What a Grand Slam taught me about JOY

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Tuesday night, we headed to the Royals game (full post coming soon, as it was on our Summer Bucket List), and something amazing happened. It’s the bottom of the 5th inning, the Royals are down 4-0, and the bases are loaded for Alex Gordon. He has a 3-0 count. I have a feeling something sweet is going to happen, so I asked Jenny to be prepared with the camera just in case. Sure enough, Alex Gordon rips a shot over the right field fence for a grand slam. Max went crazy (see picture above)!

The rest of the night, I couldn’t help but think about what experiencing things for the first time felt like. Pure JOY. And, kids experience LOTS of things for the first time, which leads to lots of JOY. Trying foods you’ve never had before and liking them, JOY. Riding a roller coaster that goes upside down for the first time, JOY. Jumping over sprinklers instead of through them, JOY. Seeing your first grand slam hit live, JOY. Darn near every day there’s something new in their life, and look how much happier kids are. There has to be a correlation, right? I know it’s hard as adults to find new things to experience every day, how do we even have time?

One thought led to another and it hit me (I’ve realized I have a very scatterbrained way of looking at the world). Give a kid a water hose and watch how many different ways they’ll play with it. What if, instead of focusing on grand, huge exciting things as new experiences, we just looked at the things in our daily life, the everyday, normal things differently. The next time you make a peanut butter sandwich, instead of cutting it down the middle, or diagonal, cut it into fun shapes. Maybe make a double decker sandwich. Challenge yourself to look at things in a new way. Wouldn’t life be more fun that way? Wouldn’t you find more JOY?

Another example, how many times do we roll out of bed grumpy, bummed out that we have to go to work or do whatever it is we all do everyday. What if, we set our alarms to wake us up with our favorite dancing song and we just cut loose the second we woke up (thanks Melissa for that wonderful idea)? Wouldn’t that be a better, more JOYful way to start the day? Pick a different song every day and you’ve got yourself a new experience every single morning.

What if we picked something we’ve always wanted to do, a new skill, a book we’ve always wanted to read. Maybe it’s playing the guitar, or learning how to finger knit (by the way, Ava + I learned how to do that in 5 minutes yesterday, it’s fun!) What if we got up 30 minutes earlier every day and devoted those precious 30 minutes to new experiences? Would that lead to more JOY in our lives? What if we pick up something we’ve grown tired of and learn to see it in a new light?

You see, we, as parents, have the opportunities to raise our kids so they never lose their childlike wonder. They look at everything that way, and we can, too. I think a lot about how my life would be different if I never lost that childlike wonder, and I know I can’t change whats happened in the past, I can only choose to change going forward. I can make the choices to look at the world like I’m a child again. In doing so, I will teach my kids to always seek out the JOY in life, and you can, too.

After all, it comes down to our mindset. Are we cultivating a mindset that will bring us JOY? Or are we going through the motions?

So, I have to ask, when was the last time you experienced something for the first time?