Four Tips to Help Your Clients Create Joy and Happiness in Their Lives

The key to create joy in our lives is to not wait to experience it, but instead to proactively seek more joy in our lives. Your clients may believe that experiencing joy is totally out of their control. But just as they can make the choice to spend less, save more, eliminate debt and take control over their financial lives, they can also choose to create joy and happiness in their lives.

If you surveyed your clients on whether or not experiencing joy was high on their list of wants, odds are that the majority would say that it was close to if not on the top of that list. What you need to explain to them is that they don’t need to be reactive and wait for joy, instead, they can create joy and happiness. Just as important, you must offer them some practical ways to do just that.

4 Practical Ways to Create Joy in Our Lives

1.  Your clients can use their daily mindfulness practice to picture themselves in situations with people they really like, or engaged in an activities that gives them pleasure. Actively experiencing joy in their imagination will predispose them to create more real-life joy in daily experiences.
2. Grow it with Gratitude – Remind your clients to find things in their lives to be grateful for and to spend time each day enjoying those things and giving thanks for them. Creating feelings of gratitude, will have a joy-inducing response on their minds and bodies.
3. Break the Busy Habit – Finding time to create joy cannot happen if your clients can’t overcome the obstacle of being too busy. While it is understandable that – with work and family – being busy is a way of life, there must also be a time in each day where we take a break to restore balance in our lives. And even if your clients are running ragged each day, remind them that they can always find a few seconds to close their eyes, let the body relax, take a breath, and come back to themselves.
4. Renew the Belief System – Many of our clients come to us with a feeling of desperation and hopelessness as it pertains to their financial health. We must help them understand that no matter how hopeless they feel, there is always hope. They are not victims, but instead they are powerful creators of their own reality. Just as they can take control of their money, they can also take control of their happiness. Instilling the belief that they can create joy goes a long way to helping them experience joy on a daily basis.

Additional Ways to Access Joy Each and Every Day

To create joy and experience happiness each and every day, your clients don’t have to make major life changes all at once. They can, in fact, make a list of the simple things in life that bring them joy. For example, their list of activities that create joy may include: reading a good book, playing with their children, walking the dog, preparing their favorite healthy meal, etc. To help them get started with their list that helps them access joy and happy daily moments, share this article which offers 40 ways to find joy in your everyday life.

Written By Reeta Wolfsohn, CMSW

Four Tips to Help Your Clients Create Joy and Happiness in Their Lives was originally published @ Center for Financial Social Work and has been syndicated with permission.

Photo by Dancing Tuna