The Joy Diet

1. Cultivate Stillness to Connect with Your Deepest Self

The Joy Diet is simply what you can do to feel better, especially when you don’t know what to do to feel better.

Access inner stillness. The first step to a happier life is accessing a point of perfect stillness within, a self deeper than your senses or mind. This "nothing" is infinitely fertile and the source of your authentic identity, truth, and life instructions. It's the most productive activity you can undertake.

Vacate your busy life. To do nothing, you must "vacate" your habitual environment and distractions. Schedule at least fifteen minutes daily to be absolutely unavailable and inaccessible to others. This defends the time needed to listen to your small, still inner voice, which is easily drowned out by constant connection and external demands.

Quiet body and mind. Achieve stillness by relaxing your body (sitting quietly or repetitive motion) and vacating your mind. Watch your thoughts without judgment, like watching ticker tape, a parade, or a waterfall. This detachment reveals an underlying calm and teaches you that your thoughts are not your true self.

2. Embrace Radical Honesty, Especially About Painful Truths

The truth will set you free.

Denial causes suffering. We often hide from the truth, even from ourselves, because it feels safer than facing realities that threaten our status quo or image. This denial, while masquerading as ignorance, is actually a form of knowing what we don't want to know, leading to "dirty pain" from stories we tell ourselves, rather than "clean pain" from reality.

Truth dissolves denial. Acknowledging your feelings and the painful stories you tell yourself, even if they seem "bad" or embarrassing, begins to dissolve denial. Ask simple questions daily: What am I feeling? What hurts? What is the painful story I'm telling? Can I be sure it's true? Is it working? Can I think of a better story?

Compassion is key. Offer compassion to the parts of yourself that are in denial or feel "bad." These are often wounded, terrified aspects seeking safety. Acknowledging them with kindness, rather than judgment, creates a climate where you don't need destructive habits and can choose actions that bring the most love into the world.

3. Identify and Explore Your Heart's Desires as Your Destiny's Map

The knowledge of your destiny is available to you, well before it actually happens, as a message streaming continuously from your heart to your brain, written in the language of longing.

Desire is your guide. Your heart holds the code for your "right life" or destiny, communicated through the sensation of desire. Systematically eradicating awareness of your desires, often out of fear of disappointment or belief they are selfish, is the only thing more painful than failing to get what you want.

True desires are constructive. Destructive or "bad" desires are often substitutes for the constructive longings of the true self, distortions of healthy needs like love or healing. Acknowledging and exploring these volatile desires makes them manageable, preventing them from overwhelming your best intentions.

Follow the pebbles. Identify, articulate, and explore at least one thing you truly want each day, starting with stillness and honesty. Any little desire, no matter how trivial or strange, can be a "pebble" leading you toward your destiny. Explore the feeling of the desire until you find its true form, which tastes of love, not fear.

4. Unleash Your Creativity to Generate Ideas for Your Dreams

If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

Creation is realizing imagination. Creativity is the process of making real the events, objects, or relationships that exist in your imagination, specifically the satisfaction of your heart's desires. This requires stretching your mind and accepting responsibility for creating your life, even the imperfect parts.

Embrace discomfort and failure. Creation is hard work, not effortless genius. It involves leaning into discomfort ("going to your edge") and facing frequent failure. Successful creators fail more often; they just keep trying. The willingness to "do it badly" is crucial for overcoming the fear of not being good enough.

Generate ideas deliberately. Start with your desire as a "how" question and brainstorm at least five answers daily, no matter how silly or impossible. Use techniques to force innovation and move beyond your current worldview:

• Perseverate on enemies (they may embody traits you need)
• Unify false dichotomies ("both/and" thinking)
• Break unspoken rules of social systems
• Combine incongruous ideas
• Do one thing differently in your routine

5. Take Calculated Risks to Expand Your Comfort Zone and Pursue Desires

To find it you must follow your heart’s desires right through the inevitable terrors that arise to hold you back.

Fear narrows life. Living to avoid fear shapes your life narrowly, preventing you from experiencing rewards that only come by daring to try. Your comfort zone is often arbitrary; taking risks challenges fearful beliefs and breaks down constraints keeping you from your right life.

Assess good risks. A good risk is not defined by success, but by its connection to your heart's desires. Ask yourself: Is it necessary for my desire? Does it bring clarity despite apprehension? Does it feel like a clean dive, not polluted water? Which will I regret more: taking it and failing, or not taking it?

Take the smallest step. Break down scary actions into tiny, graduated risks to de-condition fear. Make backing out harder than going forward by committing pride, time, or money, especially publicly. Accept that you will be afraid, talk yourself through it, and learn to walk into the "monster's maw" of your fear.

6. Use Personalized Treats to Train Yourself Towards Joyful Habits

Anything that makes you feel like smiling.

Reinforce desired behaviors. Humans, like other animals, repeat behaviors that are positively reinforced. Treats provide immediate gratification needed to sustain motivation, especially after difficult tasks like taking risks. They train your "animal self" to associate challenging activities with pleasure.

Identify spontaneous smiles. A Joy Diet treat is anything that sparks a genuine, spontaneous inner smile, distinct from a calculated social grin. Observe what events, situations, people, or objects elicit this feeling. Compile a list of these "smile catalysts."

Indulge your animal self. Go through your five senses and list things that delight each one, from simple, free pleasures to rare ones. Weave these sensory delights into your daily life, especially during boring or frightening tasks. Practice "divine decadence" by occasionally doing something that contradicts your most salient virtues (e.g., being unproductive if you're hardworking) to balance excess.

7. See Your Life and Work as Games to Be Played Wholeheartedly

We never grow up.

Humans are neotenous. Unlike other primates, humans retain childlike qualities like inventiveness, curiosity, and problem-solving throughout life. This "neotony" is expressed through play, which is crucial for mastering challenges, forming alliances, adapting, and finding intrinsic satisfaction in work.

Identify your real career. Your "real career" is the course of action your true self would take to live to its potential, defined by how you want the world to be different because you lived and the experiences you need to feel a satisfying life. Reflecting on moments of severe crisis can reveal these core priorities.

Play the right games. Almost every human activity can be seen as a game with rules and goals. Mistaking these games for "Real Life" leads to stress and joylessness. See your profession and other pursuits as games that serve your real career. Ask if the game:

• Contributes to your real career
• Is fun (even if difficult)
• Matches your abilities
• Involves people you like

8. Prioritize Laughter, Especially When Facing Difficulty

Laughter is a kind of psychological Drano designed specifically for these situations.

Laughter is medicine and social glue. Scientific research shows laughter reduces stress hormones, increases virus-killer cells, and releases endorphins. It also binds people together and smooths interpersonal communication, making it easier to navigate relationships while pursuing your unique path.

Laugh when it's uncomfortable. The more stressful, dangerous, or baffling a situation, the more important it is to laugh. Humor often plays on anxiety, providing relief and helping us incorporate fear and grief. If you can't laugh, substitute yelling (for anger) or crying (for sorrow/fear) for at least ten minutes.

Increase your LPD. Aim for at least thirty laughs per day. Increase your "humor fitness" by:

• Assessing your preferred humor style (light, dark, etc.)
• Exposing yourself to comedy (books, TV, clubs, websites)
• Hanging out with "Frequent Laughers"
• Using mechanical stimulation (tapes of laughter)
• Learning to laugh for no reason (Ho-Ho-Ha-Ha-Ha method)
• Laughing at yourself, especially your shortcomings and problems, by exaggerating them comically.

9. Apply Joy Diet Skills to Build Deep, Authentic Connections

Without someone to connect with, we quite simply can’t go on.

Connection is vital. Psychological survival requires connection with others; isolation causes immense suffering. True connection is heart-to-heart, not just having relationships or being surrounded by people.

Fear drives disconnection. We often avoid genuine connection because it makes us vulnerable to rejection, obligation, or heartbreak. Instead, we try to control others or seek "risk-free" love through achievement or people-pleasing, which ultimately leads to loneliness.

Connect using Joy Diet skills. Apply the first five skills to interactions:

• Nothing: Reach your place of peace while with another person to see their true self and reduce the need to control.
• Truth: Tell yourself the truth about your feelings and the stories you tell about others. Question your assumptions and biases.
• Desire: Identify what you truly want in the relationship, and take responsibility for defining it.
• Risk: Dare to be open about your feelings and desires, even if it's terrifying. Taking the risk of openness, even if met with cruelty, leads to growth and deeper connection than staying silent.

10. Practice Feasting to Find the Sublime in the Ordinary

Feasting is designed to turn your attention to the sublime aspects of things that may, at first glance, seem quite ordinary.

Feasting is ritual and appreciation. Unlike a "treat" (a tangible reward for the animal self), a "feast" focuses on your human capacity for symbolic meaning and inspiration. It's not just about food, but about observing the rituals of festivity to make ordinary experiences sublime.

Elements of a feast. A Joy Diet feast involves three components:

• Celebration: Creating a context of ritual, whether cultural or invented, to set an activity apart and emphasize its beauty and pleasure.
• Nourishment: Paying attention to how the experience nourishes you on multiple levels – senses, mind, heart, spirit – beyond mere physical sustenance.
• Thanks: Expressing gratitude for the experience, acknowledging the abundance and gifts present in your life.

Turn attention to the sublime. Choose any activity – a meal, listening to music, observing nature, working on a project, interacting with someone – and consciously apply the elements of celebration, nourishment, and thanks. This practice transforms your perception, revealing the extraordinary within the usual and fostering a pervasive sense of abundance and joy.

Last updated: May 10, 2025