Why Joy is So Hard
...and other lessons from Week 2 of the "Gifts of Imperfection" re-read and listen-along
Welcome! I’m Dr. Jillian, a physician leader, toddler mom, and coach who writes Humans Leading to help overwhelmed professionals live less stressed, more satisfying lives. If the full post doesn’t show up in your e-mail, come over to the webpage or Substack App to see the whole thing. Subscribe here for free to get future posts straight to your inbox:
✨ Last time: Week 1 of our 4-week journey through “The Gifts of Imperfection”: Catch up here.
✨ Today: Week 2 - takeaways from Guideposts 3&4 and podcast 3
Welcome back for Week 2 of the Gifts of Imperfection Re-Read and listen-along!
When I was recovering from burnout five years ago, I read Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection as a first step toward embracing my limitations.
A year later, I followed along with a podcast series on the same topic that she put out with her sisters. As I have been navigating my shortcomings and limitations with dealing with grief and navigating life, I found myself turning to both of these resources again. Hearing other people share their stories about grappling with these topics is comforting and encouraging.
I’m so glad you’re here with me. Digging back into this material has been so valuable, but it hasn’t been easy. Knowing there were people doing it with me was great motivation to keep going.
Here are a few more details about what today’s post (and the next 2 weeks) are all about:
As a reminder (or if you’re not doing the read-along), this week’s Guideposts are:
Guidepost 3: Cultivating a Resilient Spirit – Letting go of numbing and powerlessness
Guidepost 4: Cultivating Gratitude and Joy – Letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark
Upcoming Reading/listening schedule and the date the post will be released on Humans Leading:
Week 3 (May 2nd) Guideposts 5, 6, 7, 8, Podcast parts 4&5
Week 4 (May 9th) Guideposts 9&10, Podcast part 6
Once again, there is so much inspiring content from this week that I could have written forever, but that would be boring for you. And that’s not how Humans Leading works. So, I tried to focus on what really hit home for me as I went along in order to pass along these takeaways to you.
Below, you’ll find:
2 lessons I’m learning as a result of this re-read/listen
My top 5 takeaways for this week
Reflection/journaling prompts
If you’re reading and listening along with me, I hope today’s piece inspires you to think about what resonates most for you in your own life.
If it’s not the right time for your own read and listen-along, no worries! I think this post (and the other posts in the series) will still be valuable for you to read through and reflect on.
Plus, I’ve included several journaling prompts/reflection questions for you at the end.
Ok, let’s dig in!
1. Resilient people need help, too
In the book, Brene describes resilience as the ability to overcome adversity, but I understand it better as the ability to cope with and navigate through adversity. I don’t think it’s about getting out the other side of adversity and being finished with it.
Maybe I’m being picky about this because resilience is a tricky word for healthcare workers like me who had it weaponized against us during the COVID-19 pandemic (read: we were directly told to be more resilient).
When I was first asked to give wellness talks during that period, I was often asked to do resilience training or to talk about resilience. Even before the public wanted to admit it, we knew that we were up against a terrible force and that we needed to do everything that we could to try to withstand it.
Part of that included trying to arm ourselves with the tools we needed to withstand hard things.
And we did.
However, being able to persevere through hardship does not mean that we do not come out the other side without scars. Many healthcare workers that I know are still picking up the pieces. And we know from data that 30% of physicians with the highest resilience scores still experience burnout.
In Guidepost 3, Brene discusses five factors associated with resilient people.
One of these is that they are more likely to seek help. In other words, part of being resilient is learning to admit that you are a human being who needs the help of other human beings in order to do life on this planet.
I had to learn this lesson the hard way (through depression and burnout), and now I’ve built part of my career around trying to help other people learn it before they experience serious disfunction.
Part of my own personal resilience practice is to utilize professional help when I need it and also not to do things that cause me more distress or trauma (like watch medical or crime dramas). I’ve also been intentional about working to build up support in my workplace and my life away from work so that I never feel like I have to do it alone. And I teach other teams and organizations to do the same.
Even if you’re not a healthcare worker, it can be difficult to ask for help in a culture that makes you feel like you have to do it all yourself. If you’re working on this in your own life, I highly recommend listening to this podcast episode that
and I recorded last year:
2. Joy is the most vulnerable emotion
When I first started writing Humans Leading, I thought a lot about what it was for and who it was for. It took some time, but I finally came up with some language that I thought would resonate: Humans Leading is for overwhelmed high achievers looking to experience less stress and more joy.
That’s where the problems started.
When I talked about joy (especially in the hospital where I work), people looked at me like I had two heads. Their looks seemed to suggest that I was out of touch or possibly that my life is not as hard as theirs.
In other words: joy is for unserious people who aren’t paying attention.
I can understand this. A few years ago, I was one of those people. And I would’ve probably been embarrassed to be writing and speaking about joy, let alone letting myself experience it. It has taken a lot of work to let myself feel joy in my own life.
I think part of it is that we have a misunderstanding about joy.
We may confuse joy with happiness or think that our lives have to be perfect and be sorrow-free in order for us to experience it.
The poet
has put words to something that I have felt numerous times in the work that I do. Joy and suffering are often intertwined. They can both be present if we only take the time to notice them.Joy is tethered to sorrow… it’s connected to the daily fact that we and what we love are disappearing… We and what we love are in some kind of pain. And, if not now, we will be. Part of what I think of as joy is the way we tend to one another in the midst of that.
-Ross Gay
The other reason people have a hard time with joy is that joy is the most vulnerable emotion.
Often, when we feel it, we panic and start to list all of the ways that things could go wrong. Or, in Brene’s words from the book, we “dress-rehearse tragedy” through what she calls foreboding joy.
Here’s an example from the podcast:
In podcast 3, Brene and her sisters, Ashley and Barrett, discuss that Ashley recently passed her LMSW exam.
Barrett and Brene were thrilled for her, and they couldn’t wait to celebrate in person.
Meanwhile, Ashley experienced foreboding joy when leaving the exam center and drove extra carefully on the way to Brene’s house because she was sure she was going to die.
Now, this might seem extreme, but I think a lot of us do this.
We think about all of the ways that our loved ones might meet a tragic end on their car or plane trip.
We perseverate on losing our jobs or our homes or all of our money when things seem to be going too well for us.
And so on…
It makes perfect sense that we do this; joy is vulnerable.
It is vulnerable because we know that we can’t really control what happens in our lives. But, instead of leaning into that vulnerability, our brains try to manufacture stories that make us feel “prepared” for when the time comes.
In other words, we try to self-protect in order to not have to feel the discomfort that comes along with loving someone or caring deeply about something.
As a physician who watches how people’s lives are transformed by tragedy on a regular basis, I understand the desire to try to protect yourself. But, in the end, you can never truly be prepared for tragedy if it comes.
So, all you’re really doing is robbing yourself of the joy of a wholehearted life.
What can you do instead?
You can practice gratitude.
As Brene explores in Guideposts 3 and 4, joy and gratitude are fundamentally linked, and gratitude is a practice. It isn’t an attitude or inherent character trait.
Gratitude isn’t something that joyful people get because they have more to be joyful about. Joyful people actively cultivate gratitude even when times are hard and thus experience more joy.
Here’s how this looks in my own life:
My job as a pediatric ICU physician has gotten a lot harder since I had my son. Seeing other parents navigate their child’s illness (or losing their child) can bring up really strong emotions for me.
(Don’t get me started on how hard it is to take care of a child my son’s age, one who looks like him, or one with his name).
As a result of this, instead of feeling joy when interacting with my own child, I might start dress-rehearsing tragedy and thinking of all of the ways that tragedy could affect my son.
(Don’t get me wrong… there’s a whole list of activities that he’ll never be able to do because I’ve seen them go wrong too many times. Every healthcare worker has this list).
When I catch myself doing this, I take a deep breath, and I do something very similar to what Brene recommends in the book: I practice gratitude.
Ex: If this comes up for me when I’m at work, I set an intention to express gratitude when I’m home. Then, once I’m home hugging my son, I say to myself, “I am grateful for this moment and for my healthy child. Help me be present with him instead of stuck in my fear.”
Brene shares her own practice: When you’re feeling afraid, try to call forward joy by acknowledging the fear and turning it into gratitude. Say to yourself, “I’m feeling vulnerable and that’s ok. I’m so grateful for ______________.”
Having a practice like this won’t keep you from worrying, but it will allow you to get out of your worry and access your joy.
“Until we can tolerate vulnerability and transform it into gratitude, intense feelings of love will often bring up the fear of loss.”
-Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
If you’re reading along, you might notice that I skipped discussion of several parts of Guideposts 3 and 4. As mentioned in the introduction of this post, there was just too much to get to.
But never fear. All of the guideposts are intertwined, and you’ll find discussions of those themes throughout the series. They will also be woven into the wrap-up post coming after this 4-week series is over.
Now, on to my biggest takeaways.
My top 5 from this week:
Being resilient doesn’t mean not experiencing pain or suffering.
Even resilient (strong, tough, etc.) people need help.
Joy and pain are intertwined.
Joy is the most vulnerable emotion.
Gratitude is the antidote to foreboding joy.
If you’d like to go deeper, here are this week’s reflection/journaling questions (take what you need, leave the rest):
How do you “should” on yourself when you are having a hard time? (ex: “I should be able to get over this” “I shouldn’t need help for this” etc.)
What numbing behaviors do you use to try to escape stress and difficult emotions?
What is your relationship to being the helper vs. asking for and accepting help?
What tools, practices, or people help you stay grounded in tough times?
What 3 things are you grateful for today? (Don’t overthink it. The small things are the big things, after all)
What helps you hold onto joy without bracing for something bad to happen?
How might you practice gratitude or joy even when life feels uncertain?
What was your biggest takeaway from this week?
Your commentary on joy is so spot on. For some, joy is seen as unserious or childlike, but in reality joy is one of the most important parts of the human condition.