Verified by 
Key points
- Joy aptitude can be enhanced through cognitive mindsets.
- An orientation toward gratitude can heighten one's capacity for joy.
- Replaying joyful experiences and encounters from the past can promote joy in the present.
Decisively, I shut my laptop. I had committed to a 30-minute walk during lunch. Seventeen unanswered messages in my inbox nag at me—yet gritting with commitment, I lace up my shoes.
Walking a couple of city blocks between therapy clients has always been a mentally relaxing and much-needed reset for my sedentary, counseling days. As I walk, my attention shifts from client concerns and tiring to-do lists to mindful practice, noticing the green and shadows on the tree leaves.
Breathing a little more fully, I pause to graze the texture of the crepe myrtle bark. Casting my gaze upward to soak in the sunlight streaming through the trees, I hear a familiar bird sound of “whoo who who-who” that I once thought belonged to owls but is actually the song of the mourning dove. I find myself feeling grateful for my ears that differentiate between all the traffic and street noise to attune to nature.
Walking on for a few minutes, my thoughts wander elsewhere as I round a corner. To my delight, 30 yards above me across a telephone wire sit four, tranquil mourning doves. My happenchance discovery brings an instant smile and warmth to my heart.
Joy may appear as an unexpected delight—and oh, how wonderful are those serendipitous encounters with it. But is there a way to increase our aptitude to experience joy? Psychological studies provide some insight.
In a multidisciplinary initiative by Yale University to define and understand the emotion of joy, Roberts (2013) described “joy, as a positive emotion (an affective concern-based construal),” meaning that joy is affectedly positively experienced in response to an individual’s perception and evaluation of the situation. Therefore, there are cognitive aspects that influence one’s readiness to experience joy.
Mindsets for Joy
One cognitive antecedent to delight is the surprise of a perceived good (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2010).
Do you have a picture in your mind of what is good? Specifically, what is the desired good for this particular day? What is the desired good for your relationship with your supervisor? What is the desired good for your physical health?
Desire congruency is a hoped-for outcome. Pay attention to the desire and work to modify those desires in such a way that you can have influence over them.
For example, if the desired good is to finish an assigned work project, frame the desire to be realistic and obtainable—what you can control. You may not be able to complete all the research required, but if you frame the desired good as focused concentration for a certain blocked period of time on the assigned project, then joy is likely to be more readily available.
The Gratitude-Joy Connection
Watkins, Emmons, Greaves, and Bell (2018) found that dispositional gratitude aligns closely with joy. Gratitude serves as a "virtuous upward spiral" as gratefulness is often the precondition for a joyful experience.
When the weather has the perfect autumn crispness, for example, a grateful cognitive appraisal can allow you to experience the balancing of warm and cool sensations at the moment. Attend to your mindset by focusing on unexpected and unowed experiences, training your brain to respond gratefully.
Joyful Imagination
Psychological studies have long found that imaginative experiences establish neural networks that prime the brain for anticipated activity even mirroring the actual experience. In the case of a performance, for instance, this can look like a mental rehearsal of Beethoven’s Bagatelle in A minor for the upcoming recital. In the case of increasing joy, this may look like imagining a pleasurable meal and conversation for the upcoming date night.
The imaginative component of a joyful experience can elicit a present positive emotional state and create readiness for similar joyful experiences. Essentially, the imagination is strengthening a neural pattern that can be more easily associated with joy when similar occasions arise—as they say, “neurons that fire together wire together.”
A simple practice for cultivating imagination-driven joy is to reflect on a joyful past encounter. Imagine the setting and the moment, see it again in your mind's eye, and attempt to replay the delight—even, if you're able, intensifying that feeling more than what was experienced at the time. This exercise can be combined with practicing a daily pause that can also contribute to self-knowledge and overall well-being. By rehearsing joyful experiences throughout our day, we create the neural framework for increasing more experience of joy in our day to day (Johnson, 2020).
Although directly pursuing joy is often unsuccessful, joy aptitude can be strengthened by attending to mindsets, orienting toward gratitude, and imagining joyful moments.
References
Emmons, R.A. and Mccullough, M.E. (2003), “Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life”, Journal of personality and social psychology, Vol. 84 No. 2, pp. 377-389.
Johnson, M. K. (2020). Joy: A review of the literature and suggestions for future directions. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(1), 5-24.
Miceli, M., & Castelfranchi, C. (2010). Hope: The power of wish and possibility. Theory & Psychology, 20(2), 251–276.
Roberts, R. (2013). Emotions in the moral life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
