Did you ever realize that you were living a “joyful life”? Do you know what your joyful life is? Does your life dwell more on your positive or more on your negative connections? Maybe this pearl can help you understand what your joyful life really is and give you the ability to live a more positive, happier life.
What is Joy?
Joy is one of our four basic emotions (anger, fear, joy & sorrow) whose survival purpose is “to alert us to our possible connections” (connections are important to us: people, stuff, etc.) and triggers socializer memories about that connection. It may seem absurd (especially for weak socializers) that joy is our most used emotion, but it’s true. Since joy alerts us to any possible connection, we continuously express it through the day to a greater or lesser degree. Every person and every object we sense is a possible connection. If it isn’t a connection we dismiss it and move on to considering another possible connection, on and on.
When you think of all of the things/people you sense in a day your joy would seem endless if not oppressive. Luckily, the joy that you feel (the epinephrine surge in your heart) may or may not be triggered depending on the sensory information you consider. Here is how it works:
1…Sensory neurons send sensory data to the thalamus.
2…The thalamus slightly increases the excitation of a joy memory in the amygdala (indicating a possible connection), but it is NOT excited enough to trigger a joy reaction.
3…The thalamus simultaneously excites sensory memories with that sensory data, which excite rational socializer memories, making them available to the PFC for consideration.
4…If enough sensory memories are excited (indicating a true connection) they excite that joy memory’s neurons enough to trigger a joy reaction. Also, the rational socializer memories connected to those sensory memories are made available to the PFC to sort out the reason for the joy, quell it and move on.
5…The amygdala also sends a surge of epinephrine to the heart as it wipes the PFC clear to consider only those connected socializer memories.
When only a few sensory memories fire, steps 4 & 5 never happen—it’s not a connection and there’s no joy or epinephrine surge in the heart.
If the above description is difficult to follow—maybe an analogy will help. Think of your rational and emotional memories as DVD’s, your PFC as a DVD player and your sensory memories as a DJ that selects the DVD’s to play. Thus, sensory data excite sensory memories that select which emotional and rational DVD’s (memories) to play and the PFC plays them; simple.
The more important a connection is to us the more sensory, emotional and rational neurons are fired. Increased sensory data fire more sensory memories that excite/fire more socializer memories, producing a greater excitation of the joy memory that results in a greater surge of epinephrine in the heart. This is also a measure of our “Joyful Love”—the more we love someone/something the more sensory, joy and socializer memories are fired and the greater the surge of epinephrine in our heart.
Immediately after the joy is triggered, related socializer memories determine whether it is a positive or negative connection. The joy can be intense, and the more intense it is the more important that connection is to us whether positive or negative—it’s a social survival mechanism. Sometimes those socializer memories represent both positive and negative experiences with that connection and we aren’t sure how to react to them, especially when they might trigger our anger or fear.
Most people equate joy with happiness and the dictionary defines happiness as: “enjoying, showing or marked by pleasure, satisfaction or joy”. I am defining “happiness” here as: “when we dwell on our positive socializer memories”, which contain our hopeful, optimistic, pleasurable and cheerful memories. Thus, to lead a happier life it is best to contemplate our positive socializer memories about our connections in lieu of angry director, fearful analyzer or sorrowful relator memories about them.
How Positive and Negative Joy affects Your Happiness
The socializer memories that are connected to a joy memory determine our relationship with that connection. If he/she is a loved one, the daily joy they evoke can be meager to immense, depending on how long it’s been since we last saw them. Thus the phrase, “absence makes the heart grow fonder” is actually true, but it refers to the level of the epinephrine surge in our hearts.
The more positive socializer memories you share with a connection the greater your joyful love will be with them; thus joyful love increases with time and positive experiential memories. When having these positive joyful moments, try dwelling on them and resist replacing them with task-related thoughts or negative thoughts. It has been proven that people who lead a more positive joyful life live happier, healthier and longer lives.
The more negative socializer memories you share with a connection the more limited your joyful love, which decreases with time and negative thoughts. When you have these joy-triggered negative moments it is best to quickly dismiss them (tell yourself to “shut up”) and think about the positive experiences that you have had with that connection. But, if that negative connection is too painful to deal with it is better to avoid them until that pain has diminished. The fact is, the more you dwell on any negative memory the more you will experience a loveless and unhealthy life. Bottom line: negative thoughts darken our lives while positive thoughts brighten our lives, so as the song goes, “…you have to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative…”
What is a Life Without Joy?
Sensory memories either trigger or prevent joy and their attached socializer memories. And the more sensory neurons that fire the greater will be your joy. There is though the other extreme of joy that’s worth mentioning—what might be called a “joyless void”. When joy recognizes a positive connection it creates a chain of positive socializer memories about that connection. That chain starts with the recognition of that positive connection and then branches off to other positive memories related to them—but what if that chain is completely broken?
For example, you might be traveling through a town that you have traveled to many times where positive connections exist. As you pass through you might conger up joyful socializer memories about visiting someone that you have a strong positive connection with. But when you realize that that positive connection no longer lives there you will then go down that chain to positive memories about other connections (people or places) in that town that you might want to visit—the socializer style motivates you to seek out connections. But if every connection in that town is gone your chain of joyful thoughts is broken and you will end up in a “joyless void”. This void is opposite to the happiness you felt when those connections were there. This void creates hopelessness that may last for seconds or be dispelled with other thoughts—but while it lasts it is truly devastating. I was wondering if this joyless void and disconnection is what plagues depressed people—and for more than just a few seconds.
The dictionary defines depression as: “a condition characterized by an inability to concentrate, insomnia, and feelings of extreme sadness, dejection, and hopelessness”. That “joyless void” would create such a hopeless situation. Loss of all joy would make us feel dejected and hopeless, offering no positive recourse. And that total disconnection from our connections could create the ultimate sorrow. To get out of this void the depressed person might conger up positive socializer memories, which might not be easy to do, especially when there is no amygdala joy to naturally trigger those positive memories—thus, they have to be triggered rationally. To trigger them rationally the depressed person would have to consciously think positive thoughts and dwell on the positive joy that they bring—and being reminded of those positive experiences by others helps. Anything that dissuades them from of their “joyless void” and “sorrow of disconnection” can help—well, at least that seems plausible to me.
I am a right-brain person who is very strong in the angry “get it done” director style and strong in the joyful socializer style. Recently I was infected by some unknown insect that caused my left arm to swell up and turn yellow. It also affected my brain, creating “static in my head” and making me listless and mentally fatigued for weeks. I also lost my strong director drive to get things done and absolutely nothing gave me joy. After various therapies the brain static diminished and my “get it done” drive came back—my joy also came back and now I am my usual self. Unfortunately my natural anger also came back. I now look at this experience as a gift that allowed me to momentarily lead a life without anger (actually without any emotions). I never realized that my subtle anger was so obvious to others, but not to me. I now am much more aware of these subtle angry thoughts and try to immediately replace them with positive joyful thoughts—it’s not easy to do, but it works most of the time.
The Smiles Have It
Every emotion, whether basic or rational, has it’s own natural facial expression and there are specific eye muscles that only contract when we express basic (amygdala) joy. Joy automatically triggers a natural “smile of the eyes” that is engaging and makes others want to engage us; that’s why it exists survival-wise. Smiles are contagious, making us smile when others smile at us and making us love each other more, or at least dislike each other less. We will maintain that instantaneous smile, unless the excited socializer memories deem that connection to be negative, producing a “smile of the mouth” and a switch to the natural facial expression of the emotion that is rationally triggered (anger, fear, sorrow). There is also a bonus to a positive smile, it makes us more attractive to others…think about it—everybody who smiles is more attractive than those who frown.
I hope that this pearl about your joyful life has allowed you to see it in a more positive light and gives you clues about experiencing more joyful love. The final pearl in this four-part series is about "That Caring Feeling" and why we emotionally react the same to other’s good fortune and misfortune.
