Member-only story

Following Your Joy is a Waste of Time

Odille Remmert
5 min readApr 19, 2020

You’ve probably heard that you should “follow your bliss” or “follow your joy”. And it sounds like a great idea, at first. It makes sense. Until you have no answer to the question: “What makes me feel joy?” That’s a really interesting place to be. Not being able to think of anything to feel joyful about. Not being able to think of anything you could do that would make you feel joy.

So, where is your joy? I mean, you can’t follow it if you can’t find it, right?

But even for those who can think of things that make them feel joy — following your joy is still a waste of time…

Image Credit: Canva.com

Why Following Your Joy is a Waste of Time

The reason is: Following your joy is like following your nose. It makes no sense. Following your nose will depend on which direction you’re facing because it’s attached to your face. Following your joy makes no sense because joy is a physiological state, created inside you. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything outside of you — other than the link your brain has made between that stimulus and the physiological state of joy.

For example, you may feel joy when you spend time with a particular person, or when you’re doing a particular activity. But that feeling you’re feeling is the result of chemicals like endorphins, serotonin…

--

--

Odille Remmert
Odille Remmert

Written by Odille Remmert

Author of: "Change What Happened to You: How to Use Neuroscience to Get the Life You Want by Changing Your Negative Childhood Memories"

No responses yet