Joy Strategies: from No to Yes in 7 Words

This is unacceptable!
Use these words: what, when, where, who, and how, to create for yourself an exact detailed statement of one particular aspect of your circumstances that you want to change.

I wonder what options there are?
Expand your view of possibility by brainstorming all the factors, discuss it with friends and colleagues, take advice from experts, read books, surf the web, think, meditate and fantasize. Just find a way to get your thinking ‘outside the box'.

This option feels better
Perhaps several of the scenarios you imagine will be attractive in different ways. Try to feel how it will be if you put yourself into them. Notice which feelings are awakened—if not the heart, then think again.

Okay, let's go for it!
Sometimes the urge to act is strong and self-propelling: a compelling motivation has been awakened and out of this everything flows energetically. Without such a condition then you'll have to use will—so try to locate that part of you that is powerfully enthusiastic, which needs no force of will and simply moves spontaneously towards the promise of joy.

Let's do exactly this shall we?
Create a beautiful, written statement of what you choose for yourself in exquiste inspiring detail. Include in it others who will also enjoy the fruits of your creation, and will care and cooperate in its realization

Due care and attention
Spend a moment to consider anyone at all who will be or may be put out by your succes—and pray for their circumstances too in finding an adjustment that improves

Que sera sera
It's all part of life's rich tapestry: a game of love, truth and joy—so let what comes come! It's okay; it's all okay.

At first sight the No word might be thought daunting. It's usually the wrong answer—not what we want to hear—the response that stops us in our tracks. Or equally, the word we would rather not have to say to someone else because it's not what they want either. It may mean bother. It indicates refusals, rejection, absence and denial…also resistance, disagreement and opposition—and a string of other things that are often directly contrary to our sense of what we want.

And yet how could we learn without it? Without constraint, what is freedom? Without scarcity, what is abundance? Without selfhood, there would be no relationship. These aspects of human experience actually derive from the fact of limitation—as do compassion, patience, rationality and discipline—because they wouldn't be needed in a world without it. Learning and growing are punctuated again and again by No. We are stopped from taking a wrong direction, we rethink and reorient ourselves and then continue, having become a little wiser perhaps.

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