Joy is also a bit unsettling(causing anxiety), even scary. Feeling joyful is so wonderful that it can make you feel vulnerable and afraid of losing that joy. Brené describes that experience as foreboding(a strong feeling that something terrible is going to happen) joy. It’s what happens when you watch your children while they’re sleeping, and feel an enormous stab of joy(a sudden, intense, and overwhelming feeling of joy) accompanied by a deep and irrational fear that something terrible will happen to them. It’s a way of rehearsing tragedy in your mind in an attempt to make it feel less painful when it actually happens because in the moment of joy you realize how much you actually have to lose.

Most of us are so used to foreboding joy that we don’t even consciously realize what we’re doing. We start to feel like it’s normal, or realistic to expect the worst. But living that way costs you the incredible benefits of freely experiencing joy. 

There’s a man who Brené interviewed in her study on vulnerability who’d gone through(to experience something unpleasant) his life expecting the worst, as a kind of emotional armor. And then the worst actually happened to him. His wife died in a car accident. He realized that his previously pessimistic outlook had done nothing to prepare him for that painful event. All it did was rob him of(take something away from)the ability to fully enjoy the time he’d had with his wife when she was alive.

To allow yourself to experience joy is to practice appreciating what you have, in the moment that you have it. In fact, researchers have found that joy and gratitude are linked, in what they describe as a positive “upwards spiral.” If gratitude is one of our traits, we’ll have more experiences of joy in the moment. If we’re joyous types, we’ll have more moments of feeling grateful. The emotions positively reinforce(strengthen) each other. 

کانال عادت های اتمی: @english_prism

کانال موزیک: @Luminous_music

کانال مکالمات روزمره: @foroughpapi

پیج اینستاگرام: luminous__english

Castbox channel: luminous english

📚هایلایت قسمت سیزدهم خلاصه کتاب 

Atlas of the heart

✅unsettling : اضطراب آور

✅scary : ترسناک

✅joyful : شاد

✅vulnerable : آسیب پذیر

✅foreboding : نگران کننده

✅terrible : وحشتناک

✅enormous: بزرگ

✅accompanied by: همراه با

✅rehearsing : تمرین کردن

✅tragedy : تراژدی

✅attempt : تلاش

✅consciously : آگاهانه

✅expect : انتظار داشتن

✅incredible : عالی

✅benefits : مزایا

✅freely: آزادانه

✅experiencing : تجربه کردن

✅interview : مصاحبه

✅Go through : تجربه کردن

✅armor : زره

✅previously : قبلی

✅pessimistic : منفی

✅outlook : نگرش

✅rob sb of sth: چیزی رو از کسی گرفتن

✅appreciating : قدر دان بودن

✅gratitude : سپاسگزاری

✅upwards spiral : مارپیچ رو به بالا

✅traits : خصوصیات

✅positively : بطور مثبت

✅reinforce : تقویت کردن

➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖➖