Internal Joy and Peace

I think we can all conclude that we want to find joy. We are told that men are that they might find joy. Unfortunately, the world would tell us that it is something outside ourselves that brings joy. That joy can only be found in meeting someone's expectations or validation, and thus we can spend a lifetime with our measure of happiness and satisfaction in something that is important to others instead of our own internal feeling for joy that comes from what is uniquely right for us.

Think about it. Think about your school experience. When you wanted to know if you did a good job on something, were you waiting for someone's appraisal and approval?  When you wanted to know if something was worthy to pursue, did you seek for what other people approved of and valued? Was the only measure of your success in school your grades. Or were you ever given guidance and permission to tune into your own heart and really notice how much joy and interest you found in stretching, learning, and discovering and finding the internal reward in that kind of joy and allowing it to be your guide for success instead of someone's evaluation of you or what they think is important for you.

I believe that when we only seek for outside validation for success that we are thus prone to stress; and given a sort of acceptance that stress is our measure for success. we can then falsely believe we have arrived at fulfillment. The world will try to force us to comply to it's expectations with a sort of reward and punishment system that is always outside of ourselves and thus distracting us from really tuning into the feelings of our own heart and following that path of joy and peace.

We often have it backwards believing that getting good grades, money, and even just dutifully perform acts of righteousness will make us happy only to discover that it only makes us look good but not actually feel good. The truth is that it has actually been found that people that have joy in learning get better grades, and people that are happy first will actually make more money.   It is also only when we first feel love and the true joy in service that we can benefit from that performance.

So I am committed to tuning into feelings of  joy that also brings peace. I will notice when I feel that joy and peace and when I don't and make the adjustments necessary to find joy, knowing that finding true joy and peace means that I sometimes have to repent and stretch to become better. I won't confuse a temporary feeling of pleasure or just making something easy as joy because joy is a deeper feeling. I believe it is a feeling of peace and deep satisfaction knowing that we are feeling and doing is God's will for us. He is the only one that knows us perfectly, and I know that He must be my guide in seeking that which will fulfill my life purpose and bring me joy.