Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast, Kelly here.

And today I want to talk about opting into joyful living.

We're starting this year out strong. And I told you that the theme really for this podcast for the year and for really life is how we can

access more joy. I really believe that when we need joy, we can access it anytime we want.

We can go to that ATM of joy, I call it, and withdraw as much as you need.

It is never-ending.

It is limitless the amount of joy you can have in your life.

And so by that point, so is joyful living.

Like the next step is living with joy, having it as a lifestyle.

Joy is a practice. Joy is an exercise. Joy is not something that just happens. Like you can

access it any time you want. Let me be clear. I firmly believe that. But it's not like you wake up

and you say the word joy and it appears, right? And there is a lot of science around the distinction

between joy and happiness, living a happy life versus a joyful life. Happy living or happiness

is probably the better way of saying that. Happiness is an external kind of event and

phenomenon. It is the emotion we get when something good happens. We run into an old friend we

haven't seen in forever. We get engaged or find a partner that we have this great relationship we never thought

was possible. We buy our first home or whatever that is. We have these moments. We get the

promotion we wanted or our business hits a certain milestone. Happiness just happens. We get a like

when y'all rate the podcast podcast and I see a five star,

I get happy. It's a moment dependent on an event. An event happens. You become happy. And we

certainly want happy moments in our life. We are trying to cultivate that. I don't want to live a life where I don't have

happiness coming to me and I don't have happy moments and happy events. But joy is an experience

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