What’s your Delight?

Delight is a word I use often.  When something happens or I see something that was wondrous, I’ve been know to exclaim, “That was delightful!”.  But I think I’m an anomaly, and my husband would agree and say that I’m an anomaly in so many ways.

Anyway, I was listening to The Science of Happiness podcast the other day and Dr. Laurie Santos was discussing how we’ve lost the fun factor in our lives and even she, who studies happiness, had seemed to have lost hers.  As she was finding ways to reclaim fun, she was introduced to Ross Gay who did an experiment on ‘delight’ and wrote the collection of essays called, “365 Days of Delight”.

Now before we get into his experiment, which will lead us into my own 30 Days of Delight experiment (that I hope you’ll join me on!), let’s take a look at some terms that relate to positivity and may be similar to delight.  I do this to help you make your own definition of what you find delightful.

There are different ways to express something positive.  I took the Science of Wellbeing course with Dr. Laurie Santos.  From that, I’ve learned that happiness is something we have to work on and it doesn’t just fall into our laps.  The things we think will make us happy, like money, power and stuff, are scientifically proven to NOT make us happy.  Things that make us happy, like social connection, acts of kindness, gratitude, savouring, exercise, sleep, meditation, and mindfulness, give us a sense of contentment and well, happiness.  (NOTE: you can take The Science of Wellbeing for free through Coursera.)

Joy is different than happiness.  You can Google it and get various definitions.  But to me, joy is more pervasive.  It comes from living with authenticity and in alignment with our values.  Think of a job that you may not be enjoying.  It may be because the job, employer or coworkers do not allow you to live in alignment with your personal values thus you don’t find joy in it.  Or think about having dreams and goals; if you never take a step towards fulfilling them you may be lacking in joy.

Fun is something else altogether.  Catherine Price is one of the few people who have studied fun.  In her book, “The Power of Fun”, she says that things we find fun have three components; they have an element of playfulness, connection and flow.   When we find fun, we are typically in a low stress state thus the pursuit of fun improves our health by keeping our stress levels down.  Things aren’t fun all the time, but we can certainly recall times when we’ve had fun because they stand out. Singing ‘Mr. Roboto’ with my friends in the car (I was lead, they were back up) was fun.  It was playful, we connected and we were certainly flowing with the song (If I must brag, we rocked it!).  We still talk about how fun it was, and I think about it every time I hear that song (which was absolutely not the worst song of the 80’s and I don’t care what Rob Lowe has to say about it!).

I also include awesomeness in the expression of positive things.  I’ve taken awesomeness to come from, “The Book of Awesome” by Neil Pasricha, which are things that are unexpected, make us feel less stress, or enhance our day.  He wrote the book with the intention of helping people become more resilient through mindfulness and identifying things that are awesome such as popping bubble wrap, hitting a bunch of green lights in a row, and wearing underwear just out of the dryer.

I look for things that would be included in my own “book of awesome” all the time and actually exclaim it out loud.  For example, trying to pull out of the driveway at work onto a very busy, traffic-filled roadway.  There are times I’ve had to wait 10 minutes to pull out turning left.  On the very odd day there is no traffic coming in either direction.  That is completely unexpected, reduces my stress and enhances my drive.  And I proclaim out loud as I’m turning left, “put that in the book of awesome!”

Delight, on the other hand, is even simpler.  Something that makes you smile, a small pleasure, wonder or mystery, or a spontaneous act of fun.  That’s my definition of delight.  It doesn’t have to be something grand.  The simpler, the better.  Then we know we can find and enjoy even the smallest things that we find, well, delightful.

Ross Gay found the impact to be the same as happiness, fun, joy and awesomeness: all of these things make us pay attention (be more mindful) of things that are good and positive in our lives.  It can change our mood, boost our overall happiness and well-being, and build resilience.

In his book, he shares the story of taking a tomato plant home from a friends’ place via air travel. So, he carried this little potted plant around the airport and on the plane with him.  He said the delight it brought him was amazing.  It made people smile.  People would talk to the plant.  The flight attendant asked no less than five times if the plant was doing okay.  When he got water he gave the plant a little also. It brought him social connection and brought delight to others also!

He had three rules for the delight project – do it everyday, write it with pen and paper, and keep it simple.  Some of the other things he wrote about include:

• things our bodies do that we have no control over like the laughing snort (guilty!)
• doing something wrong or badly and then yelling “do over” and starting again
• spontaneously singing to the radio
• noticing the first flowers of spring and that most of them are purple
• noticing little flowers growing in the sidewalk cracks

It can be anything you find delightful.  Yesterday, I went for a walk and got pretty close to a squirrel.  I spoke to it (as I always do) and he ‘spoke’ back.  He didn’t seem real happy that I was so close to his personal space and he made me laugh out loud.  His little face was so cute when he was looking at me and nattering away.  It brought me delight.  I apologized to him and carried on my way.  Today I learned how to use a template in Word and modify it! Ah, delightful!

Ross said that by doing this experiment he found more social connection when he shared the experience with others and found kindred spirits who found delight in the same things.  He also found that the more he paid attention to positive things, the more he noticed; to the point where he didn’t really have to search them out anymore.  He also found he was happier because he was more present and focusing on good things more often.  And as a wonderful side effect, he found he built his resilience.  Being mindful helps to build our resilience because we become aware of the present moment; we don’t ruminate about the past and we don’t worry about the future.  We are just in the now.  And if you are focusing on good and positive things also, of course, the benefit is even greater.

So, I am going to endeavour to experience 30 Days of Delight to see what impact it has on my life as 2021 wraps up.  If you’ve been reading my blogs, you know I’ve had some struggles this year so I wanted to end the year with a little more positivity in my life.  I hope you’ll join me.  I’ll be launching a 30 Days of Delight Facebook group starting on November 25th where we can all share what we find delightful in each day leading up to Christmas Eve.  For more information, please contact me via my email or FB Messenger.

I expect our interaction to be delightful!