Follow Your Highest Excitement - WTF Does That Even Mean?
If you live and consume information in my bubble of the universe, then you will hear the a lot of people talk about “following your highest excitement” these days.
I’m one of those.
Oops.
I actually adjusted it a little and moved from excitement to joy. It just vibes better with me. “Highest excitement” feels a little too intense for me. I like things a little more peaceful and chill and slow.
So even though I don’t mind experiencing excitement in my body, I find joy more sustainable and long-term.
Highest excitement feels like chasing peak experiences, whereas joy feels like riding a nice gentle fun wave.
Here is what living a life guided by the mantra “following my joy” means to me:
doing what feels good to me in the moment
embracing the flow of my days and life
saying no to things that don’t spark joy at all —> letting go of should-ing myself and putting pressure on myself to do something
asking “Why am I you doing this?” —> Because if its not for the joy, then why do it? - money? Why for the money?
integrating play into my daily life and relationships
Following the joy is like being and living like a kid. Take a four year old. Observe it.
“If you have a child of two or three, or can borrow one, let her give you beginning lessons in looking.”
—Corita Kent and Jan Steward, Learning By Heart
They do this and then they do that, they glide from one activity to another, just as they feel it in their body. They follow their inner guidance as they play and do whatever speaks their joy at any given time. They go back and forth between activities to then come back to one or the other.
It’s quite amazing.
But as we grow up, we learn that we have to do things we don’t want to do.
We learn that we have to always do things that have a purpose.
We are told that we can’t just have fun and be joyful all the time.
But you know what - we operate, give and are of service the best when we allow ourselves to do what sparks joy in us.
Can I always follow the joy?
I try to. It’s my North Star.
But being a human in a modern world also means that sometimes I have to do things I don’t particularly enjoy or that I need to do.
For example, I don’t enjoy responding to admin emails, make calls to the bank, or fixing something that broke (like a website).
I try to outsource things like that as much as possible.
The way I follow my joy is to trust the messages of my body.
The body never lies.
As Bashar says, when we follow our joy, we are on the shortest path to what we want.