Workshops

I designed Cultivate Joy Within Workshops to inspire and empower people to live more joyful lives.

Joy is a state of being, a feeling of delight, the emotional component of happiness. We bubble up with joy. We smile. Our hearts open. We feel connected, engaged, at peace. We want everyone to feel this way. We are thrilled to be alive.

However, often we believe feeling joyful is dependent on expectations or desires being fulfilled, or until outside circumstances change. We will feel joy when…

We have more money, a better job, a romantic relationship, buy a house, a car, remodel the kitchen; or when people we love are feeling joyful, when winter is over and it’s spring again…

These things and many more outside circumstances all can bring feelings of happiness, of course. But the temporary happiness of achieving a goal is often followed by a desire for the next thing, which then places us back into worry and stress. We have the job, now we must have the car, or the house. It is as if we are on a treadmill watching a video screen that changes pictures, but we are still on the same treadmill, working, working, working, with occasional moments of joyful excitement or peace.

We may not be goal oriented, but believe it is selfish to be joyful because others are suffering – people we love, people more distant from us, animals, the planet – that we are wrong to cultivate inner joy and peace in the face of the suffering around us, when the truth is that our being worried and stressed serves no one. When we allow ourselves to feel joy in our everyday lives, we bring that joy to others and give them permission to enjoy their lives, too.

Deliberately creating more joy and meaning in life is an incredibly rewarding journey, and one that we usually are not programmed to take. Each step taken toward empowerment and meaning leads to a more joyful life, and each decision made and acted upon produces change. Once you are on this path you will never go back to where you began because you will not have merely altered external circumstances, you will have changed your fundamental approach to life.

I developed Cultivate Joy Within Workshops as a way for people to learn and develop skills to create more joy in life. Whatever our desires and outward circumstances, we can learn simple tools and develop the skills to use them that will allow us to feel more joy in our daily lives. By using the tools and practicing them, we can train ourselves to feel more joyful more often.

Designed to assist you in focusing on life as a journey to be experienced fully, creating the mind-set that being joyful can be independent of outside circumstances, the workshops provide you with tools to:

  • Reduce and/or remove internal and external blocks to a more joyous life
  • Create an individualized plan to maintain a more joyous life, encompassing the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of life.

Through short lectures, individualized and interactive exercises, and discussions, you will learn how to:

  • Practice presence
  • Practice self-acceptance
  • Discover internal blocks to creating a more joyful life
  • Let go of self-defeating beliefs and negative judgments
  • Create an environment for yourself that welcomes joyful expression

Workshops are limited to eight participants with two sessions of 2-1/2 hours each, usually a week apart so you have time to use the tools you have learned, discover what works for you, bring your experience back to the workshop, then fine tune your plan as you participate in further exercises and discussions.

UPCOMING Cultivate JOY Within Workshops

To see my upcoming Cultivate Joy Within Workshops, click here.

For Further information

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity, but in doing it. Greg Anderson