We have had it all wrong. It’s not that spreading joy is a thing you have to go out
and do. It’s that when you fill yourself up with joy and KEEP it, it spreads.
“Spread joy!” implies a task. It reads like a subtle command to people-pleasers
to get back to work. But, if you turn it around and say, “Joy spreads.” Well, then
you can rest. Joy spreads. You can relax. It doesn’t need you to do anything at
all.
You can keep your joy.
It’s a gift to you, from you, and for you.

  Growing up I was rewarded for being sweet and for making people feel happy. I learned that people-pleasing meant I was valued. I am a highly intuitive people pleaser.

I internalized that being sweet, nice and sharing my happiness is what I should always do. It is my gift to the world.
I also grew up in the South, where southern kindness is as sweet as the tea we serve. So every step of the way, I was rewarded for being as sweet as my little heart could muster. I offered (and still offer) heaps and heaps of sweetness onto everybody.

Now, I know what you’re saying. Being kind, spreading joy and being gentle and polite is GOOD…right?
Absolutely it is.

But I, or maybe “we” if your neck is sore from nodding along profusely, overcompensated.

We overcompensated. We tipped the scales too far towards being sweet and kind and sugary and soothing and spreading our joy and happiness all over everything. I mean, it feels so good. It lifts me up when my happiness has a
purpose. And it lifts up everyone around me, too.

I lift as much and as often as I can. And it keeps going. In my family and in the south in general we collectively keep lifting.
When one person’s arms get tired, there’s always another southerner around who will notice and take over lifting while we sit out a minute. The collective southern woman is like Sisyphus, punished by Zeus to keep rolling the boulder up the hill for eternity.

Stop spreading joy in an effort to lift. Stop lifting.

The encounter of this realization, dream after dream, eventually proved my worth to me. I learned how to marvel at myself. I learned to enjoy the pursuit of my own experiences for no reason beyond my interest in it; and because my lion couldn’t be shared, I learned how NOT to spread joy. I learned how to keep it.

Yes, I have a brand built around this work. So it seems like I am spreading it. But the truth is, I am 100% sure of my own joy and so it spreads. I don’t need to do anything with it, and so sharing with you costs me none of my
own joy and happiness. I am not inflating it so you can have some. I’m just being joyful so you can see it.

If all my business, followers, subscribers, clients and programs went away tomorrow; my joy, happiness and gifts would remain unchanged. I know on the deepest level and without a shadow of a doubt that I do not owe
my joy to anyone. I belong to me. I pursue me relentlessly and it doesn’t make me selfish. I don’t owe myself to anyone and I am free to fill up with as much joy as my little heart can muster. I’m a highly intuitive joy seeker. And I can’t give that away. I can only treat it with reverence so that it radiates outward from my loving of it.