Category Archives: Intention

joy in 2018

Bring More Joy into Your Life in 2018

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Dr. Christine Carter, a sociologist, coach, and happiness expert at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, about how to bring more joy into your life this year. I hope you enjoy her blog piece based on the interview which I've included below. You can also read it on her blog site here. Dr. Carter also just released a great new book entitled The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work. I highly recommend it! Like a wise friend you can depend on, Dr. Carter takes you by the hand and, with gentle encouragement, shows you step by step how to create true well-being in your life. Honest, playful, unpretentious and chock …

letting in love

Letting in the Love

Here are two lovely clips in conversation with Linda Graham, author of Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being, from 2013's Awakening Joy course. I hope you enjoy them. Letting in the Love In this conversation with Linda Graham I share my practice of letting in the love from all around us. This practice re-trains the mind and heart to shift the way we hold ourselves towards worthiness and seeing the goodness inside. Linda responds by showing how we can become reminders of that for each other. She also shares her personal main practices for awakening joy. To watch this video on Youtube, please visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOiXop4jqPo You Have a Choice In this video Linda makes the point that who we are is not …

loving the truth

Loving the Truth

The most direct way to access true happiness is to bring more consciousness into our lives. In order to do that, we have to be willing to take an honest look at our experience. This can often be a challenging endeavor. It’s been said that self-awareness is usually bad news. But the alternative is going through our lives unconsciously. That route almost guarantees repeating habitual behavior based in greed or aversion that will likely lead to more suffering for others and ourselves. We might think that ignorance is bliss but in the long run, as we are willing to face the truth, we can wake up and create genuine well-being for ourselves. Something deep within us loves the truth. We are …

widening your intention

Widening Your Intention

Excerpt from Awakening Joy by James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander Whatever motivates you to grow in happiness becomes the wind in the sails of your intention. It might seem pretty obvious why you would want to be happy, but if you take a look at your motives, you might find a few other reasons. Maybe you believe that if you have more joy, you’ll make more money, or you’ll get the right guy or the great gal. Those are not necessarily bad reasons for intending to be happy, but you might also consider opening up to other options. The more inspiring your motivation, the more energy you can bring to fulfilling your intention. In 1994, I was invited to a conference for …

Intention

Dear Friends, We’ve recently started the Awakening Joy course. It's exciting even after 15 years to support so many in having more fulfilling lives. At the live class in Berkeley as I looked out at the sea of people and thought of all the many more taking the course online, a familiar thought occurred to me, “How did that happen? How did that little, insecure boy from Elmhurst, Queens get to do this?” Our first course theme is Intention. And looking back on my life I can see that once I had an intention that inspired me, life supported me as long as I kept listening honestly inside and showed up. From my current perspective I see everything in my life has been …