Jumping for Joyful July

This week marks the start of Joyful July, this month’s theme for our 12 months of healthiness campaign.

This month we’ll be looking at some of the ways you can stay joyful and create a life that’s happy and more fulfilling. We’ll provide you with tips to boost your mental health and help you be happier, more in control and able to cope better with anything life throws at you.

There are lots of things that bring us joy in our lives. Whether it’s looking forward to a summer holiday or simply walking the dog, we all have different levels of feeling content and happy. Make sure you fill your life with joy for better health and wellbeing.

Being joyful is about inspiration, passion and motivation. It’s about setting goals and taking time out to do the things you really enjoy doing. When you are joyful, your whole body benefits, especially your heart and your mind.

Here are 5 ways to add more joy to your life

1. Keep it simple

Do you find you often have so much on your plate it’s difficult to even think about enjoying the good things in life? If so, it may be time to take a serious look at what is truly important to you. If you can cut out the unnecessary, you leave yourself with more time to do what truly makes you happy. Try to stop overstretching yourself, learn to say no every so often, and make time for yourself and the people you love.

2. Make a conscious decision to enjoy life more

Once you intentionally decide to be more joyful, you will find more reasons to be happy on a regular basis.

3. Make your own personal joy list

Writing a list of the things that make you happy is a good way to trigger positive, joyful feelings. It can also remind you to do these things more often. Try to write down at least 10 things that make you happy, then strive to incorporate those things into your life on a daily basis.

4. Spend more time with the people you love and with others who make you smile

People who encourage social networks and a sense of community tend to be more joyful than those who don’t. Happiness is contagious, so the more time you spend with happy people, the more happiness will spread to you and your friends.

5. Be kind to someone else

When you go out of your way to make someone else feel good, you will often find yourself feeling good as well. Sometimes all it takes is a random act of kindness. This could be a small compliment or a smile to brighten up someone’s day, which in turn will make you feel happier and better about yourself.

By making conscious decisions to let joy in, reminding yourself of the things you have to be happy about, and creating more time to do the things you love and spend time with the people you care about – we can all choose to have joy in our lives!

What are you doing this month that will bring you joy? Post a comment below to let us know what you’ll be getting up to.

You can also share your stories with the Communications team. You never know, your activities may feature on our intranet AskHUE!