The Thief of Joy
President Theodore Roosevelt is credited with coining the phrase “Comparison is the thief of joy.” It’s a phrase I use often, when I advise clients who are beating themselves up because they feel they aren’t measuring up to someone else’s performance or to their own or someone else’s expectations.
Today, I’d like to explore the idea that the actual thief of joy is our over-commitment. It’s not so much our comparison to others that steals our joy— it’s our commitment to the hustle. We overextend and over-effort, over-commit, and over-do. We end up run down, depleted, or even burnt out.
Photo credit Toa Heftiba at Unsplash.com
Friend, you and I both know that when we are exhausted and overwhelmed, it is hard to feel joy.
When we are overcommitted, we are far more likely to feel stressed, annoyed, put-upon, angry, resentful, or simply numbed-out. Even if it is something we volunteered for, we can end up feeling as if we are being taken advantage of.
I’d like to point out that there is no time like the holidays to make this all crystal clear. In what is supposed to be a joyful time of year—be it Chanukah, Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or New Year’s—we are too often overcommitted, with all the negative stuff that comes along with that.
Those of us who identify as female too often end up overcommitted year-round, and it gets worse during the holidays. The planning, shopping, wrapping, packing, shipping, decorating, cleaning, and cooking tend to fall on us.
Whether it’s peeling and grating potatoes and onions for latkes, baking batches of cookies or cakes, or preparing dishes for Karamu, we work to make our holidays special. That job alone is a lot of work, as anyone who has ever prepared a holiday meal by themselves can attest. Yet we routinely assume all of the holiday-related duties on top of our already packed daily lives.
When all those holiday tasks are added on top of work, caretaking, home-schooling, and the other things on our already-full lists, it’s easy to become overcommitted and lose the joy. Sure, the frenzy of doing “all the things” may propel us through the holidays, but all that adrenaline depletes us; it doesn’t help us experience joy.
If you read my last post, “Set and manage your intentions for a good holiday season,” then you may have already sat down to make a list of all the (many) things you usually do for the holidays. Maybe you have even crossed a few things off in order to simplify things for yourself a bit.
To reclaim your joy, ask yourself which of your commitments are draining you.
We cannot add more hours to the day. We cannot continuously get up earlier or stay up later, pushing our bodies past the breaking point, risking physical illness and fraying our nervous systems.
Rather than trying to shoehorn more things into your already full days, why not figure out which of your commitments are draining you?
Once you have figured that out, decide which things you can cut.
For example, if you usually make 12 kinds of holiday cookies, or 5 different types of pies, or homemade sufganiyot, ask yourself whether 1 or 2 kinds of cookies or pies might not be enough. And maybe those jelly donuts for Chanukah can come from Dunkin this year, instead of requiring you to heat a huge pot of oil in your kitchen, bust out a syringe, and then clean all that mess.
Once you have a list of the things you are considering reducing or eliminating, move on to the second question: “what would bring me joy?” And then do that.
If it means all the decorations, but no shopping in stores, fine. If it means less decorating, fewer baked goods, and a holiday dinner that includes fewer dishes or some store-prepared items instead of homemade, also fine. Maybe instead of homemade gifts for everyone, it’s a good year to purchase them; or perhaps instead of buying things, it’s a good year to make donations on behalf of the recipients.
Again, the two questions are “what commitments are draining the life out of me” and “what would bring me joy”?
Answer those two for yourself, and then choose joy. It will make you—and likely everyone around you—feel more relaxed, happy, and satisfied this holiday season.
