Joie de vivre
Joie de vivre. If you don't know what this sentence means let me explain... The translation from French to English is"The love of life". The French created this very descriptive sentence in the late 1700s and it's been used a ton to describe how people feel and how they take on life and what their attitude to it is. I have always been told that I have joie de vivre. But today I thought about it for a bit and was thinking "what makes a person have joie de vivre? It's always come naturally I guess, I don't try to enjoy life it just happens.
I do some pretty fun things that make me happy and I do almost every day. But if you're not born with it how do you learn? You just have to change your attitude to the people you talk to on a regular basis. If you say "thank you" when they do something nice for you that they do every day that you expect them to do, say "thank you". If you say thank you to them for doing something that they could just drop and leave you to do it because you don't realize how much time their putting into it. So when you say "thank you" it makes them feel appreciated and that you know that they're doing something nice for you. Plus it makes them feel better, which can lead to them being happier, which leads to them being nicer to you, which means that you will be in a better mood and see that at least one person in the world likes to be with you and enjoys you just being you and appreciating them.
Another thing that spruces up your view of the world is how you look at things. If you're going to the store to buy your favorite chocolate that you've been craving all week and the grocery store is all out of it, you may have some pretty angry emotions. Sometimes it makes me feel that the world is trying make me mad. I know that may be an overly dramatic example but I bet you know 1 person in your life that is way over dramatic and they might feel that way about what you think is just a little tiny thing. If you are one of those over dramatic people (like myself, and are willing to admit it) that take situations where there is no chocolate, you may want to think of it this way... There was a single dad and his daughter had cancer, she only had about 2 months left to live and she was nice to everyone she met and was going to make the most of her last 2 months. A month pasted, her last month of life, it was her 13th birthday and all she wanted was a specific kind of chocolate bar. The dad rushed to the grocery store to get the chocolate bar for his daughter after work. He saw that there was one left, he grabbed it and wrapped it up for his daughters birthday. That evening he stopped by the hospital like he always does and hands his daughter a nicely wrapped small rectangle package with a blue ribbon on top (her favorite color) she opens it and is overjoyed and eats a little bit of chocolate and is so happy.
Then as they said she died a month later but she had a full life and she made the most of it. Can you be mad at that? You didn't get to have the exact chocolate bar that you wanted but someone else who wouldn't have chocolate again because she would not be alive anymore, got to enjoy it more than you ever thought that you could enjoy chocolate. If you think of it that way it will make you feel good and that someone enjoyed it so much more than you ever would. That is a way to totally turn something around, though it may not be the exact situation that I wrote about, you can do a spin on the situation that you're in. Now I do get sad quite a bit and don't look at the bright and positive side of life for everything, but I do try pretty hard to do so. When I don't talk to people I feel lonely and very isolated which is the number one way that I become sad. Try to surround yourself with people you love and people that love you.
So, how do you get Joie de vivre? You look at the positive side of things, be creative and have an imagination; so you can think of all the different possibilities of why you can/should be happy.
And so you can create different stories about why you never got that chocolate bar.
I do some pretty fun things that make me happy and I do almost every day. But if you're not born with it how do you learn? You just have to change your attitude to the people you talk to on a regular basis. If you say "thank you" when they do something nice for you that they do every day that you expect them to do, say "thank you". If you say thank you to them for doing something that they could just drop and leave you to do it because you don't realize how much time their putting into it. So when you say "thank you" it makes them feel appreciated and that you know that they're doing something nice for you. Plus it makes them feel better, which can lead to them being happier, which leads to them being nicer to you, which means that you will be in a better mood and see that at least one person in the world likes to be with you and enjoys you just being you and appreciating them.
Another thing that spruces up your view of the world is how you look at things. If you're going to the store to buy your favorite chocolate that you've been craving all week and the grocery store is all out of it, you may have some pretty angry emotions. Sometimes it makes me feel that the world is trying make me mad. I know that may be an overly dramatic example but I bet you know 1 person in your life that is way over dramatic and they might feel that way about what you think is just a little tiny thing. If you are one of those over dramatic people (like myself, and are willing to admit it) that take situations where there is no chocolate, you may want to think of it this way... There was a single dad and his daughter had cancer, she only had about 2 months left to live and she was nice to everyone she met and was going to make the most of her last 2 months. A month pasted, her last month of life, it was her 13th birthday and all she wanted was a specific kind of chocolate bar. The dad rushed to the grocery store to get the chocolate bar for his daughter after work. He saw that there was one left, he grabbed it and wrapped it up for his daughters birthday. That evening he stopped by the hospital like he always does and hands his daughter a nicely wrapped small rectangle package with a blue ribbon on top (her favorite color) she opens it and is overjoyed and eats a little bit of chocolate and is so happy.
Then as they said she died a month later but she had a full life and she made the most of it. Can you be mad at that? You didn't get to have the exact chocolate bar that you wanted but someone else who wouldn't have chocolate again because she would not be alive anymore, got to enjoy it more than you ever thought that you could enjoy chocolate. If you think of it that way it will make you feel good and that someone enjoyed it so much more than you ever would. That is a way to totally turn something around, though it may not be the exact situation that I wrote about, you can do a spin on the situation that you're in. Now I do get sad quite a bit and don't look at the bright and positive side of life for everything, but I do try pretty hard to do so. When I don't talk to people I feel lonely and very isolated which is the number one way that I become sad. Try to surround yourself with people you love and people that love you.
So, how do you get Joie de vivre? You look at the positive side of things, be creative and have an imagination; so you can think of all the different possibilities of why you can/should be happy.
And so you can create different stories about why you never got that chocolate bar.
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