It all began on a maternity ward in Southampton back in 1977, when my parents couldn’t decide what to call me.
Luckily a midwife came to the rescue, telling them: ‘She’s a joy, so call her Joy!’
My name really has become my calling – although it took me a while to realise it.
While I liked my moniker, by the time I’d reached my 30s, I was feeling anything but joyful. I’d forged a career in PR, doing a stint working in New York, but it was fast-paced and took everything I’d got. I lost my job during the 2008 recession and headed back to the UK.
In 2009 I was a candidate on The Apprentice – I’d seen an advert for it on telly saying, ‘Have you lost your job? Could you be our next candidate?’. I thought ‘that’s me’ so on a whim I applied – but was fired by Alan Sugar in the second week.
As the year drew to a close I was feeling miserable and lost.
On New Year’s Eve I was drunk at a friend’s party, mulling over the ups and downs of the past year, when I was suddenly hit by a cocktail-fuelled flash of inspiration.
‘My New Year’s resolution will be to do a joyous act every day of 2010,’ I blabbered to anyone who’d listen. My friends thought it was a great idea, but we’d all had a few drinks. A few of them doubted I could to it continuously for a full year.
Waking up hungover on a friend’s sofa the next morning, she gleefully reminded me of my pledge from the night before, asking if I was really going to go through with it.
‘Let’s see what happens,’ I decided. ‘If the opportunity to do a joyous act presents itself today then I’ll take that as a sign.’
No sooner had we left her flat to go out for breakfast, a man approached me saying he’d broken his car key, so I gave him £3 to cover his bus fare home. My friend looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
It was January 1 2010 and my first deed was done.
That night I set up a blog on WordPress, calling it Joyous Acts and vowing to post something kind every day. Blogs weren’t such a big thing back then so I didn’t expect to get many readers – it was more to hold myself accountable.
At first I committed to big grand gestures. On Valentine’s Day I stood in Birmingham city centre and handed out heart-shaped balloons to strangers.
It was absolutely brilliant, everyone smiled – I learned you can’t give a balloon to a stranger without them smiling. Some blokes said they’d take them home to their wives or girlfriends, and kids were delighted. Love was in the air – it was so positive.
Another day I arranged to pick up some unwanted food from an Indian restaurant and left it in a couple of church doorways where I knew local homeless people went to shelter. The vision of somebody who was really cold finding that food and warming themselves up made me feel so excited, even though I never got to meet them.
But as the year went on I realised: no matter what’s going on in life, joy is always available to us. It could be letting someone into a queue ahead of you, complimenting a stranger’s outfit or even just stopping to smile at someone.
One of my practices is to give out compliments all the time. I could be stood in a queue or on a busy tube and I might tell someone their skirt looks really nice or I like their hair. I find the response is always positive; they walk away smiling to themselves.
It’s especially useful if I’m having a sick or down day myself; being nice to people lifts me as well as them.
By the end of 2010, it had become my way of life – once I started noticing those daily moments it became impossible to choose just one act. I was doing it automatically at this point; it had become a kind of gratitude practice.
So I stopped focusing so much on myself and started thinking about others. I even set up my own PR firm called Joyous Comms. I tried to make my brand values centre around positivity and infuse that into my work.
I’m proud to say I’ve been doing my new year’s resolution every day since 2010 – although my perception of joy has changed. It might be as small as an act of self-care, like allowing myself an early night.
When I had my son Ziggy, now six, I made this mantra was a part of his life too. We play a game called ‘silver linings’, where we look for the positives in any challenge.
It could be going puddle jumping when it’s raining and the slide in the playpark is too wet to sit on, or watching a movie together if he misses a school club. We don’t pick a particular time – we just do it as each day unfolds.
As and when a challenge appears, we stop and I a prompt him to look for silver lining. For example, if we’re in the supermarket and we can’t find what’s on our list, we decide to be adventurous and try something new.
Another of my favourite practices is journaling. As a child at boarding school I wrote my diary every night before bed, addressing it ‘Dear Tally’ to my best friend who lived abroad.
I’ve always found it joyful because you don’t have to mask who you are in a journal – you can be completely yourself.
When I had Ziggy in 2016 the habit dropped away. As a single working mum I was just too busy.
Journalling became a method of self-care for me; it was one of my coping strategies.
Some days I wrote lists of things to be grateful for, or moments that had made me happy.
One afternoon in early 2021 I went for a walk down Clapham High Street. It was a beautiful sunny day and I spotted a guy sitting on a bench with two black Labradors.
I’m a smiler – I always smile at strangers – so I beamed at him and we got talking. I ended up being late to pick up my son that day because we chatted for so long.
We ended up having a deep and profound conversation about life, and I told him I was pondering a house move, but doubted I could afford it. He told me that life was an adventure and we all had to be brave.
His words were ringing in my ears when I got home. It was time to put my plans into action and I knew exactly what I wanted to create… a book called The Joyous Journal. It would be a beautiful diary with prompts, gorgeous graphics and even word searches and dot-to-dots to get the juices flowing.
In November 2021 it was released to coincide with World Mental Health Week.
My next project, launched in April 2022 for Children’s Mental Health Week, was a set of playing cards called Joyous Kids Kindness Cards to encourage children to think about their emotions and ways of spreading kindness and joy.
For me, joy boils down to three things: kindness to myself, kindness to others and connecting with nature. It’s different to happiness because moments of joy can exist even at the very worst of times, if it’s possible to find them.
Joy is what can make you content in your life, even if you’re not content with present circumstances and difficult situations. For example, when I was identified with ADHD aged 45, I initially felt lost and having to re-think events of my life. But by making sure I continued with my philosophy I was able to cope and move forward.
I think we could all do with a little more joy in the world right now, so why not make it your New Year’s Resolution to find and spread it as much as you can in 2023?
To buy The Joyous Journal or the Joyous Kids Kindness Cards visit https://joyousacts.com. Follow Joy on social media @joyousacts.
As told to Jade Beecroft
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