Embrace Joy

My class agents were kind enough to give me 10 minutes of our 45-year reunion class meeting. Here it is, courtesy of my friend and classmate Todd Allen. The audio is not great, but it’s audible. Embrace Joy.

This is an experiment. I have been playing with AI and I created a low fidelity clone of what my voice sounded like before my strokes. I wrote up a podcast and gave it to my clone. This is what I got. If I like it, I will update with a video version with some slides. Looking back at my 2024, one of the first practices I started was gratitude. Being thankful for whatever things, even small ones, makes life better, happier. Being grateful releases dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. It is what makes it feel good. Those hormones also improve your health. They will help manage your blood pressure, and get better sleep. Improved sleep will contribute to better moods. It is basically a built in health and happiness generator. All you have to do is feed it with gratitude. Gratitude can improve your relationships. You will be in a better mood, and probably treat people more kindly. They will be nicer to you. As we will discuss in future episodes, positive relationships are good for happiness, but for now just know you will be happier if the people around you show kindness. And that is more likely if you engage in gratitude. Having gratitude, and being in a better mood, shifts the odds in your favor. You are more likely to have good things happen to you. It is  not positive thinking prosperity gospel talk, it is just the reality that being more open to positive events, you will notice them more. You will be happier with what you have rather than sad and striving for more At the root of it is that we love gratitude. Showing gratitude will, all by itself, make you happier. And along with that comes these other benefits that increase your happiness and health. My initial gratitude practice was all in my head since I did not have enough arm strength or control to write. I suppose I could have used my phone and dictated voice memos. If I could pick up my phone. Each day, at the end of the day I would think of three things from that day for which I was grateful. Real things. They could be small, inconsequential things, but they had to be real. And I had to focus on really feeling the gratitude. For me, that feeling is a warm, open feeling in my upper chest. Kind of like my heart is growing, encompassing more of the world.  At first, I tried to be totally strict about avoiding repeats, but, after a year and a half, I focus more on the item being fresh from the day. Unusual is good, but I no longer strive for unique. I don’t do “breakfast was good” day after day, but the occasional “those eggs Benedict were wonderful” is just fine. I’ll be honest, Mother’s day eating Indian Food with my family topped that day’s list.  As time passed and my arm got better, I started a gratitude journal. I don’t just write a quick three bullets of gratitude. I take a few minutes and write about the items I am grateful for and why. It helps me to really feel gratitude when I do that. One of my early entries: The view outside my window is green and lets me believe in life. Seeing the greenness reminds me of growth. And healing. It reminds me that I want to live. And grow. And especially heal I drank water. This is a big deal for me. I was able to pick up my water mug, now that I had Rachel buy a smaller one I can lift. I was able to swallow without aspirating. This gives me hope about getting the feeding tube removed and eating real food again. Plus that icy feeling of cold water down my throat is great. My brother read to me. I can’t pick up even my small Kindle yet, but I had Hank here to read some Murderbot to me. I think I might have hooked him. Over a year later, it turns out my brother loved Murderbot and has just started watching it on Apple TV. There is nothing Earth shattering or big on that list. Nothing great and stupendous happened that day. But those items are real. I felt them in my heart. I felt them again writing today’s podcast. I had to rehearse the podcast so I could get through those without tearing up too much. So now I am going to leave you with homework. It is simple. Grab or buy a journal you can use for gratitude. Or start it on the computer, but do it a bit before bedtime and lay off the extra light stimulation at bed time. Use your journal every night to write down three things for which you are grateful and maybe just a little bit of why. Make it real. Make it yours. Be genuinely grateful. Embrace Joy.

Hi and welcome to Embrace Joy. Embrace Joy is about finding joy and having happiness in your life no matter your circumstances. I am Rob Sartin, your host and owner of Embrace Joy LLC. Together, we are going to explore happiness. We will talk about  the elements of happiness. We will find how to be happy even if our life sucks. We investigate what happiness really is, and is not. We will look into the reasons you are not as happy as you could be, and how to be happier. We will learn about finding joy in the journey of life, even if it is a bumpy road.

This talk was from a LEAD group meeting for Earth Day run by Rehab without Walls. Rob was working with his speech therapist on improving his breath control and timing, and maintaining volume. He had recently received an injection into his vocal folds, but it had not yet fully taken effect. This speech set his then-current standing record. He covers a short version of his stroke and delusions and offers advice on how to be happier. He recommends: starting a gratitude journal of three items making and maintaining friendships access to nature meditating to help understand and manage your thoughts and emotions. Final advice is two things, a thought and an activity. The thought is to remember that you can find joy and happiness anywhere. You simply need to seek the good. Turn on the light. The activity is gratitude as a habit. Every night write down three things for which you are grateful, genuinely grateful. Even if they are tiny things like “lunch tasted good.” Feel gratitude. As deeply as you can. Every day. Embrace joy.