Increasing your joyspan
This is something I wrote back in December 2023, and it re-emerged last night for me. I thought I’d share here.
Today has a new freedom to it. My regular co-working, connection catchup with Eva-Lotta Lamm is not on today. I love our catchups. But sometimes we each have something else on, and that is cool.
And yet again, with all the space, I manufacture things to do. I notice this, and try to release the pressure as I walk that bit further to a Lime bike. My wife and I both slept that bit more. Woken by our youngest. It’s 7:15 he said. Wow! Potentially a decent sleep. I wouldn’t know as my Whoop isn’t working. Damn bluetooth. One of the most amazing but yet annoying technologies.
Anyway, later waking means later walking the dog. Later walking the dog means longer walks to a Lime bike into my office.
As I take a few tokes on the vape (do people even say that?) for the walk to the bike, I feel the pressures subsiding.
Although a request from someone to upload my updated framework on the Miro board has come through and activated my urgency response. I message back that I’ll get to it later today or tomorrow. I hope to. And if not, there’s still value in getting feedback on the previous version of the research framework I shared.
A few ideas of what to write and do today come up. I have plenty on my to-do list app, but let’s ignore that.
I connect three thoughts…
One from a webinar event last night with Humanity (it’s a lifespan app/product/service) founder and a founder of a non-invasive blood glucose (and more) tracking device.
One from the Reflect and Refocus session I did yesterday with Nirish Shakya and Josie Downey.
And one from the archive of things I would always love to write but never get round to.
A quest for increased joy span
Over the past 5 months I have been pretty heavily immersed in the cancer detection and treatment space. That immersion can pull you into many directions.
From biological diversity — how we are all so different and yet so similar biologically, and psychologically.
Through biotech, AI, and interesting science.
To the fields of wellness, longevity and broader health and wellcare.
I have got emotionally closer to my own mortality as I lost two people within two weeks who were pretty overweight like me.
Each death brings new information. Emotions. Thoughts. Fears. Hopes. Clarity. These deaths combined with my work in the space really messed with me these past months. Triggering some attention shifts towards my physical health again.
This broad field seems to prefer to focus on healthspan these days. Longevity being around increasing the length of your life. Lifespan being a cuter word for that.
Healthspan, as I understand it, is more about being healthier more of your life. No point living to 120 if you have 40 years of pain and frustration.
In one of my Amsterdam doodles in my sketchbook I ended up reframing the concept to Joyspan. A concept more useful to me and the people I coach than my immediate project. Or was it?
It’s something I brought up with my new therapist as I tried to distil what I wanted from our time together. ‘I want to increase my Joyspan.’
Sustaining the highs. Having fewer lows. Generally being above the waterline into the positive, rather than feeling below it. Slowing the descend from a high. Spotting when the descend is getting dangerous and doing something about it.
With my coachees I have often played with ideas around doing things that people love doing, or reminding people of how great they are. ‘Power-ups’ I called it in one session recently.
Another might be the ‘smile file’ of positive feedback to lift you up.
Or my favourite, ‘the sunny day list’. A name which one of my coachees came up with for a bunch of activities she could do, food she could eat, amongst other things, that she enjoyed. As a working mother of a young child, she didn’t give much space to herself. She needed to reclaim who she was as well as being all the other things to other people. So many of you can relate, I am sure.
Creating your joy lists
Another person (probably Kim Witten, PhD, who is well worth following) recommended the idea of writing a list of 100 joys. It’s really hard.
Different things that you can do (big or small) that make you happy. Little ‘power-ups’ for life. It could be listening to a piece of music, having a certain ice cream, having a day to yourself, sitting on your favourite bench, reading a novel. Anything.
I started one in a google sheet and occasionally add another to the list. It sits as a special Edge bookmark pane thing on the right hand side of my browser alongside ChatGPT.
I, like so many others, just find it hard to identify when we need to go to our ‘joy list’, or even that it exists when we most need it. A topic for another time.
In the reflection session an attendee shared something so familiar to me. The reaching of an age milestone. Not feeling enough of joy in life. Not really doing much for themselves. When I was approaching 40 I compiled a Jason 4.0 personal strategy as part of my coaching with Julia Whitney. 40, 4.0 — see what I did there? Before that relationship had started I was probably at the lowest in my adult life.
I share some of the slides I just found below. I actually just rediscovered some of the content as I screenshotted in this article. Screenshotidipity.
Sorry. Not that sorry. I like making shit portmanteaus and using alliteration. It brings me joy. One more for the list.
In fact, going through my screenshots could spark me some joy. Added.
I’ll have to get back to this deck from around this time six years ago. Some useful stuff in it. But back to joy…
Joy is within reach
I believe there is an infinite amount of joy to be had in our lives. Even in the darkest moments of our lives. But we tend to suppress joy in favour of the ‘practical’ stuff like health or work. Like lifespan was too duration focused, healthspan feels limiting as well. For me at least.
How about we increase our joyspan? In our lifetime? In our years? In our quarters? In our months? In our weeks? In our days?
And then I realise that this little lead in is the article I needed to write for today. Not the one I thought I was going to write. The other threads can be addressed another day. In another post.
Or maybe not. Let’s see what emerges.
This post was part of an advent calendar challenge I set for myself in December 2023. Writing and publishing one piece a day. Whatever emerges. Although sometimes I may work on an idea sparked on another day. An exercise in getting back into the writing groove. But also re-finding my voice. Lowering the barriers of my ego getting in the way of what might be valuable for others, or at least me.
You can check the other pieces here on the ‘Eclectical’ Medium publication.
I am a coach, a product-service strategy consultant, a community connector and so many other things. You can find out more about me, my many interests and how to connect them with yours here.
Great piece. Think we all need this one right now! The piece you were thinking of btw is 'Dare to create a list of 100 wants', but I love the idea of 100 joys! I'm going to do that one and see how it goes. Thanks for this.