Following Your Joy – The Creators
“Following the path of your greatest joy can be a nice bumper sticker, or refrigerator magnet, or fancy Facebook post for all of you. But for many of you it is an ideal. It is easier for you to acknowledge that following your joy in life is the ultimate in living the way that you want to live than it is for you to actually put that ideal into practice.
We understand that. We understand that in the place where many of you are, it seems foolish, it seems irresponsible, it seems unlikely that you will be able to follow your joy anytime soon.
So we want you to look at this differently. We do not want you to decide that following your joy means getting back together with the band that you were in in college and touring the world and seeing the drudgery of your life as going back to your 9-to-5 job for yet another week, month, year, and so on. If you compartmentalize things in that way and you then believe that the only way for you to pay the rent or mortgage, and other bills, is to go back to the drudgery of the job, then you are setting yourself up for failure.
All we want you to do is to recognize that there is joy, that you are joy, that joy is accessible to you, that in any moment you have the opportunity to take the approach to your life that is boring and monotonous, or you can take the approach to your life that is joyous and fun. It’s up to you. It is also true that you do not need to quit your job to follow your other pursuits in life that you want to. But if you see that you can only do one thing or the other, and you decide that you must do the boring, monotonous work just to stay alive, then you will never really find the joy within each moment.
First you must decide that joy is what you want, and then you must decide that it is possible, and then you must be joyous, rather than looking for something joyous to find its way to you so that you can then feel it. You must decide that whatever you are doing can be a version of that following your joy that you ultimately are seeking in every action that you take.
So if hitting the road with your college buddies to play various venues around the world is that ultimate joy, then bring that to whatever it is that you are doing. Whatever it is that you would be doing on that tour bus and in those performances, bring that to whatever it is you are doing. Do not allow what everyone else is doing to determine what you must do and how you must be. You must decide for yourself what is most important to you, and you must realize that you are the one who is determining and deciding how joyous your life can be.”