Create Joy First and Your Health Follow

What is it to be a bum? Is it dropping everything to cut fresh lines in three feet of 4% powder, slapping on a perma-grin as you ski down a mountainside; or is it spending years developing a business idea through hard work and passionate dedication, and finally building a successful product? My answer to this: Yes! Becoming a bum is the journey of developing a passion for something that has so much influence on your decision-making that you’re willing to improve your character, expand skill sets, strengthen mental immunity, and do whatever it takes to be successful at something…..that creates Joy. Anyone can follow a formula to be successful, but a BUM follows their heart to experience ultimate joy.

What is a BUM?

                        

                  

                B - Becoming an

                U - Ultimate

                M - Master of creating joy.

What kind of BUM are you, or what are you pursuing in life that creates joy?

For 25+ years, I have devoted my journey to being a BUM through whitewater kayaking, skiing, biking, and other thrill-seeking adventures. These experiences inspired me to become a Health and Wellness professional to help others reach a higher potential by breaking through limiting beliefs and pushing them outside of their comfort zones to experience a higher frequency of joy.

Adventure activities have forged my life in a way that I have developed into a person much greater than I ever thought I could become. Adventures have given me greater confidence in who I am; taught me a deeper meaning to life; have become a platform for overcoming limitations and fears; has been an environment for establishing values and constructive beliefs.

I did not participate in adventure activities with an expectation to improve myself.  I did them because I followed my heart to experience joy.  But I realized over time that these adventure activities developed resilience, healthy mindsets, work ethics, and problem-solving skills that translated into my everyday character that correlated to the joy I was experiencing.

Do your major influences for making decisions in life create joy, or are they survival responses?

What is joy?

Joy is an expression we experience from those things we hold with the most significance that brings meaning, richness, and clarity to life's journey. Joy becomes a metric for our beliefs and values and is something one can develop, practice, and make a habit of.

 

 I personally break joy into three experiences: 

• Pleasure - the joy we experience from food, play, celebrations, instant gratification, and addictions. 

• Achievement - are those things we accomplish physically and mentally that gratify us, like building a business, participating in a marathon, or getting a degree.  

• Empowerment - is the ability to control the impact of your insecurities and fears and listen to the ‘I Can Do It’ voice. It is the ability to pursue your unlimited potential and share your potential so others can experience joy. 

What kind of joy do you want to experience? Hopefully you said, “All of them.”

A variety of lifestyles inhibit us from attaining our true potential of joy and accomplishing the things we want to do in life. To name a few: we live the “escape route lifestyle” where life is too stressful, and we use mindless entertainment to escape our potential. You’ll spend countless hours on mindless indulgences, but there is no personal growth and gain in life. Same thing with money. If you reflect money as your only value in life, long hours and energy spent on pursuing a materialistic lifestyle but receive no or little gain, you are pressing the joy-destruction button. 

Essentially our lives revolve around creating a reality of joy.  This reality becomes the control center for many of the choices in our life, which then determines the lifestyle we live, reflecting our physical and mental health. 

Most individuals try to improve their health by fixing the pains in their life with hopes that it will create more joy.  Health is not a choice; it is the consequence of the lifestyle you choose.  As I have worked with individuals helping them improve their health, my experience is that if you focus on increasing your joy first, pursuing those things we hold with the most significance, you will improve your health faster, greater, and longer than if you try to set health goals to fix pains.  By engaging in things that give your purpose and meaning that enrich your life you will naturally make decisions to improve your lifestyle which results in improving your health.

  

Instead of setting a goal to lose weight, choose to engage in something that challenges you, pursue a dream, run a marathon, seek a higher purpose and you will see that losing weight was a miniscule part of the journey.  When you realize that your passions, whether work, family or recreationally related, have a far greater impact in life than just setting goals to fix things you will unleash a giant of potential for becoming an ultimate master of creating joy.

Bubble Popper Note: I don't have time! Then what are you living for? This is the irrational “I Can’t Voice.” I see it all the time in adventure.  My favorite part about adventure is watching people shift from “I Can’t” to “I Can.” And then taking this mindset and applying it to other components of life. 

What voice are you listening to?