Life can be hard. Life doesn’t have to always be or feel hard. When we start to live our most authentic and fulfilling lives, joy automatically shows up. It’s what was always waiting. It’s what was always there.
Dan greets viewers, notes the time and introduces himself and today's theme, 'joy to the world.' This orients viewers to the video's topic and setting.
He recounts playing with his band in Los Angeles, the great turnout and performance, and how that experience brought him joy.
Dan reflects that joy wasn't on his radar for a long time and shares a conversation with a sponsee who feels underlying sadness despite moments of happiness. He highlights how persistent patterns can mask deeper feelings.
He argues that joy isn't dependent on external circumstances but on how one lives, even amid friends' serious struggles. He describes moments when joy 'pokes through'—music, sports, family time, and writing.
Dan urges viewers to find and keep doing activities that bring joy, calling joy a muscle to work and noting it can be recognized and practiced. He closes by encouraging listeners to give themselves the gift of joy and share it with the world.
Alrighty. Well, it is Saturday. 30 Pacific Time. And this is Cadre. This is Dan Griffin here again. And you know, the theme today is joy to the world. just kind of came into my head, really, I was just thinking about joy. And why was I thinking about joy? Well, because I did something that brings me a lot of joy last night. I played music. I played on a band that I've been with for eight years, great group of people. We played at a local venue here in Los Angeles, had a great turnout of people, played some really wonderful music, and we did it well.
And all of that brings me joy. And The truth is, joy was not really on my radar a lot for a long time. I mean, happiness, sure, I'd be like, okay, yeah, I could be happy. Like I was talking to a guy I sponsor in 12 step recovery today and he's like, my, he's like my, he's a great guy, very successful, great father and all this stuff. But he's like, my underlying or kind of default emotion seems to be sad. I was like, wow, I was like, that's significant, He's like, I feel happy A lot. But after the happiness, I go back to sadness.
And I like totally get that, right? and so I was just thinking about the fact like, but that's not my experience today. Like here I am and my life is better than it's ever been. And I'm like, I'm surrounded by people who are having tough times. I mean, like really tough times. One friend is dying. Another friend almost died or was in very serious condition. Another friend attempted suicide. Definitely not a lot of joy there. But what's my point? My point is that joy is not dependent on the world in which I live, right?
Joy is dependent on the life that I live in the world in which I live. And what I really believe is that joy is just, is always there, right? It's always there. It's all the stuff I put on top of it that keeps me from experiencing it. So when my little brain over the years of living in an alcoholic home and living with my own alcoholism got very trained to be cynical, to be critical, to be depressed, to be unhappy, all of that, joy poked through very little. Now joy pokes through with the music, pokes through with volleyball and pickleball and it pokes through with time with my wife, pokes through with time with my daughter, time with both of them.
I mean it can poke through at a lot of times. I'm working on a book and there's a lot of joy in just that act of writing right now that's just very fulfilling. And so all of that is a component of joy. And so my hope for you is that you find the things that bring you joy, you do the things that bring you joy, you keep doing the things that bring you joy because you deserve it, because it's worth it. And it's a muscle. It's a muscle that you have to work. I don't think it was joy right away with the music, or it might have been, but I didn't even recognize it.
took me a little while before I was like, oh my God, this is joy. Like this is This is really what I feel. I have no real attachment to what happens when we play music other than the experience of playing music and sharing it with others. So I hope you find some of that for yourself this week. Even if it's just one moment, I hope you take the time to give yourself the gift of joy. Because when you do that, you also help to bring joy to the rest of the world.
