S2.E27: Big Joy vs. Small Joy
Did you know, Big Joy and Small Joy are the same thing? We can be just as content baking brownies and enjoying a glass of red wine as we are sitting on a beach in Mexico. In this week's episode, Kayla talks about intentionally implementing small joy moments into our day-today routines, to live a more fulfilling life.
I am just the girl next door who believes that the purpose of life is to enjoy, create, and have fun. I believe that as humans, we can have anything we want and things are always working out for us. Experience has taught me that the path to getting everything you want begins with ease. If you believe in miracles and happily ever after, or even if you just want to, then this is the podcast for you.
Hi there. I'm your host, Kayla Rain, and welcome back to Attract It with Ease. In this week's episode, I wanna talk about the difference between big joy and little joy because it's easy to think you have a fulfilling life when you have all of those big, joyful moments. You know, the weddings, the anniversaries, the honeymoons, the trips out of the country, vacations, time spent with family, those are our big joy moments things will remember for the rest of our lives.
But today I wanna talk about little joy and how we can use little joy to actually have a fulfilling life. But before I get into all of that, I'd like to share my gratitude this week. I have so much to be grateful for, and the first thing on my list this week is random, unexpected text messages. You know the ones when you hear from someone you haven't talked to in a while and they let you know that they're thinking about you or they send you a meme or a photo or just something that tells you that you were on their mind.
I love that. I received a text from one of my sisters this week, and it was some photos of some crystal statues, crystals with bronze statues attached to them. I've never seen anything like it, and I don't know that she had either, but she saw them and it made her think of me, because of course, I'm obsessed with crystals. And it was just so fun to get a random text message out of the blue, both because it was somebody that I care about, but also just to know that somebody's thinking about you.
I love the way that that makes me feel, and I love that people go out of their way to let you know they're thinking about you. I love when that happens. That's something I'm grateful for this week. Second thing I'm grateful for this week is the fact that I'm actually starting to learn to have a green thumb. I've talked about plants a lot recently on the podcast because I went from really not being able to keep any plants alive to suddenly having a home full of various plants, and it's only been maybe four months, but my plants are thriving and I'm loving what I'm learning about how to care for plants.
And I love that I finally feel like I'm surrounded by these living things that I'm caring for. I don't know, maybe it's the motherly nurturing part of my personality, but I just am obsessed with my plants. I feel like they're my little children, and I am so grateful that I haven't killed them, and I'm starting to be able to actually say that I have a bit of a grain thumb. The third thing that I'm grateful for this week is just little reminders.
Reminders that I am not my body. And believe it or not, I sit here and I talk to you every week and I preach to you about how to live a more fulfilling life, how to make better choices, how to use the law of attraction to your benefit. But even though I talk about it on the podcast every weekend, even though I believe what I say to my core, I too struggle. And I too sometimes forget that this life is pretend. It's all made up.
And this week I had a reminder that I am not my body. And of course, that's something that I know. I know that I control the body that I'm in. I basically have this body on alone while I am in this human existence. And yet it's so easy to lose sight of those thoughts and just define yourself off of how you look. And I'm at an age where my body's going through a lot of changes and so much of that I cannot control.
And it's easy to feel bad or to have negative thoughts or get caught up in how the body changes as you age and mature. And this week I had a great reminder that I am not my body. And I appreciate that, even though that's something I know, that when I lose sight of the truth of what this life is really about and what's really important, the universe consistently sends me little tips and reminders that help keep my thoughts on track, help me stay positive and help me remember that I am not my body.
So that's it for my gratitude this week. Let's talk about joy again. I wanna talk about the difference between big joy and small joy. Now, big joy is the big, big moments, the memorable things that when you're on your death bed, you're just going to say, those are my favorite moments. Those are the best times I had in my life. And those are things like the day you get married, the day you have a child, the day you graduate, the day you get promoted at work. Those are your big joy moments.
And so many times we think that in order for our life to be fulfilling, we have to have a life full of these big joy moments. And the truth is, it's really next impossible to have big joy moments every day, let alone big joy moments every month or every year. And so the question then becomes, how do you have a fulfilling life? How do you find happiness in the day-to-day? And the answer is in the small joy.
And here's what I mean by that. I can tell you that there are certain things that I can do or experiences that I can experience that are on a very small level compared to say a honeymoon getaway, yet bring me the same amount of joy in tiny bite sized doses. And I wanna talk about that today. I wanna talk about some of the things that bring me small joy, that the feelings and emotions when I'm going through it, or I'm experiencing it or I'm doing it, are on the same level of joy as those big, crazy exciting moments that we plan or experience maybe a handful or a dozen times throughout our life.
Some of my small joy moments are baking. I absolutely love to bake, and sometimes I'm terrible at it. And what I mean is I'll try a new recipe and I completely ruin it. I remember when I was 19, I made my first loaf of banana bread and I was so excited. And when it came out of the oven and finally cooled, and I was ready to slice into it and try it for the very first time, I took the bread outta the bread pan and it basically like a cement block fell on the counter with a big thud that tells you right then and there.
I did not do a very good job with my banana bread because it was a brick, essentially. It was a brick. And I was so sad and I was so disappointed. But I just have a love for baking. And I will say probably 75% of the time, my baking does turn out and I make wonderful things, and I love to bake. I love to make candy. And those are things that I learned from growing up with my mother. She was a stay-at-home mom, and she baked every week and she made candy, and she taught each of us kids, or at least each of the girls in the family.
And so it's something that reminds me of my mother, but it also is something that just brings me joy. I love to bake. Baking is something that is a small joy for me, but it makes me feel so good. Sometimes I just stop and I think about how much I enjoyed baking with my mother and how much joy it brings me when I'm able to bake and when I can have others enjoy the food that I've made. The next thing that I have on my list of small joy is lunch in my car.
Now, this sounds silly, and I honestly do not do it every day, but I regularly bring my lunch to work. It saves me a lot of money, it saves me a lot of time. It helps me make better eating decisions. But I'll bring things to eat, to work, and I just get in the habit of eating in my office. So when I take a lunch, I usually sit at my desk in my office. And of course, because I do that, I'm constantly interrupted. People know that I'm there. If they need something, they come find me. And I often end up kind of working through my lunch, number one, because my computer's in front of me.
So I have a tendency to wanna check my emails. But number two, because my staff comes in and asks me questions and gets me involved in things instead, sometimes I make the decision to go eat lunch in my car and not everything that I bring to work is maybe appropriate to eat in the car. So you know, there's things that maybe are messy if you don't have a table or a counter or a desk or something to set your food on. But I found that the days that I actually take the time to eat lunch in my car, I have so much more joy, so much more relaxation, so much more time to myself by getting out of the office and sitting in the sunshine, sitting in the peace and quiet.
I can listen to a podcast, I can listen to music. And quite frankly, usually I don't listen to anything. It's just me alone with my thoughts, alone, with myself, alone with my food, alone in my car. And it's funny how that brings me joy. I read a meme the other day about how women, especially mothers know the joy of just coming home and sitting in your car for a few minutes before you come inside. And I think any mother listening right now that has little kids can relate to that because sometimes you just need a few moments to yourself, but there's joy in that.
There's joy in just sometimes just taking a few seconds, taking a few minutes just to just have some time to yourself. And that's how I feel when I choose to eat lunch in my car. I should do it on a more regular basis. But when I do do it every single time, I think to myself, wow, that was a much more enjoyable lunch experience than when I choose to sit in the office. The next thing on my list of small joy is actually soaking in a hot bath versus taking a shower.
Now, I don't take baths very often. I love to take them, but I don't even take one once a month. But I will say when I take the time to put some bath salts or some bubbles into a bath, draw a long bath. I love having candles. I love just soaking in a hot tub. And like I said, I don't do it that often, but when I do, it is the most amazing, relaxing, wonderful experience.
And it's not to that I don't enjoy a good shower. I do enjoy showering, but sometimes it just seems like a hassle. I mean, we all have to do it right, we need to be clean, but sometimes it just feels like a hassle to go take a shower and then to get ready and to, you know, do the whole routine to wash my hair and dry my hair and curl in my hair and do my makeup and put on my lotion and all of the things. But when I take the time to take a bath, it's usually in the evening, it's me slowing things down.
It's me again, alone with my thoughts, soaking it in, relaxing the muscles. And it's, yeah, it's about getting clean, but it's also just about self care and alone time, and just time to enjoy, time to rest, time to literally just soak, soak it all up. That to me is an example of small joy. And I hope that as I'm talking about these things, you can understand that we can have a life full of all of these little teeny small joy moments.
We can have multiple small joy moments a day, let alone a week, a month, a year. And these may not be the moments that we think about when we're on our deathbed and we're reviewing our life. But I'll tell you what, if you get into some routines, if you get into some habits, these small joy moments will likely be what creates the most joy in your life. Because you can do these small things like take a bath and have lunch alone in your car on a daily basis if you want to.
And if those become your routine, that becomes your self care, that becomes your life, and that likely will be the things that you appreciate when you're on your death bed. Okay, I'm gonna shift gears for a second and share with you a little bit about where my head was at when I went through my divorce. I got married at age 18, and that's not uncommon in the religion that I was raised in, but I was married very young, and I ended up getting divorced at age 25.
And at the time, I just had this newfound freedom. I was in my twenties discovering myself single again, the single for the first time as an adult. And yes, I had a child and I was a mother, but we had shared custody. So I didn't have my child every day, and I just found that I could do some things for me. I could do some things for self care that literally were just about me.
They weren't about my husband, they weren't about the family, they weren't about anything else other than discovering who I am, what I enjoy, and finding ways to enjoy those moments. And the two things that always come to mind when I think back on that period of my life is number one every single day for probably the first year, year and a half after I was divorced, or at least separated from my husband, every single day when I would leave work, I would drive by Starbucks, which was near my house.
I would park, I would order a caramel macchiato, which I still love to this day, but was my favorite drink at the time. I would order an iced caramel macchiato, and it was always about five o'clock, five 15 in the evening. And I would take that caramel macchiato and this particular Starbucks had a sunroom. I would go sit in a big overstuffed leather chair in the sunroom and just listen to the music of the coffee shop and unwind from my day.
That was something that I did every single day when I found myself single again. And it probably was 20, maybe 30 minutes, and I would do it before I got home because if I had gone home first, I wouldn't have gone back out. I just am that kind of person. I'm a homebody. I love to get home and relax, but this was my way to unwind from my day, unwind from the stress, and just have a few minutes all to myself completely for myself with what at the time was one of my favorite beverages.
And I just remember how wonderful it felt to sit in an overstuffed leather chair listening to music and just relaxing, being alone with my thoughts, organizing, de-stressing, letting go of all of the tension from the day. That was something that I did on a daily basis that even now I look back on and think those were some good times in my life.
The second thing that comes to mind, and you may judge me on this one, I've never been a cigarette smoker, but I will tell you I do enjoy cigars. And I did not pick that up really until I went through my divorce. And I never wanted to pick up cigarettes. I never wanted to be a cigarette smoker and have to have that daily smoke or smell like smoke or lose my sense of taste. But I found that they sell these little mini cigars, they call them cigarillos because they're not much bigger than a cigarette, but you can get flavored ones.
And of course, I was in my twenties, I was young and I liked flavored things, but I remember there was this flavored cigarillo called moon trance that was the flavor, which that doesn't even describe a flavor. I don't know what it's supposed to be. The tin that it comes in is purple and blue. So I don't know, maybe it's some kind of a berry flavor. I can't really describe it, but there's something about those little cigarillos that when I was first divorced every evening, even when I had my son, after I put my son to bed, I would go out on my back patio.
I had a condo that I lived in. I was on the first floor, so it was kind of just a walkout patio. And I would stand outside my patio just in the moonlight and smoke a cigarillo. And honestly, it takes about 15 minutes to smoke one of those that it's a short smoke. And even to today when I taste a moon trance cigarillo, it tastes to me like freedom. And I know that sounds funny. I said that to my husband this last week.
I said, this is what freedom tastes like because I hadn't had one in years and I tried one again last week. But that to me just brings back so many wonderful special memories because those memories weren't about anyone else or anything else except me and my joy and my moment to myself. And I just have to tell you that these small joy moments are moments that we can create for ourselves.
These are the things that just bring us those same feelings as going on vacation, sitting on a beach somewhere, going on a cruise or a hot air balloon ride. Those moments are amazing and they're wonderful and joyful, but you can have those moments enjoying a slice of cheesecake. You can have those moments enjoying a wonderful bubble bath or doing something you absolutely enjoy like baking.
Okay, I'm gonna take a break here for a word from our sponsors. And when I come back, I'm gonna share some more of my small joy moments. But I'm also going to share with you some of the small joy moments that I know my husband appreciates because I don't want to forget about our male listeners on the podcast, and I don't want them to feel like all I ever talk about is what it's like to be a mom or a female. So I'm gonna share some of my husband's small joy moments as well as more of my small joy moments when I return.
But right now, we'll take a break for our sponsors.
Welcome back to Attract It with Ease. We were talking about the difference between big joy moments and small joy moments. And essentially the whole message of this podcast is those big joy moments. We can have a dozen or a few dozen times in our life, and those are the things like the giant vacations and the weddings and the birth of children or grandchildren or whatever the case may be. But we can't have those big moments every day.
And so to recognize that we can have the same level of joy in some smaller, itty bitty bite size moments, moments that we can create for ourself on a daily basis, we can create a more fulfilling life, a more joyful life. And if you intentionally create some of these small joy moments into your daily practices, you will begin to see that these small joy moments are just as enjoyable as those big joy moments that we have in our lives.
So I promise to share some more of my small joy moments as well as some of my husbands. So let me talk about some of his. First of all, my husband is a huge golfer. He loves to golf, and he's so excited about the beautiful weather and the spring season that's finally here because it's felt like so long since he's been able to go out and golf. And my husband's been golfing at least once a week for probably the past month, and I guarantee that is one of his small joy moments.
However, when you think about golfing, it's a half day if not full day event. And so maybe that doesn't seem like small joy to some people. That being said, sometimes when my husband doesn't have the ability to go out and play a whole game, or maybe he doesn't have a foursome to go play with, occasionally he'll just go hit a bucket of balls at the driving range. And I know that that is a small joy moment for him because not only is he able to work on his golf game, but he gets to be out in nature.
He gets to have some time to himself again, alone with his thoughts or out with some friends. That is a small joy moment for my husband. Another small joy moment that I can't really relate to is my husband loves to spend time in the garage, and sometimes I wonder how he spends so much time out there. But if you've listened to my podcast episodes, then you probably know that he has some giant vintage speakers that I did not want hanging on our wall in our new house.
They're huge, but they're these awesome speakers from the seventies that he has hung on the wall in the garage, and he's set up this amazing sound system out there, and he loves to listen to music. So my husband will play music in the garage and he just will organize his tools or reorganize the Jeep. He'll work on little projects. He loves woodworking, he loves making things he loves creating. As much as I love creating, that is a small joy moment for my husband just to go out to the garage, turn on some music and organize his tools.
He absolutely enjoys doing that. Another small joy moment for my husband is just getting behind the camera. He's a professional photographer, and when he started the job that he's currently working, he was hired as a photographer. He eventually became the director of photography. But his job has evolved to where he's over so much more than just photography that he often feels like he's gotten so far away from what he actually loves, which is his passion for taking pictures.
And so a small joy moment for my husband is anytime he can get behind the camera. And he says that so often he'll go months without picking up his camera. And if he just goes out and shoots or spends a day taking product photography for something or someone has them to do family photos, whatever the case may be, he always comes home and tells me how much he's missed that and how much he loved it and how he needs to get back to it.
I know that time behind the camera for him is a small joy moment. And when he's doing it and experiencing it and editing the photos and getting to share the end result that brings him just as much joy as it does for him to go on an adventure, to go camping or off-roading in the Jeep to go to Mexico on vacation. These are moments that are equally as joyful to him as those big moments that we plan and spend fortunes of money on, like our weddings and our honeymoons and everything.
That's just these big huge moments in life. Yet we can create these small joy moments on a day-to-day basis. If we just take the time to consciously think about it, plan it, and do it. And I'm telling you these moments, they don't have to cost money. They don't have to cost any money. Some of them can cost money, but they don't have to cost money. It can literally be as simple as taking a bubble bath.
It literally can be as simple as sitting out on your patio or deck and watching the, that to me is another small joy moment. I now live 15 minutes closer to work than I used to. When Dan and I were living in our tiny house, Hank, we lived 15 minutes further away than we do now. Now we are renting a house, which we absolutely love, and I'm closer to work, and so I have this extra 15 minutes of my day, and I absolutely love my sleep.
And so at first I was like, oh my gosh, I can sleep in for another 15 minutes in the morning. But what I've ended up doing with that extra 15 minutes of time that I used to spend driving is every day when I finish getting ready for work, I go into my office, which is also my podcast studio, and I spend 15 minutes doing my tarot card reading. I've shared that with you guys that this year I've started doing a daily tarot card reading. I was never into tarot before, but I bought a tarot journal so that I could start doing tarot readings for myself and looking for themes or patterns in the messages.
I feel like it's another way that I can ask the universe to communicate with me another way for me to be in touch with myself and answers to questions that I have or things that I'm mentally trying to work through. So every morning I get ready for work and I have approximately 15 minutes left before I need to leave the house because my routine is essentially the same. And I take those 15 minutes to go into my office and do my daily tarot card reading.
And when I pull the cards, I think I've told you I pull three cards. The first card represents me, the second card represents the path I'm currently on, and the third card represents my potential. So I set my intention, I pull my cards, I then interpret the reading, and then I journal about it. That is how I spend my last 15 minutes of each day before I leave to work and just get overwhelmed by the craziness of, of everything that comes with the day.
This is something that I have just absolutely learned to appreciate. I'm loving the messages I'm getting and receiving through my tarot readings. I'm loving the things I'm learning about myself. I'm loving that I'm able to interpret these messages for myself. And honestly, it could just literally be my mind just telling myself what I need to hear, who cares, who knows, or whatever. But those 15 minutes of my day that are completely for me before my day gets crazy, before things get started, before I take off for work, that to me is a small joy moment.
I do it every day and I absolutely love it. Another small joy moment for me, you're gonna laugh at this one. My husband and I have been together for over seven years, and during that time, we have never been the kind of people to sit down at a table and have dinner. Now, that's not to say we've never sat at a table and had dinner, because obviously when we go to other people's houses, we do all the time and we have on special occasions or when we've hosted or had people over, we have sat at the table.
But generally speaking, we have been the type of people that have just sat in front of the television and and had dinner every night. I know that that is not ideal. I know that's not recommended. I know that so many people are probably in shock and horror that that's how I've lived my life, but that's me just being truthful with you. That being said, since my husband and I have moved into the house we're currently living in, we have an open floor plan here. And so the dining room is essentially the same space as the living room and the dining table faces the television, which has made it so much easier for us to sit down at the table and still watch television if we want to, but actually enjoy dinner at the table.
And the funny thing is, we don't always turn the TV on. Now that we sit and have dinner at the table, we often just sit and have conversation. And to me, that is a small joy moment. You know, when I was growing up, we had family dinner at the table every night. We never ate in front of the television. In fact, I can remember only one time we ever did. And it was such a special treat to be able to do that. But for some reason now as adults, that became normal to just sit down on the couch, turn on the television, and just eat.
And so to be able to sit at the table, have a meal and a conversation with my husband, catch up from our day, catch up with each other, share funny things that have happened, tell each other about what's going on with our jobs, that to me has become a small joy moment that I just absolutely appreciate every single night. Even if we do turn the television on, it's so nice to sit at the table, feel like a little family, and have a meal with my husband.
That is a small joy moment for me. A few episodes ago, one of the action items I shared was creating a Happy Memories album on your phone to have an album on your phone that you just kept photos of your happy memories, pictures that you took for you, pictures that you didn't take to share or to post on social media, or because you wanted people to know that you were having this amazing meal or you were doing this amazing thing, but to capture the moments that meant something to you, the moments that are your happy memories.
Well, I shared that as an action item on a podcast episode a few weeks ago. So I have a happy Memories album on my phone, and sometimes I just love sitting down and just looking through those photos. It only takes a few minutes, but those are some of my best memories. Those are some of my favorite moments. And sometimes I wish I captured more of those moments for myself. But those photos in my phone, photos that are simply for me, those are some of my small joy moments.
But those are also moments of just reliving those moments, reliving, remembering those memories that brings me joy. And going through those photos can be a small joy moment for me as well. Alright, one last small joy moment that I'll share with you is you probably already know. I am a sucker for wine and a sucker for cheese.
Cheese is probably one of my biggest vices in life. Thank goodness I'm not lactose intolerant because I love cheese. I love cheese more than almost anything. I love cheese almost as much as I love my husband. But sometimes my husband and I have these little date afternoons. If we have a weekend off together, we'll just take an afternoon. We'll have three or four or five different artisan cheeses that we've picked out at the store, and I'll slice 'em up and I'll make a little charcuterie board with some salami and some nuts.
We love to have our charcuterie and wine dates. It's just some time alone with my husband. And we can sit outside, we can sit in front of the television. Sometimes we go on a drive in the Jeep and we take it with us. Other times we go camping and it's what I pack as our snack. But I love a little charcuterie spread. I love wine and cheese, and I love sharing good wine and cheese with my husband.
And that is something that is one of my favorite memories that we've shared to date, but something that we make a point to do probably at least once a month. That is a small joy moment for me that I know for certain. One day when I am laying on my deathbed and I'm reviewing my life and thinking about the big joy moments, the honeymoon, the wedding, the time my son was born, all of those big joy moments will be up there with my small joy moments, which are sunsets on the patio, wine and cheese with my husband picking up Starbucks and sitting in the sunroom on my way home from work, 15 minutes to do a terrible reading before starting my day.
Those are the moments that make my life fulfilling. Those are the things that I enjoy as much as the big joy moments. And my action item for you this week is for you to find what brings you joy in small doses for you to decide the foods that bring you joy, the activities that bring you joy, the people that bring you joy, the small joy moments that you can create and add to your daily routine that can make you feel more fulfilled and that can make you have a more joyful life.
So I challenge you to take on my action item and create a small joy moment today, tomorrow, and intentionally look for those small joy moments and opportunities for you to create them in the coming week. The last thing that I wanna share with you this week is that I am a proud member of the Ethereal Network. Now, the Ethereal Network is a group of podcasts that all have the goal of raising the vibration of the planet.
All of us tend to be in the metaphysical or spiritual realm, so to speak, but we all focus on different things. And this week I want to share with you another podcast from the Ethereal Network that I think you will just find amazing. This podcast is called Spirit Sherpa, and I'm going to end this week's episode with sharing a little introductory clip to Spirit Sherpa. It's been so fun talking with you this week.
Have a good one. Bye-bye. 