Stop Waiting for Happiness: Why Conditional Joy Kills Your Relationship

Do you feel like joy is just not your day to day experience and you wish it was? Are you looking for more joy? Are you ready for more joy? If you answered yes to any of this, you don't want to miss a beat of this episode. Okay, we're going. Okay. Three, two, one. I'm Rebecca Silence, national marriage and family specialist here with you on the show the healing is possible experience. This is a show designed to bring you back home to you resting in your unshakable wholeness. I am so honored to be here. And today's episode is the fourth in a series of five episodes where I give you an overview of the five biggest signs you've lost yourself in your marriage or your primary relationship and what to do about it. Today we're talking about the sign that your joy has become conditional as an indication that you've lost yourself in your relationship. If your joy is contingent on or determined by your partner changing, I just lovingly want to suggest we're in trouble here and that leaves you reactive and powerless, giving all of the power for you to experience joy to your partner. And we don't want that. So before I go any further, if you haven't already, please subscribe to the Rebecca Silence YouTube channel. Please hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so you can get all of the up to the minute latest material. And if there's anyone you know and love that needs this content, please share it with them. Please. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here, for wanting to be your best for those you love and for the world. And without further ado, let's talk about the three ways to take your joy back. Because your joy being conditional, I just want to suggest that's something you learned that doesn't have to be gospel or truth. It's not a law that your joy can't happen until and unless or as long as. So what are the ways that you back burner your own joy because of something someone said, something going on, something someone did? Can you just take a minute and journal? What is it that has me back burnering my joy without meaning to is that I don't think I can be happy unless my partner's happy? Is it I don't think I can be happy unless my kids are doing well in my perception and in my opinion, is it I can't be happy or experience joy unless my body's a certain size or there's a certain amount of money in the bank? What are the ways that you deprioritize your own joy because of circumstance and because of life. Really sit with that question. Knowing how innocent and gorgeous you are. This takes courage. I want us to practice a lot of courageous curiosity today. And I want us to listen from a place where of neutrality and curiosity. Because you're not doing anything wrong. It's just you don't have to wait for joy another second. Especially when it comes to your relationships, especially in the area of love and marriage and partnership. Your ability to be joy and bring joy and experience. Experience joy. That's what's going to keep joy in your life, in your vibration. And not only in a way that you're experiencing it, but in a way where it becomes your essence. And when joy becomes your essence, that's medicine. That's medicine for every life you touch. So let's break it down. What are the three ways that without meaning to, we innocently have joy become a condition instead of the rule that we live by? So honestly, the first reason why is we haven't seen joy as a default setting for the people that we love growing up. If you're honest with yourself, and this is another great question to journal, on scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most, 1 being the least, give each of your parents a grade. How joyful were they? Was one of them maybe a two, one of them maybe a five or six? Have you seen anyone, 10 out of 10, joy in your life just no matter what, not they're joyful because they got the promotion or the relationship or the body or they finished a marathon or whatever it is that they achieved, but just because. Have you ever seen it? For so many of us, that's a really hard no. We see joy in glimpses. We see joy determined by now we're on vacation. So I have permission to be joyful now, I got that accolade, so I have permission to be joyful. But have you seen anyone joyful? Just because. Have you seen anyone radiating joy? Not toxic positivity, joy as the rule, not the exception. For almost all of us, the answer is absolutely not. We see joy as the exception, which means from there we expect it to be the exception. Which also means we don't believe it gets to be our norm, our day to day our experience. And this is such a big conversation because most of us don't a realize that was the model. So that's why my experience of joy is limited. But we also don't want to have more joy than the people we love. What does that mean about me if I have people I love? That are struggling, that are suffering, that are good people and they deserve better. But this is their reality right now. And they're close to me and I care about them. How do I get to have all of this joy and radiate and vibrate from the highest expression of myself when the people I love and care about, they're just going through it right now? Here's what I want to challenge and here's what I want to suggest. What if the more joy you become and express and embody, the more you model that possibility for everyone around you? I think the biggest reason why joy isn't the rule for most people is because they haven't made that their standard and they haven't accepted that it's okay that they can give themselves permission to be more joyful and to experience more joy than most people, especially the people they love. But let's not discount how powerful it is to model joy as a rule that we can all live by. Not some of us, all of us. And again, not in a way where we're faking it until we make it, but it's just who we are. And from there we model that as a possibility for every life we touch, every life we touch. And joy isn't a careless energy. Joy is powerful and magnetic and healing. So you being joyful, while sure it may be confronting to some it's not doing any harm. And in fact it's promoting wellness and well being and hope. The more you are joy, the more light you are radiating and the more you're a lighthouse. As cliche as that sounds, we need you in your joy and you don't have to be threatened and you don't have to fear that it means you care less. I think the more joyful you are, the more you care because you understand vibration and you understand energy and you understand that your vibration and your energy has a ripple when you're rippling joy. It's medicine when you're rippling. Paula, let me just say that part again. When you're a ripple of withholding joy or dumbing down, dimming down how much joy you have in you to bring and give now, you're a ripple that's back burnering joy. It's not a bad thing to be joy even when you have people you love that just aren't there yet. It's a wonderful gift and it's you an example and you being an example. It's your right. And we actually need you more joyful. Your family needs you, your kids need you joyful. Your Friends, your community, your customers, your clients, your team. And I can be joy and be authentically vulnerable. This is such an important point. What I mean by that is I don't have to pretend like something hard didn't happen to be Joy. I just get to be me no matter what. And that's the definition of joy. I want to offer you. Joy is you being you no matter what, the best of you, no matter what. And there's never a reason to not step into the best of you and your joy ever. The second big point I have for us today is we're afraid of the darker emotions, which means we limit our ability to access and experience the lighter ones. Now, if you're new to me, I. I just teach five emotions. That's it. I think Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart, as gorgeous as that book is, talks about more than 80 emotions. I'm going to give us five, and I'm going to suggest everything, Everything. Everything else is learned, and it's how we're coping. Okay? So the five emotions I teach are anger, fear, grief, joy, excitement. If we have difficulty with anger, fear and grief, we don't get access to joy and excitement. If we're trying to numb or protect ourselves from anger, fear, or grief, we don't get to have more joy or excitement. And for so many people, again, it's this unconscious belief and expectation that these darker emotions are something to avoid that has us unconsciously avoiding joy and excitement as well. So for some of us, the darker emotions are the difficult place for us to go and to express and to release and to trust and to have a healthy relationship with. And that means our relationship to joy and excitement so stays at the same level that our relationship to anger, grief and fear are. The other piece of it is some of us just don't trust joy or excitement. You know, I know for me, excitement especially was a very difficult emotion growing up and even as an adult for many years, because I thought, if I'm excited, something bad is going to happen. I was so abused growing up, I thought the abuse was happening, particularly sexual abuse, because of this emotion called excitement. Now, of course, I didn't have the words for that, but that's unconsciously what I made up. And I didn't think you could have joy without excitement, so I didn't trust the light. And for many of you, that's a thing. We're not trusting the lighter emotion of joy. We think it comes with the other shoe dropping or something bad is going to happen if I let myself have joy. What's going to happen next is a very real world that so many people are living in. And I just want to neutralize that today and suggest that you experiencing joy, it's never going to hurt anyone. It's never going to threaten anything, and it's never going to mean now. You have to brace for another shoe dropping. Life's being life. Whatever happened, it was already going to happen. It has nothing to do with do with how joyful you allow yourself to be. And I do think joy is something we allow. Joy is something we are, but it's also something we allow. So are you giving yourself permission to be joy? Are you giving yourself permission to allow joy? Those are the first two big pieces I want to address today. A great question to meditate on or journal about is if I allow joy into my life as the rule versus the exception, what would happen? How would that change my life? What would that look like? Let yourself go here. If I allow joy as the rule of my life, what kind of a life is that? Meditate on it. Journal about it. The next piece of homework, if you're up for it, that I want to offer you is please read chapter two of my book. Please. If you want to understand more about how to navigate the darker emotions and how to allow yourself to receive more of the lighter emotions. In my book, Coming Back to Life, A Roadmap to Healing From Pain to Create the Life youe Want, chapter two, it's a gold mine. It's a treasure trove of information about how to have healthier relationships with all five of those emotions. And what I teach is that healing is freedom. And we're not free until and unless we have healthy relationships with all five of those emotions in a way where we don't need life to be different for us to be joy. Check out chapter two of the book, You Won't Regret It. Now, the third big point I have for us today. Notice how so far I'm really not talking about your partner at all. Right? We started the show by saying joy has become a condition and that has you feeling lost in your marriage. You can't have joy unless until conditionally. That can be how it was. That doesn't have to be how it continues. And what I want you to understand is that if your joy is conditional just one more time, you've given your power away. And what today is about are the three ways to not just take your joy back, but. But to take your power back so that you can be joy. And that doesn't mean Your partner isn't doing what they're doing. That doesn't mean that the disconnection isn't real or the bad behavior isn't real, or the lack of congruence and flow and intimacy that you're looking for isn't there right now. But I want to empower you to try on what I'm sharing today before you just go kicking your partner to the curb, because the pattern will repeat. You'll still be experiencing conditional joy in your relationships. I promise. I don't want that for you. That's just how it works, right? So I'm not giving your partner a free pass today, but I am empowering and liberating you. Just because you haven't seen it before and doesn't mean you can't become it. Just because you haven't known how to allow joy doesn't mean you can't start today. And then the final piece that I want to share with you on how to break through joy being conditional at home in your marriage is I want you to use your children or someone you love as your carrot, as your motivator. If you can't do it for you yet, do it for them. Maybe it's your own inner child. I always think about growing up in the 80s, there used to be those Got Milk Commercials. And I remember watching the commercial and wondering, who's the version of me as an adult that at some point will be looking back at me? I don't know if you ever saw those commercials. I'm sure you can find them on YouTube, right? But the kid would be looking up at this gorgeous, healed, whole rock star version of themselves. And I always wondered, huh, who's the me looking back at me gonna be? And for me, I do it for my daughters and for my inner child. That at my essence, at my core, was joy and love and light, purely. And I really believe that each and every one of us are born joy and love and light. And I work with the generational healers and the cycle breakers in the family. And does everything always have to go back to our childhoods? Yes and no. Our inner child decided somewhere along the line that joy just wasn't a possibility, or that joy was a threat, or that joy was fleeting, whatever it might be. What did your inner child decide about joy? And what does your inner child long for when it comes to joy? These are massive questions, but it really is this simple to go, wait a minute. I'm the hero. My inner child has been waiting for. I'm the hero. My kids are Waiting for to model joy as the rule, not the exception. Even in dark and difficult moments and seasons of life, we can be joy. Brendan Burchard, bringing the joy. We can be joy, we can allow joy, and we can bring the joy. These are the three big takeaways I hope you take and run with into your day and into your week. When you can't do it for you yet, that's okay. Who are you bringing the joy for? Be joy, allow joy, bring joy for those around you, for your inner child, for the ripple effect that you want to be a part of and you're part of healing the collective. So what I want to leave us with is a guided meditation. And if you're able, I would invite you to close your eyes or at least rest and relax them. If you're not driving and if you're comfortable. And I want you to imagine a life where you're free, a life where joy is how you feel almost 100% of the time. And I want you to notice your thoughts in this moment, and I want you to challenge them. Any part of your brain, any part of your mind, any part of your ego that's saying, yeah, right, Rebecca, I just want you to gently blow those thoughts a kiss and put them in timeout in the corner for a moment. Joy for breakfast, joy for lunch, joy for dinner. Joy as the energy and vibration, that's the truth of who you are, can become your new foundation, your new baseline. Not something to strive for anymore, because it's what you rest in. It's your starting point. What's life like then? Now imagine going through your days, and every life you meet, every heart you meet, gets a little taste of your energy. Can you see the power in that? Can you see the significance of your commitment to joy is healing everywhere you go. What if you're that powerful? And what if you don't have to be afraid of that power or anxious about it or running from it? Just for today, will you make a commitment to allow joy to be your starting point. Now, I want you to see someone's face that you're doing this for so that in the moments you can't do it for yourself, you do it for them. Who is it? Whose face is it your inner child? Is it one of your children? Is it your partner? Your best friend, your parent, your grandparent? Pick one face. This person is your joy compass. From here on out, please know your best is enough. Please know you get to turn the volume up on your joy, and that only means good. Please know joy is your birthright and the world needs you and your joy more than ever before. Now take a deep breath, and when you're ready, open your eyes, knowing I'm meeting you here. Thank you for coming with me this far today. Thank you for being someone who wants to be joy and wants to allow joy and wants to bring joy. Just for today, let your day be about joy and then try it again tomorrow and then try it again the next day. Watch magic happen. And any pushback that comes your way, just consider it was already there. And you can either let that pushback be another condition that limits your joy, or you can practice going, I don't turn down my joy for anyone or for any reason. Now in this season, as this version of me so powerful, don't forget, please to get my book. You can listen to it, you can read it, but chapter two, if nothing else, chapter two. And for more goodness and free resources, please visit rebeccasilence.com thank you for being here. This is the healing as possible experience. I am your host, Rebecca. Silence. I love you. I want so much more joy for you. And I'll see you soon. Okay, we're going. Okay. Three, two, one.