel the alieness flowing through us. And like a synchronicity, I came across this research a week ago, and it turns out that Sonia Liubor Mirsky, a distinguished professor of psychology at University of California, who's researched happiness for decades, had the question, what really is the secret to happiness? She said it comes down to one thing: feeling loved. Not being loved, but feeling loved. And when I reflected back, I had this revelation. In that reign, I couldn't receive love until I was willing to love all of me, including the unacceptable parts, the outrageous parts. And without even realizing it, I was shifting my body chemistry. Months of cortisol and adrenaline stress were flooding my system. But there, in Barbados, through rest, through salt rain, through punches of rum and laughter and being loved, I was creating oxytocin. The bonding hormone that says you're safe, you're belonging here. You can come online now. So I came back from Barbados with something shifted. Do you know what Elisa did during their two years away from skating? She became a normal teenager. She got her driver's license, she enrolled in UCLA, she traveled to Everest, she dyed her hair, got a piercing, took up skiing. And I used to think, oh, that's nice. She took time off for rest. But sitting in that warm Barbadian water with the rain pouring down, I realized that wasn't time off, that was the work. She wasn't avoiding skating, she was discovering who she was outside of skating. Because she couldn't love as Alisa Liu, the elite figure skater. She had to know she was loved as just Alisa, the person. The whole person. The one who probably plays games badly, who gets a driver's license late, who dyes her hair weird colors, and hikes mountains just because they're there. And that's what I was doing too, without realizing it. Drinking rum at 11 a.m., getting sunburned, playing in waves like a crazy girl, just being Monica. Not the transformation coach, not the person who always had her shit together. Just me. Learning to love that person, all of that person. So I came back from Barbados, and what was different was the result of a precious gift I took from that experience. Something I want to try with you right now. If you're a returning listener, you know by now that in this space we practice together. In Barbados, the thing that shifted everything was realizing I couldn't receive love until I was willing to love all of me, including the parts I found unacceptable. And I've been practicing something since then. Something simple. And I invite you to do it with me right now. Put your hand on your heart. Actually do it. I'm doing it too. Now think of one part of yourself you've been rejecting. Maybe it showed up recently. Maybe it's been there for years. Maybe it's Anger. Maybe it's sadness. Maybe it it's the part that comes to rest when you think you should be productive. Maybe it's the part that feels selfish or weak or too much. For me it was my outrage. That visceral primal part that showed up when I couldn't access my joy. When others would say you're too dramatic. That part was hard for others to witness. That part I kept thinking this is unacceptable. I should be more composed. I should have access to my tools. So right now with my hand on my heart I'm going to say something to that part. I see you, outrage. You are allowed to be here. Now you to whatever part you thought of say it with me out loud if you can silently if you need to I see you and fill in the blacks. You are allowed to be here. That's the practice. Not fixing it, not making it better, not making it go away. Just I see you. You are allowed to be here. Because I couldn't find my way back to joy until I could love the parts of myself I've been fighting, the depleted parts, the outrageous parts, the parts that didn't have it all figured out. And wholeness, being able to hold it all, that's what created the conditions for joy to return. And if you do this practice and don't feel anything shift right away, that's okay too. This isn't magic. It's just one tool. Some days it works, some days you're just not there. Be patient with yourself. Over the next few days, notice when that part that you rejected shows up again. Because I presume it will. That's how I started creating the conditions for joy to return, not by forcing it, by making space for all of myself. And when I came back from Barbados and started practicing this, accepting those rejected parts, something unexpectedly happened. I started noticing things I'd been overlooking my whole life. Small things, ordinary things, things I dismissed as not impressive enough to count as joy. But those small things, they were breadcrumbs, leading me back to myself, back to aliveness. Next episode, I'm going to tell you exactly what those breadcrumbs were. And why they weren't just nice moments. They were actually re-establishing something much deeper, reconnecting me to a current of energy that flows through everything. Because this is what I'm reminded with all of this. Joy isn't something you achieve after you have fixed everything. Joy is what gives you the capacity to show up for all, and to show up at all. Joy is a prerequisite, not an outcome. And if you want to go deeper with this work, with me into understanding how this energy actually works, how to reconnect with your aliveness, how to access the inner knowing, even in chaos. I'm hosting a free life training in about a couple of weeks in April. It's called Become Fully Alive. We'll explore energy literacy, life worse and aliveness, and how to access your genius and feel connected to something bigger than yourself. This is what I wish I've known when I was in that darkness before Barbados, before I understood any of this. But that's the gift of the work. So here I am sharing it. If this resonates, join the priority list at monicapandale.com. You'll be informed first when doors open. And if you're listening to this and April has already passed, check the same link. There's likely a waiting list for other life experiencing I'm crafting. Subscribe to this podcast wherever you've been listening so you don't miss the next episode about breadcrumbs of joy. Until then, be gentle with yourself. Practice that self-acceptance. Notice when you're rejecting parts of yourself. Because joy doesn't come from perfection, it comes from wholeness. I'm Monica Pandele, and this is the Joyful Rebellion. See you next time.