Joy as a Daily Vitamin: The Practice of Centering Joy in Life
Photo Credit: Ben Iwara on Unsplash.
Joy often gets tossed around in public discourse, though we seldom hear people explicitly define what they mean by it. There's an unspoken assumption that people who say they want more joy in life must want that jumping-for-joy, exuberant feeling–what joy is commonly associated with. But what if this isn’t exactly what they’re looking for? Perhaps, they want that bursting-at-the-seams feeling of exuberance, or maybe they want to feel something closer to peace? Or perhaps they long for something else?
Joy can be experienced in so many different ways: you could be laughing so hard you can’t stop; doing an activity you love; spending time with family or friends; or you could feel a sense of peace and awe that allows you to relax into stillness like when you’re holding your child, smelling flowers, or sitting in a nice, warm bath. Joy can feel like exuberance, but it can also feel like peace and awe washing over us—and everything in between. Whatever the case, joy is that feeling you get when you do something that brings you pleasure. Joy makes your eyes light up and your spirit smile. It isn’t fleeting. Joy has a deep, enduring quality that seems to elude happiness.
Let’s sit with this for a moment. What makes your eyes light up and your spirit smile? As you hold this in your heart and mind, I ask you to consider something: What if you could take all these things and put them into a vitamin? A vitamin that you have to take daily or weekly to help you stay healthy. This vitamin is essential to restoring and maintaining your health and well-being, allowing you to center joy in your life.
The practice of centering joy means intentionally integrating joy into your life regularly as opposed to waiting for it to fall into your lap. You are consciously putting joy into your life. As you place your energy where your joy is, you are creating the conditions to produce more of it. As Lisa Nichols, author of Abundance Now, says, “Energy grows where energy goes,” or in neuroscience terms, “Where attention goes, neurofiring flows, and neuroconnection grows,” in the words of Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry (Siegel as cited in Larrivee, 2018, p. 111). As you do more things that bring you joy, your joy has the capacity to grow.
The practice of centering joy has two components: 1) self-care: the basics of healthy living (balanced diet, good hydration, good sleep, and physical activity), and 2) treating joy as a daily vitamin: consciously integrating fun, play and leisure into one’s life on a regular basis. Through these components, you are feeding yourself all that brings you joy, nourishing your heart, mind, body, and spirit. You are doing far more than just carving out space for joy; you are prioritizing it. You are putting joy first on your to-do list. Through the practice of centering joy, you are embracing joy and wellness as a way of being–as a lifestyle.
This requires a paradigm shift away from beliefs in: forgoing joy until all the work is done; feeling guilty about experiencing joy because there’s so much suffering in the world; one’s joy only existing at the expense of another; and joy being too good to be true, so something bad is bound to happen; being undeserving of joy. Instead, when we practice the art of centering joy, joy becomes center stage, and you are recalibrating your system to accept joy as normal.
In doing so, we must let go of the notions above that stand between us and joy–a process that may take some time. In the work of clinical neuropsychologist, Mario Martinez, he speaks of how joy must be processed. For example, if one lives a life of deprivation or scarcity in the areas of health, wealth, or love, and a “good thing" enters their life (in one of these areas), the person may have a stress response to it. Their immune, endocrine, and nervous systems are unaccustomed to the newfound joy and identify it as a threat instead of something to welcome and embrace. In such cases, it becomes necessary to allow your system(s) to become acclimated to the “good thing” (i.e. the joy) by, for instance, breathing into the areas of tension and giving gratitude for that joy, as well as other techniques that allow one to fully process the joy (Martinez, 2009).
To truly practice the art of centering joy, we may need to make some changes to what we believe about the what, when, and how related to joy. For some, this may seem like too much work. Why bother? Why change? Why should you be proactive about integrating joy in your life?
One answer. Centering joy keeps you alive and healthy longer and allows you to enjoy a life filled with vitality. Prioritizing and centering joy in life not only helps us live longer, but also extends our healthspan meaning “how long you can expect to live in good health, free of chronic disease and cognitive decline” based on your lifestyle choices (Higgins, 2025; Wright, 2025).
In Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory, she researches positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, and love. Her study suggests that these positive emotions yield a number of benefits which include the ability to broaden one’s attention and thinking, undo lingering negative emotions, drive psychological resilience, and prompt greater future well-being (Frederickson, 2004). When people experience fewer positive emotions, there is a tendency to get stuck, whereas those who experience substantial positive emotions tend to become “generative, creative, resilient, ripe with possibility and beautifully complex” (Fredrickson, 2004, p. 1375). Fredrickson concludes that, “People should cultivate positive emotions in their own lives and in the lives of those around them, not just because doing so makes them feel good in the moment, but also because doing so transforms people for the better and sets them on paths toward flourishing and healthy longevity” (Fredrickson, 2004, p. 1375).
There are also numerous studies on the connection between laughter and cardiovascular health. Such research asserts that laughter helps prevent heart disease, reduce stress, reduce blood pressure, and boost the immune system (Ananth, 2019; Miller, Fry, 2009). When we consider the laughter that one may experience when engaging in activities that bring them pleasure, the practice of centering joy can have a positve impact on one’s cardiovascular health.
Engaging in practices that initiate the relaxation response (which can fall under the first or second component of the practice of centering joy) helps individuals manage and reduce chronic stress. Such practices include deep breathing, various types of meditation, yoga, visualization, massage, being in nature, or soaking in a hot tub. So, let’s say you’re anxious or stressed out; it is your sympathetic nervous system that gets activated. When you initiate the relaxation response by engaging in any of the activities above, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, allowing you to return to a state of homeostasis–a state of balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems (Larrivee, 2018; Myers, DeWall, 2018; Sutton 2022).
From promoting greater cardiovascular health, a stronger immune system, and a longer healthspan and lifespan to fueling mental resiliency, attention, and creativity, the practice of centering joy in our lives moves from being “just a nice thing to do if I had extra time” to being absolutely necessary. Such evidence offers us compelling reasons why the practice of centering joy in our lives is integral to restoring and maintaining our health and well-being. Cultivating joy on a regular basis allows us to stay healthy longer, live longer, and enjoy more vibrant, fulfilling lives.
On your journey toward tapping into what brings you joy and actively integrating it into your life, I invite you to begin by sitting in silence (or with soft meditative music) for 2-5 minutes, asking: What brings you joy? Allow the answers to slowly come forth. Bring gentle attention to what comes up for you. Immerse yourself in the feeling of joy that each moment or activity brings. This is the well from which you will draw your joy vitamins. Visualize one daily joy vitamin—a joy ritual you will practice everyday— and one weekly joy vitamin—a joy ritual you will practice once a week. Open your eyes and write down these joy vitamins. Make a promise to yourself (and keep that promise) to begin taking your joy vitamins that day. With each joy vitamin, watch how you transform and flourish over time as you embrace this new lifestyle of practicing the art of centering joy.
Janet Stickmon is a wellness consultant and coach, professor of Ethnic Studies, and founder of The Joy & Wellness Circle. Stickmon is also the author of Crushing Soft Rubies: A Memoir, Midnight Peaches, Two O'clock Patience: A Collection of Poems, Short Stories, and Essays on Womanhood and the Spirit, and To Black Parents Visiting Earth: Raising Black Children in the 21st Century. Stickmon has led workshops nationally and internationally at venues including SXSW EDU, the National Education Association Racial & Social Justice Conference, and the World Diversity in Leadership Conference in Edmonton, CAN. Janet Stickmon is the founder of CenterJoyPWR®: Strategies for Healing Racial Battle Fatigue—an online experience designed for professionals of color who want to heal their racial battle fatigue and center joy in their personal and professional lives.
References
Ananth, K. (2019). How laughter benefits your heart health. Henry Ford Health.
https://www.henryford.com/blog/2019/03/how-laughter-benefits-heart-health
BIDMC Contributor (2023). How laughter can help your heart. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. https://www.bidmc.org/about-bidmc/wellness-insights/heart-health/2020/09/how-laughter-can-help-your-heart)
Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1367–1377. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1693418/pdf/15347528.pdf
Higgins, L. (2025). Everyone’s talking about healthspan—but what does it actually mean? Flow Space. https://www.theflowspace.com/physical-health/prevention-longevity/how-to-improve-healthspan-2972020/
Manninen, S., Tuominen, L., Dunbar, R. I. M., Karjalainen, T., Hirvonen, J., Arponen, E., Hari, R., & Nummenmaa, L. (2017). Social laughter triggers endogenous opioid release in humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 37(25), 6125–6131. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/25/6125
Larrivee, B. (2018). A daily dose of mindful moments: applying the science of mindfulness and happiness. Shoreline Publications.
Martinez, M. (2009). The mindbody code: How the mind wounds and heals the body. [Audiobook]. SoundsTrue.
Miller, M., & Fry, W. F. (2009). The effect of mirthful laughter on the human cardiovascular system. Medical Hypotheses, 73(5), 636–639. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2814549/?tool=pubmed
Myers, D.G., & DeWall, C.N. (2018). Psychology. Worth Publishers.
Sutton, B.G. (Ed.). (2022). National academy of sports medicine (NASM): essentials of personal fitness training. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Nichols, L. (2016). Abundance now: amplify your life & achieve prosperity today. Dey Street Books.
Siegel, D. (2010). Mindsight: the new science of personal transformation. Bantam Books.
Wright, V. (2025). The five pillars of health with dr. vonda wright. Growing Bolder. https://growingbolder.com/stories/the-5-pillars-of-health-with-dr-vonda-wright/
Copyright © 2025 Janet Stickmon
