The Fools Pilgrimage – Joy

I was laughing whilst training with one of my PT clients the other day, we were reflecting on our primary schools assemblies – He is from Plymouth and I went to school in Bristol, yet we still had the same ‘style’ assembly that always finished with a hymn, and we both knew the hymn – “Give me Joy in my heart” and so belted out a few verses – and this was accompanied with raucous laughter and a great amount of joy.

There is no doubt that laughter is the best medicine – the greatest act is an act that brings the most joy, and with it the greatest feeling of love and freedom.

And activity, especially exercise combines freedom of movement with the joy and fun of being physical.

Life is a serious business and you only need to put the news on for the headlines to get caught in a spiral of doom and gloom in the book ‘Factfulness’ by Hans Rosling, we see that the world over time has got a safer and better place yet if you listen to the naysayers we seem to be two or three choices away from oblivion!

This kind of negative thinking is powerfully infectious and it doesn’t take long to tip the scales of perception towards a negative perspective of the world and of your life! 

What can be done to stop that – Laugh 🤭 laugh at the world, laugh at the situation but most importantly laugh at yourself, not to belittle the situation but, be little in the grand scheme of things and take the enormity out of it! Then the joy of life can be found.

I’ve always enjoyed teaching kids – my own children tell me this is because I’m like an 8 yr old and I’m ‘on the same level’ and they’re probably right! 

Hanging out with kids is fun, even now I still work teaching kids martial arts and over the holiday period I get the opportunity to work for some really great holiday clubs – their underpinning ethos is to make sure kids have fun!

When you make one child smile and they feel the joy – and that can be as infectious, not only in spreading the joy to others but in boosting our own feelings of happiness.

Young people live very much moment to moment they inherently know that – THIS TOO SHALL PASS and ride thru the challenges into new adventures and look at everything with wonder and excitement and find the joy in the simplest of things.

So when things are tough, laugh, remember all things pass and sing to yourself “give me joy in heart I pray”

Namaste 😊 Have a great day