This is a story about JOY.

For the past several years, I’ve held the intention of experiencing more joy in my life. 

Looking for joy requires paying attention to when I feel a spark of excitement in my body. It requires being present. Savoring. Noticing. 

A great call with a client. A refreshing drink. A delicious meal. Conversations with my people. Hiking. Nature. Sports. Popcorn. Lighting a candle as I work. Listening to music with dinner. The feeling of grass under my feet. These are a few of my joy-inducing discoveries.

At some point in this exploration of joy, I came to the realization that it gives me joy to watch flash mobs - you know, those surprise dances that people do in the streets.  And then I thought about how amazing it would be to actually do one of those someday.  Unfortunately, I’m not a dancer at all, so this likelihood was extremely low.

However, I shared out loud with my sister-in-law the excitement I felt about this idea. 

That started a joyful journey of us sending each other videos of people dancing, and laughing about how we could try it. Again, I’m not a dancer and my body just does not do most dance moves, so this dream was still laying dormant. 

Then one day, my sis-in-law found a video of someone shuffling. Do you know what this is? It involves just doing steps with your feet. 

As I was watching that video, I felt a huge surge of excitement and said to her,  “Oh my gosh, I think we can do this. This is it!”

And so, our dream of doing a flash mob together started to take shape. 

We got together in May and did our first shuffling lesson together and then have been practicing for the last seven months in secret.

We named ourselves the Shuffle Sistas. We purchased a shuffling course, made a shared playlist and a shared photo album and proceeded to send each other videos, tutorials, and practice dances. 

We have laughed our asses off at the ridiculousness of the songs and the moves and the choreography, and the plan to do this flash mob, which we would forget the name of and instead call it flashdance, or a mob show.

We cracked ourselves up regularly, did not take ourselves seriously at all, and simultaneously worked like crazy and feel damned impressed with ourselves. 

We encountered setbacks like sore knees, and sprained ankles, illnesses and times where we were too busy to dance. But we proceeded with our joy.

And finally, we came to the day of the big reveal. The flash mob took place. And it was glorious. Every bit as much fun as I dreamed. And worth every minute we spent preparing for it. 

Want to see it? You can find it here @mendybeattycoaching on Instagram.

What I’ve learned from this experience is that joy is truly one of the highest emotions that you can feel, and that it trickles out into other areas of your life, and it impacts the people that you come in contact with.

It also helps you through challenging times. During the time that my son was leaving for school, this silly little project kept me afloat emotionally. 

If you do nothing else this year, I invite you to look for more joy in your life. Start paying attention to the things that give you that spark of excitement. Start exploring and experimenting and noticing and savoring.

And I can’t recommend enough finding yourself something absolutely ridiculous to spend your time doing, finding a partner who’s willing to play with you, and going all in on it. 

Happy happy joyful day, my friends. 

Love,

Mendy