Joyful
Feeling joyful is a bright, full kind of happy that comes in a moment and fills it: a friend's laugh across the table, a dance in the kitchen, the first warm day of spring. It arrives, peaks and passes. Savoring is how you keep more of it, and in a 30-day diary study, good events lifted mood more on the days people savored them.1
- On the wheel: Happy, then joyful
- More exact words: Delighted, playful
- Nearby: Grateful, hopeful, proud, in awe
- Often points to: A moment worth slowing down for
Bigger than pleased, shorter than content
While it's here, you're in it. Then it's gone, and you're left grinning at nothing.
Delighted is joy at a surprise, something small that went better than you expected. Playful is joy that wants to do something, to joke or tease or try a thing for no reason except that it's fun.
"My nephew figured out how to whistle and wouldn't stop. By dinner the whole family was whistling at each other and crying laughing."
Joy widens the view
Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory says good feelings widen what you notice and what you feel like doing.2 Fear narrows you toward one escape. Joy, in the theory, opens you up to play and explore.2
She and Christine Branigan tested part of it with 104 college students across two experiments.2 After a funny or a calming film, students took in a wider view on an attention task than after a neutral one, and they listed more things they felt like doing; after films that made them angry or anxious, they listed fewer.2
Savoring is how a good moment turns into a good day
Savoring means noticing a good moment on purpose and staying with it. Paul Jose and colleagues, Fred Bryant among them, had 101 people report every day for 30 days on their good events, how much they savored them and how happy they felt.1
Good events lifted mood more on the days people savored more.1 The researchers read savoring as part of how a good event becomes a good feeling, the step in between.1
That puts the step partly in your hands, because while you can't schedule joy, you can stay for it when it comes.
The 3-to-1 ratio that was withdrawn
You may have read that you need three good feelings for every bad one to flourish, a "positivity ratio" of about 3 to 1. It came from a 2005 paper that borrowed equations from fluid physics.3
In 2013 Nick Brown, Alan Sokal and Harris Friedman showed the math was wrong and the ratio had no basis.4 The journal then published a correction withdrawing the model behind it.5
Joy still matters, and nobody needs to keep a tally of it against the bad moments.
Staying for it
- Say it out loud, or in your head. "This is a good moment." Naming it makes you notice it while it's still happening.
- Pick one sense. The sound of the laugh, or the sun on your face. Stay with that one thing for three slow breaths.
- Tell someone. The person beside you, or a friend who'd get it, by text.
- Keep a joy list. One line each time, with the date, so on a gray week there's something to read back.
When did you last lose track of time because you were enjoying yourself? Write where you were, who was there, and one detail you can still see or hear.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about feeling joyful
What is the real meaning of joy?
A strong, bright happiness tied to a moment or an event. It runs hotter and shorter than everyday happiness.
What is the difference between joy and happiness?
Happiness describes how a day or a stretch of life is going, and joy is a peak inside it. A moment of joy can turn up on a hard day, and a happy week can pass without one. Happy has the whole family.
Is joy a feeling or a choice?
A feeling, by most definitions, and one that won't come on demand. What you can choose is attention: playful time with people you like, and staying with the good moment when it comes.1