How Can Fast Joy Support Your Hormones?
Living in a fabulous Wonder Woman body means you are coded for pleasure - truly - but sometimes, and perhaps more often than it should, busy modern life gets in the way of us really flexing our pleasure muscles.
Our big jobs, our enormous To Do Lists and our desire to create something truly spectacular with this one life, means pleasure for the sake of pleasure is rarely made a priority.
But when we do pursue pleasure, our hormones benefit immensely (scroll down to see how fast joy supports your hormones).
While it sometimes just doesn’t feel practical to fit endless days at the beach, languid afternoons with your lover or book long hikes in nature into your tight schedule, there is definitely another way to:
Combine practical with pleasurable and come up with something quick that you can do in just a few minutes…
Introducing your very own Fast Joy List; designed to lift your spirits in a snap and get you back into your joy in no time!
I invite you to think of 3 things that give you immense pleasure... And now while you’re heading to your happy place, let me share more ideas to spark your thinking around fast joy:
Reading your 5 star reviews
drinking out of a favourite cup
singing along to a special song
hearing your lover’s voice on a saved voice message
reading an old love letter
looking through a photo album
painting your nails (or just one perfect nail if you’re really pressed for time)
standing under a flowering tree and marvelling at its scent
lying on the grass watching clouds go by
listening to birds
replaying a favourite scene in a movie (you know someone has likely already made a clip of it on YouTube)
hearing kids laughing
boldly skipping around the office like nobody’s watching
listening to an audio of waves crashing on a beach
dancing wildly to a fun track (I recommend Y’all Ready For Y’all Ready For This)
gazing at an orchid and marvelling at its beauty
playing with a puppy
moisturising your hands with the most incredible smelling lotion
standing in Wonder Woman pose for 2 minutes – hands on hips, legs apart, shoulders back, head high and smiling like the world is just how it should be!
Now that you’re inspired, go ahead and write out a list of your 3 things that give you Fast Joy. You can pin your Fast Joy List up in a place you’ll see it often - on your fridge, near your workstation, in your bathroom - so you can pick some Fast Joy at any time to bring yourself back to balance in a snap.
Confession time: one of my fast joys is sharpening children’s colouring-in pencils. I know – totally silly! But the simple practice brings me so much satisfaction as I transform a stubby stick into a colour-creating wonder wand in just seconds! And yes, I have been known to sneak into a family-friendly café with a pencil sharpener concealed in my handbag just so I can surreptitiously sharpen all those blunt pencils…
Now don’t worry if you aren’t into sharpening pencils – that’s likely my fast joy, not yours – and instead focus on your own particular brand of fast joy that really, truly, lights all your smug bits up in seconds. And then go ahead and notice how your days, weeks and months start to change.
So how does fast joy support your hormones?
Anecdotally:
When you experience joy, your body lights up. You sparkle. Your neurons fire and your blood feels like it's flowing more readily through your body. You feel juicier. Everything feels more achievable. Your mojo comes back – even just a little. Your skin glows. You look even more beautiful. Strangers double take when they take in your joy as you saunter down the street...
Science-y:
When you experience joy, your body steps out of sympathetic overdrive and out of fight or flight. Your Instant Joy list can play a small role in sending a safety signal to your HPA axis that all is well in the world. In doing so, you may put a stop (even just for a few moments) to that constant stream of high cortisol.
To explain further:
Insulin and Cortisol are Tier One hormones. Your body prioritises making these two hormones over Any. Other. Hormone. When your body sees that these two hormones aren’t needed (there’s no lion in your bathroom, no investor presentation in 3 minutes, no sugar fest in your belly), it takes a break, so that Tier 2 hormones Pregnenolone and DHEA can be made.
When all is well in Tier 2 Land, your body meanders down to the Tier 3 hormones of Estrogen, Progesterone, Testosterone, Melatonin and Thryoid hormones. These Tier 3 hormones are the hormones you need for healthy ovulation, healthy menstrual cycles, good sleep and overall good health.
You can likely appreciate that while your Fast Joy List isn’t the only thing that’s going to impact your hormone tiers (we still need to work on your stress response, diet and lifestyle), it's easily the most fun step to implement right away.