Finding Joy in Everything You Do

Since this blog is about enjoying the simple pleasures of life, I thought it appropriate that my first post be about learning how to find joy in everything we do, including the mundane tasks of life. 

As a homemaker, I find that my day is generally made up of a string of monotonous tasks such as loading and unloading the dishwasher, feeding my daughter (Lily, 12 mo's) and subsequently cleaning the highchair and floor many times each day, picking up the items that Lily has unceremoniously tossed out of cabinets, drawers, etc.  It's easy to get frustrated and annoyed with the seemingly purposelessness of these tasks, so in order to find happiness and contentment as a stay at home mother, it is essential that I learn to find joy in everything I do.

I think the most successful people in life are those that find pleasure in their work by doing it to the best of their abilities.  That is, whether you're a janitor cleaning toilets, a stay-at-home mom wiping runny noses, or a CEO running a Fortune 500 company, the best way to enjoy your work and life is to do everything as well as you can. 

For me this means that when I clean my kitchen and tidy the house umpteen times a day, it is important that I focus on doing it well. It is easy to do the task begrudgingly and only well enough to squeek by, but this only leads to further frustration since it immediately works its way back into the messy category.  Isn't that the way it goes?  It's like the case of graffiti on the wall or a broken window.  Once these items are left and not cleaned off / repaired immediately they only pave the way for further destruction!  There have been many test cases where this has proven to be the case and I think it's the same with housework!!  You must do the best job you can so that others (and yourself!) will respect the cleanliness and strive to keep it in order.  Plus, there's something deeply satisfying in a job well done!

Something my pastor said yesterday at church really resonated with me and caused me to think about the concept of finding joy in every little moment.  In talking about God's plan, he said that Jesus knew from birth that he was headed to the Cross.  This was only a by-note of his sermon, but really got me thinking about living purposefully.  How would we live our lives differently if we each knew that we had a certain amount of time allotted to us, as Jesus did?  If we were all born knowing we would have 33 years on this earth, how would our lives be different? 

None of us are guaranteed a moment longer on this earth than the present moment.  If we lived our lives continuously aware of this fact and not, as we do, taking each moment for granted, how would this change our lives over the course of a lifetime?  Imagine lying on your deathbed and looking back over your life if you had lived life in this way, making the most of each moment.   

This ties back to the concept of finding pleasure in everything that we do because if we live each moment as if it is or could be our last, then we will want to enjoy whatever we are doing in that moment.  Whether we are cleaning a toilet, changing a diaper or preparing a major presentation, we will want to live in that moment and enjoy the simple (or not so simple in the case of a CEO) task at hand.

So on that note, I'm off to fold laundry and to enjoy every minute of it!  Have a wonderful day, friends!!