February 13, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode of The Deeply Well Podcast, we’re diving into the transformative power of what I like to call "tiny joys" with Devi Brown. Together, we explore those quiet, often-missed moments of happiness that have the potential to shift our emotional landscapes in the most profound ways. Devi opens up about her personal journey—how she’s learned to hold space for both grief and joy—and the practice of expanding our capacity to fully embrace joy in all its forms. With soulful reflections and actionable insights, she invites us to lean into those fleeting sparks of joy as a gateway to deeper self-love and true emotional healing.
You deserve to love your life.
You deserve to love your life.
You deserve to love your life.
Connect @DeviBrown @DeeplyWellPod
Learn More and Pre-Order Devi's New Book, "Living in Wisdom" DeviBrown.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:27):
Take a deep breath in through your nose. Holds it.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now, release slowly again, deep in, helle hold release, repeating
(01:02):
internally to yourself as you connect to my voice. I
am deeply well. I am deeply well. I am deeply
(01:30):
I'm Debbie Brown and this is the Deeply Well Podcast.
Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place to land on
your journey. A podcast for those that are curious, creative,
and ready to expand in higher consciousness and self care.
(01:51):
This is where we heal, this is where we transcend.
Welcome to today's episode. Now, by the time you're hearing
this episode, I'm certain that I have already announced my
new book, Living in Wisdom, A path to embodying your
authentic self, embracing grief, and developing self mastery. You are
(02:15):
a listener of this podcast. This is the deeper layer
of work that I have really been waiting and just
so heart centered and creating to really ascend on this journey,
to be able to go deeper, to be able to
go higher, to be able to have the practices that
will support all the things that you are currently working
(02:38):
on in your life, and a lot of it are
things that we dive into on this show.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So I'm so excited to get this to you.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Preorder Debbie Brown dot Com, Amazon, anywhere you get books,
you can pre order your copy officially today.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I am so proud of this beautiful little baby.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
This is my life's work, and this is really my
heart offering of some of the deepest wisdom. I have
been gratefully able to amass and ways to make it
tangible so that you can heal your life as you
live it in its fullness.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So check that out.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Living in wisdom, all right, Today's episode is all about
the art of tiny choice. I'll never forget when God
sent me that concept. In twenty twenty, I was laying
on the grass. We were in the pandemic. I was
so confused. I had a two year old child. My
life was changing really fast, and it felt really hard.
(03:41):
I had lost someone that I loved dearly, A friend
of mine left the earth, and I was grieving that
there was so much chaos and upheaval in the world.
And I laid down and I just let tears fall
down my face. And I remember the sun was so
hot and bright that day, and my eyes were closed.
(04:05):
I was listening to a song and I could feel
the warmth and the orange of the sun through my
eyelids while they were closed, and it reminded me of
this moment when I was a little girl, and I
used to do that at recess. I would go find
a quiet corner all by myself and I would lay
down and I would just feel the sun on my
(04:26):
face and it fueled me. And I remember God's voice
spoke so loud to me, and they said, seek the
tiny joys, seek the tiny joice, seek the tiny joye.
It was a profound moment for me that set me
so much deeper on my path as a person that
(04:47):
was healing, but also as a teacher, because after I
got that message, I got more ritualistic, I got more devotional,
and so much of my day became about letting myself
open to the goodness that was around, even on the
hardest day. And at that time, I had this incredible
collective of women I was working with called Karma Gang
(05:08):
through my company Karma Bliss, and I was also teaching.
I was beginning to teach quite a bit with Chopra
and taking on a role as an executive there leading meditations,
and God gave me this vision of how to teach
tiny joys, and so I started groups, I started talking
about it. I was posting about tiny joys all the
(05:28):
time on my stories, everywhere, in my posts and my
classes that I was teaching, and I even created a
little mastery challenge about how to identify.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Joy and make it real in your life.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
What I didn't know at the time as I was
doing that, because I was really at first just trying
to keep going, and I was noticing that this was
radically keeping my heart open. But at the time, what
I didn't realize was that also on my healing journey,
I was building my tolerance for joy. I didn't even
(06:01):
know at the time that I didn't know truly within
my body what authentic joy felt like. It alerted me
to the understanding that so much of the way I
and we moved through the world was really about more
so a performative joy, right. It was a lot of
the kind of extra like spire emojis, yes, yes, queen, Hey,
(06:24):
I have a big announcement, look at me, look at
what I'm doing. And I always felt the emptiness in that.
And this was the first time I could really feel
God moving in my body in a different way. So
I became incredibly enraptured by this art of finding tiny joys.
(06:48):
I would journal about it every day. I would identify
these moments for myself, and slowly, over time, I began
to create a system within my body with an healing
that is still in full use today, which is even
on the hardest day, I can find some pathway back
(07:09):
to myself. It isn't always a wide road, right, It
isn't always this kind of open, beautiful path. Sometimes it's
really tiny and I'm tiptoeing through it, But I can
always connect to the path by doing these small, beautiful
heart openers that I call tiny joys. So I want
to talk about how to do that today. I realized
(07:31):
recently that as I've kind of moved forward on my path,
and this is just an integrated part of who I am.
And I'm also someone that doesn't hold so tightly to
ideas and concepts and words that God sends me because
I know they're just here for everyone. So I'm not
always looking to trademark or monetize or you know, create
entire bodies around certain things that God reveals. But this one,
(07:55):
it felt so important to run this back. I've done
episodes probably about five years ago, four years ago that
speak to this as well. So do some investigation if
you feel called. But I thought that with the time
that we're in right now, with the ways so many
of us are experiencing the world, this is the perfect
(08:17):
moment in time to really lean back into some of
these teachings about how to activate your own inner oven,
how to light that fire for yourself that only you
can see and feel, how to bring forward a sweet
smile for yourself even in some of the hardest moments.
(08:37):
And so that's what I want to talk about today.
You know, joy can sometimes feel incredibly elusive. It is
something that happens as an embodied response to the way
you're experiencing goodness in your life, the way you're experiencing presence,
the way you're experiencing God. And so it is something
(08:57):
I found out many years later is part of what
feels like the challenge and also the excitement of this
lifelong journey of growth and self actualization and sometimes healing.
We have to build the tolerance for joy, and sometimes
(09:17):
we reject it because it feels so foreign, or we
think the other shoe is going to drop and the
thing that I want to be really honest with you
about in this episode, is that it is true that
the other shoe will drop right.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
It is true.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
It is true that our life, just because we find
moments of joy, it doesn't mean our life is going
to be free of challenge and hardship. It seems to
be that this is the way earth is designed, that
we're always oscillating between grief and joy. And I talk
about this so much, so much in my book.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Living in Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
My book Living in Wisdom is truly like this deep
dance between how to navigate life's griefs and joys in
any and all moments. And so when we sink into
that truth, it actually, instead of filling us with more
fear about opening our hearts wide enough to feel joy,
it can actually deeply empower us. Because we now know
(10:17):
what our vitality source is. We now can identify what
our God connection can be, and it really opens up
space inside of us to see and experience God's love,
our own self love, and the beauty of life even
in some.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Of the most challenging days.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So, if joy has felt far from you, or if
it's felt foreign, or if it's felt to be quite honest, useless,
because life has just been so hard or so challenging,
or you know, so complex to navigate.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The thing I want you to know.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Is that this allows that to feel so much different.
It allows you to survive it, to go through it,
to transcend past it in such unique, beautiful ways that
are true to the core of who and what you are. So, yeah,
the other shoe is going to drop. Sometimes good times
(11:16):
aren't forever, and neither are the bad times. And I
think that's the beauty of what it is when we
connect to and accept the duality, the polarity of what
it is to be in this human experience to be alive.
We are always dancing with grief and joy, but we
really let ourselves down and we miss part of the
(11:37):
point when we're only choosing to fight with grief and
we don't choose to dance with joy when it's present,
Will it leave? Most likely, because all moments do. We're
just in the present moment. But even if you can
connect to it for a second and let it in,
it creates a light inside of you that you can
reaccess to shine on the harder days. It creates a
(12:01):
certain amount of self reverence and gratitude and connection to
the greater compassion that's possible for us to have for
ourselves and others, and it fuels your creativity, and creativity
is most often the cure for challenge. Creativity is most
often the cure the medicine for karma. All of us
(12:25):
are living very different lives, and some of them could
potentially be more complex than others or seem to have
more incidences of challenge than others. And I found that
connecting to tiny joy is the cure for that. It
connects us to our creativity, It connects us to our
(12:46):
ability to co create with what's in front of us,
to change circumstances, or to at least feel a little
bit more lovable and grateful and graceful.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Through all the other processes.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Is so, let's dive into the fibers and really kind
of have a reopening of what it is to connect
to tiny joys authentically and powerfully. So my hope for
today is that this conversation feels like a gentle exhil,
like we are diving into the art of what it
(13:22):
is to make life a little bit more beautiful. These
moments that I like to call tiny joys are those
delightful often fleeting moments that remind us of beauty in
our everyday lives. Tiny joys are the little treasures that
we often overlook that they hold immense potential to shift
(13:45):
our energy and to really help us truly feel alive
inside of our own bodies. When we think about joy,
many of us tend to envision these big life changing moments,
right like wedding, a promotion, a dream, vacation, going viral celebration,
(14:05):
all the things that we look to in this moment
of humanity. And while all those milestones are absolutely joyful
and beautiful, what about those small, quiet joys that are
really always within reach to us? The kind of joy
that is tucked into the sunlight that dances on your skin,
(14:28):
like that moment I shared a feeling that warm orange
glow behind my eyelids, Or the way that your favorite
coffee in the morning warms your hands, and the nature
of that also warms your soul a little bit. Right,
These are what I would refer to as tiny joys.
(14:48):
When your favorite song happens to come on the radio
at the exact perfect moment, or when you overhear someone
else's conversation and somehow it's really relevant to who and
what you are are, and it takes you deeper, or
it gives you access to a memory or a piece
of nostalgia that feels good, that feels warm, that turns
(15:10):
something on inside of you. It is that gateway to presence,
that gateway to gratitude, that gateway to.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Deep inner peace.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
But here is the thing for many of us, identifying
these moments doesn't necessarily come naturally. One we move really fast,
and just in the last thirty years, we have been
taught as humans to move faster than any of our
ancestors ever have in the history of humanity. We're moving
faster as a species mentally, emotionally, physically than we ever
(15:43):
have ever, ever ever in the entire history of humanity.
We are thinking about more than we've ever thought about.
We are juggling more than we have ever juggled as
a species, and we're doing it while also being highly
stimulated by everyone else's experience and every thing that we see, touch,
here feel we have more choices than ever. There are
(16:05):
more challenges globally that we can see all the time,
more than ever in addition to our day to day
lived experiences. And I really call that forward because I
want to honor the fact and be honest that it
is a lot. It is a lot, And if you
are ever feeling overwhelmed, I want you to really understand why.
(16:25):
It's not necessarily because there is something deficient or broken
about you and the way you experience your life. It
is because we are all having experiences right now for
the first time in humanity, in a way that God
didn't necessarily design our biology to uphold. So there is
so much about our physicality and our mentality and our
(16:48):
emotional experience that is catching up to how much life
has changed being human in just the last few decades.
I'm talking the last few decades, like not even the
full length of my lifetime. Yet things have changed in
a way they have never been that we can't even
(17:11):
fully conceive.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And so it's.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Important that we remember that. And if joy is a
challenge for you, if happiness is a challenge for you,
if feeling present in your life is a challenge for you,
it is not because something is wrong with you. It's
because this is really hard, and it goes against a
lot of cosmic law. It goes against a lot of
natural law and the way that we've understood it and
(17:36):
we are. No matter what age you're at, whether you
are a boomer right now, gen Z, gen X, what
are the others millennials that's me, or Generation Alpha or
the next generations to come, no matter where you are
generationally on the journey of being alive. Right now, every
single one of us, all of us are experiencing things
(17:58):
that humans have never experienced here on Earth, being alive,
and it's so important to know that we are the
pioneers of whatever this new phase of humanity is. I
think that's going to become even more obvious and relevant
to us as the decades go on. It might be
the thing that once I am, you know deeply in
(18:19):
my elderhood and in the stunset of my life, is
more widely understood and studied. And I really look forward
to being at those ages where I can see how
much we've come to understand about right now, because the
truth is, we don't really understand any of it, but
we're all being profoundly changed.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Because of it.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So keep your eyes open, and also keep investigating your
own experience and keep moving. How personal your experience may
feel right now. If you find yourself to be more
self critical or more in judgment about who you are
and how you're designed and how you operate, because there
is just so much that's unknown, and there is so
much that's being forced into us that we haven't fully
(19:02):
given our consent to because we don't know what it
can lead to yet. So I'll sit that there, and
I'll really kind of dive back into what I have
found in this moment with the tools we have and
the consciousness we have thus far, to be a true
medicine and cure for that, and that is the tiny joys.
(19:22):
So identifying these moments don't always come naturally, especially if
we're not used to experiencing joy in our body. If
we have spent years again navigating stress, navigating trauma, or
simply the busyness of being alive, joy might feel really elusive.
It might feel too slow, too foreign. So today we're
(19:44):
going to talk about again how we can begin to
notice these tiny joys, how they might show up in
our bodies. Sometimes it's a tightness in your jaw, you know,
maybe if someone, even your own child, is getting too
close to you with affection, you might notice your body
tends up or your jaw tends up. It's not because
anything is wrong with you, and it's not necessarily because
it isn't real or true. It could simply be you're
(20:07):
building your tolerance to have a feeling of deep intimacy
that you haven't felt before, even the platonic intimacy, right,
because intimacy it's depth and its closeness, and it's something
that gets into your interior. But that doesn't always mean
that it has anything or needs to have anything to
do with romance or with physicality. You know, sometimes it's
(20:30):
really just what it is to be seen and revealed
or to have a reaction to something in the most
vulnerable way. Even the really good, exciting stuff and especially
the non sexual stuff that we don't imagine, can cause
us to have some friction or some tenseness. So notice
that whenever there is a barrier which is really just
(20:52):
a felt restriction, a felt wall, or something that is
giving you a different signal that feels strange or different,
notice if that it is related to fear or need
to self protect, or notice if it just happens to
be a new feeling altogether, or a different kind of
tingle inside of your heart, or a different way that
you're experiencing. How you have reactions to things.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Sometimes we just.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Need to let ourselves be in deeper practice with it,
or sink into our bodies a little bit more to
heal something that we didn't have access to before, or
to feel something special we didn't have access to before.
It matters so deeply for our well being. There really
is not true wellbeing, true happiness, true sense of peace
(21:38):
without the ability to access joy. It is the opposite
side of that coin of pain and challenge, and we're
meant to know both, and some of us get deeper
degrees to within which we study that, and sometimes we don't.
But I think it is very very important to build
our tolerance for it. I remember a couple seasons ago
(22:00):
I had one of my dear friends and brothers, rasmaminicm
on this show, and he is just He's written some
beautiful New York Times bestselling books. My Grandmother's Hands is
one of them, and he he spoke quite a bit
on the last podcast we had about something I was
noticing on my journey earlier in my in my journey
that I dealt with personally, and so I think so
(22:23):
many of us do. But it is that you just
have to get your repsin. Those were his words exactly,
and I loved the way he taught that you have
to get your repsin when it comes to joy, you
have to build the practice of it. And the reason
I really look to connect to this concept of tiny joy,
not the big joys and the big celebration, the tiny
(22:44):
joys is because in some moments it is so powerful
to become more with less, become more with less. I
find it to be so much more authentic and healing
to find ways back to myself through more of the
silent self expressions. The silent joy is the small, tiny
(23:06):
moments than.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
It is those big ones.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Those moments are the ones that feel more fleeting and rare,
and then you start measuring and comparing and competing. But
the small ones, those are the moments that you give
yourself that are just for you. It's not about broadcasting them.
It's not about telling everyone about this feeling that you have.
It's about building your confidence and your ability to feel
(23:30):
joy in any moment you choose. I've had since you know,
I discovered this practice some more as all of us
challenging hard moments on the floor and tear moments in
shock and horror of the world around me moments right,
and I found that even on those days, I'm able
to find a smile for myself, even if it's for
(23:53):
that long, right, a minute, a few seconds, I can
find a smile for myself and my child. And I
can do it with so much less than I used
to think it would need to take to be quote
unquote happy or joyful or enough. Tiny joys teach you enoughness.
Tiny joys teach you that your life is enough, and
(24:17):
it's valid, and it's honorable and it's special. Another way
I like to explore this concept of tiny joys is
make love to your life. Find ways to make your
life beautiful just for you. Sometimes you might want to
share them. Sometimes it might hit the story, and sometimes
it is just so you can smile. It is your
(24:37):
way of flirting with yourself and flirting with your life.
I love to after I drop my son off at school,
I have really created something special in our world and
in our home, and I feel that I have brought
beauty to life in our lives in a way that
(24:58):
feels really special for us and really graceful for us
and nurturing for us. And so I like to create
little moments each day. So before I kind of start
my meetings and get into the workflow of my day
and of my life, I really look to come home.
After I take him to school, I usually will have
about thirty minutes to myself where I can do something
(25:21):
just on my own with no pressure, and so I'll
usually light some minsense to kind of give offering to
my day, to my house, and then I'll go pick
some flowers from my garden outside and I'll make a
little mini flower arrangement, or I'll just take a moment
as I sip to your coffee to notice the way
the light comes into my kitchen, because it comes in
(25:42):
like really beautifully in the morning. Sometimes there's just a
little bit of it, depending on what season we're in.
But I always find this like sliver of sunlight that
goes through one of the prisms I have hanging over
my windows, and it casts this little rainbow scape on
a wall somewhere. Sometimes there's like hundreds of these little
(26:03):
rainbows swimming through my house, and on some days that
the sun isn't so bright, there might be one or two.
But I always find it, and I give myself a
moment to just feel grateful and inspire to the way
the sun creates in my life.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Or it could be that I'm.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Driving and I just notice the sun as I'm listening
to my favorite yacht rock song and just feel grateful
and feel special, and for me it feels like God's kiss,
And on hard days, it's actually more than enough. On
hard days, that's even all the strength and the opening
(26:38):
I have for joy, A big joy when't feel right
on a day like that, I'd be steeped into deeply
conflicting emotions and experiences and there'd be a lot of
kind of emotional labor having to happen. But the tiny joys,
those are the ones that don't really require as much
of your participation. It just requires you to be witness
(27:00):
to it and accept that it's happening. And I think
that is the deep power of tiny joy. It teaches
you how to accept in a really beautiful way, how
to create in a really beautiful way, and how to
open for yourself in a really beautiful way. Deeply well,
(27:28):
so ways to deepen that understanding of identifying tiny joys.
The first step is creating moments of pause in a
world that is constantly pulling us in all those directions.
The pausing is revolutionary.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Truly.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It can be as simple as stopping for a deep
breath and having an appreciation for breath moving in your body.
You've been working on your breath work, having an appreciation
for how much air can come in and out that fast.
That's simple. It can be just finding moments for delight.
(28:04):
Sometimes all I can do is say, surprise me, God,
delight me, Lord, and that's the prayer, and nothing else.
Surprise me, God, delight me.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Lord.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I'm not trying to control it. I'm not creating a
definition for what I deem as good enough or important
enough to be considered as joy or to get me
out of whatever is happening. Right I'm leaving that in
God's hands, and I'm saying I am open to receiving it.
I am open to seeing it. I am open to
bearing witness to it, to being present with it. Whether
(28:39):
it lasts for me an hour or it lasts for
me a second, it's enough.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It's enough. It's enough.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
It could be the way that sunlight filters through the trees,
or the sound of a child laughing, or the feeling
of soft nabric against your skins. Are everywhere, but they
do require our attention. So start by tuning into your senses.
Maybe you catch a smell of someone cooking a delicious
(29:10):
meal through the window while you're out on the walk,
Take a deep breath, Take an extra second to take
a deep breath. Perhaps you notice that the sun is
filtering through the trees again in just such a special way,
and the wind is blowing. Instead of walking by it,
stop and look take it in. What is more important
(29:32):
than that? Truly, when I think back to some of
the deepest memories in my life, some of those core
memories that I can kind of time travel to, it's
moments that I also remember what nature was doing as
that moment was happening. So think about that. Is you
craft the ways that you will make yourself spark and
(29:54):
come to life, think about that as you craft these
ways that you're going to flirt with yourself in your
everyday life, romance yourself with these tiny joys. You don't
have to have a partner. Things don't have to be
going so well. You don't have to have the greatest friends. Yet,
you don't have to have a perfect relationship with your children,
(30:15):
or with yourself or with your coworkers. Right, those are
some of those bigger arcs that we're going to be
striving towards our whole lives. But you can have these
little moments where you get to become more with less. Now,
let's talk a little bit about how tiny joys actually
(30:39):
feel inside of your body. So joy, even if it's
smallest form, it's a somatic experience. It is something that
we feel. But if you're not used to feeling joy,
it might show up really subtly at first. And so
that's why we say get your reps up, build your
tolerance to feel it, to accept it. And also in
(31:02):
building your tolerance in these tiny, smaller moments, you're giving
yourself a chance to really really feel the fullness of
the big moments. You know, how many of us have
had experiences where you might be quote unquote living your dream.
I talk about this a lot in the book and
Living in Wisdom. You might be, you know, doing the thing,
and you're like, why.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Do I still feel empty inside?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
That was one of the biggest wake up calls I
had in my life and in my previous career where
I got the dream job, I did the thing, and
it still felt empty and ensure inside of me. It
still felt like that wasn't enough, because we're expecting that
that big thing is gonna heal everything that ever happened
to us, and it doesn't, and it won't it's not
(31:47):
supposed to. It is these small moments of deep presence,
of deep witnessing, of flirting with your life, of creating
and finding and seeking out on purpose the tiny joys.
That's what actually does that. That's what creates the bigger space.
And it all happens inside of your body. It is
(32:09):
connecting the mental and the physical. It is bringing that
elevator down from the mind into the heart so you
can feel and experience and love your life because you
deserve to. You deserve to love your life. You deserve
to love your life. You deserve to love your life
(32:31):
no matter what has happened, no matter what is happening.
You deserve to love your life. And it doesn't have
to be in these massive grand ways that you're waiting
for to happen until you get there. It can happen now,
and then you just have even more room to grow
and expand. Sometimes in our bodies, it feels like a
(32:55):
little bit of a warmth in your chest, or even
like a warmth or sometimes even like a like a
spasm in your gut and your sacral in your womb.
It's a softening in your shoulders, a softening in your jaw.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
It is the feeling of.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
A really satisfying exil. It feels like an opening to something,
and you don't know what it's opening to. You don't
need to, don't overthink it, don't try to push the
lesson forward so quickly, so fastly. It's that little spark.
(33:30):
It is that gentle, that gentle hum.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
That is what it is.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And so if tuning into your body feels unfamiliar, or
if it even feels uncomfortable, that is okay. That is
why we start small. When you experience a moment of joy,
no matter how tiny, place a hand on your heart,
place a hand on your belly. Breathe into it, let
your body register it, let yourself have a little moan
with it. That is somatic response as well, and it
(33:59):
also does so much to heal the way you're able
to express so jess likea or.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Ah, whoa wow.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Sometimes I like to just go thank you, thank you, bang,
thank you, and really let the kind of hum happen
but through a professing of gratitude, acknowledging gratitude in the
moment expands its potency in your life. That's why you
(34:30):
might notice, like if you if it's hard for you
to share your joy or to show your joy, or
even to give compliments to others because whatever host of
restrictions might be happening inside or previous experiences with authority
figures in childhood.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
You know, you'll notice.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
That you feel guilty about that if you don't express
gratitude in real time, or you notice that you cut
it off on purpose, and then you'll ruminate on it
later or sometimes try to find a way to make
it good later, or theorize with yourself about it, back
and forth about why you did that, or why you
didn't do that, or why you had a harsh response,
(35:11):
or why you weren't more giving. It's because it's the
natural flow of the universe forgiven receive to be in
harmony with the universe. We are all giving and receiving
in real time.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
With one another.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So when we cut that off, when we keep it inside,
when we don't want to give it or when we
don't want to receive it, we're creating a balance in
our lives. We're creating a little bit more kind of
energetic and spiritual sickness inside of us. We're creating another
thing that is feeding into this narrative of experience that
we've been having, which very often is that good things
(35:48):
don't happen, or people don't see me, or people aren't
grateful for me, or people don't do for me. A
lot of times it's because we ourselves are cutting off
that give and receive, and so opening to tiny joy
helps that process spiritually as well. It advances our growth
spiritually when we do that. And so let yourself have
(36:11):
that moment, even if you want to give it to
the person when they aren't necessarily seeing you, but you
are choosing to acknowledge it. Right. I don't want to
presume what the barriers for us all especially are with
certain people in our lives, but try to find room
to even give yourself a somatic experience with gratitude at
(36:32):
the end of every day for.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
The smallest moment.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It can look like I'm grateful for that person that
just shared a smile with me for no reason or
made eye contact with me for no reason. Because no
one's looked in my eyes lately, or that person that
gave me a longer hug, or whatever small act of kindness.
I'm grateful for all the green lights I got today
because I hate sitting in traffic. Right I'm grateful for
(36:58):
the fact that my song came on the car. But
say it longer, say it slower, sway your body, close
your eyes, take a deep breath. These are ways of
training yourself to give and receive more tiny joy It's
so important. It's so important. It's so important. It creates
(37:18):
that pathway to feel safe inside of yourself and to
feel welcomed into your nervous system. Why does all of
this matter? Why focus on tiny joys well? Because they
remind us of what it means to be human. They
anchor us in the present moment, and they create ripples
of gratitude that nourish our spirit. Tiny joys are acts
(37:42):
of self love. They are a balm for stress. They
are a counterbalance to the heaviness that we all carry,
and lately it seems like we may carry certain pockets
of heaviness every day. Think about that counterbalance that bring
harm to that When we consciously choose to notice these moments,
(38:05):
we're rewriting the narrative that says that joy is something
that we have to earn. Joy is our birthright, and
these tiny sensory experiences are available to us in every
single day, And I want to take it farther than
saying joy is our birthright, because that is an idea
that we are guaranteed it, or that it's owed to us.
(38:29):
It's not so much that joy is our birthright. It's
that joy is God's intended path for us, and we
may have to do some work to get there. It
may not be this right that is automatically given to us,
as is the case with so many other quote unquote
rights that we fight for as humans on this earth.
(38:52):
But it is God's intended path for us, and it
is something that we should be walking towards and opening
to at all times. And they're all available to us
every single day if we choose it. And again, it
doesn't mean that that tiny joy is going to radically
shift what you're going through, what has happened to you,
(39:14):
what could be currently happening to you. But it is
a portal that is a gateway. It is an opening
to new chambers of who you are and how you
interact with your world and with life, and it is buildable.
You are able to travel and transcend with it.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
It is a key to.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Opening more in your life, to better in your life
and in your body. So a little soul work that
I'd like to share for the end of this episode
is I want you to really get a journal out,
and I want you to spend some time just lightly
thinking over first and examining what would you can consider
(40:00):
to be some tiny joys in this moment or in
your recent past. So think about specifically today or this
week we just had, or something recent where something just
gave you a little smile, even if you didn't express
it outwardly, inside, something that gave you a little, a
(40:22):
little spark, a.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Little oh anything.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Maybe you got a little more sleep, Maybe you did
have a day of a little better traffic. Maybe the
sun hit you in a way that felt beautiful. When
I first started connecting to tiny joys, all I could
do was connected the sun. It felt like there was
nothing going right. I was grieving the passing of someone
I love. I was grieving another passing that had happened
(40:48):
not too far removed. I was grieving myself. I was
grieving the world just greaving a relationship. There was just
so much grief, as is the case a lot on earth.
But the sun every day I took a couple extra
seconds to feel sunshine on my face. That was my
first gateway, and then that opened to more things. I
(41:10):
was able to have more epicurean experiences. I slowed down
with my coffee, I slowed down with the bite and
let myself really receive the pleasure that was possible from
it in that moment. So I would love for you
to think about it in those ways.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Again.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Sometimes it's big, like human connection, a smile, an opportunity,
but find the smaller things. Slow down and smell that flower.
I used to keep my face buried in a rose,
buried in a rose on my darkest days outside, or
my feet buried in some soil, a warm bath, whatever,
(41:49):
a favorite song, whatever, whatever it is for you, write
down things that you noticed recently in your life that
you would say, hmm, you know, I think that fits
in that catgory.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Think about it.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Then, what I want you to do is every moment
after that, every day, find a moment to slow down,
even if it's just one. Though I think you'll find
many where if you notice something feels good, decide to
pause in that exact moment as it's feeling good and
really experience it, whether it's a second or five minutes
(42:25):
or an hour whatever, Slow down enough when it registers
as something good that you might be pulling up a
wall to or not fully experiencing, and take a breath.
And then once the moment fades, take a breath again
and let it integrate in your body. At the end
of the day, journal about it, write it down, even
(42:47):
as a bullet point. I like to write and experience
my life in a highly romantic way, very poetic, very
roomy all day, so I'd be.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Like, oh my god, this smell was so invocative. That's me.
You find what's you.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It could be very very direct and just bullet point
this happened, or it could be a haiku. Whatever is
right for you, you'll know and it's enough and it's perfect.
Recapitulate it, savor it before you go to sleep at night,
think about it and take a breath. That is how
you will begin to train your body to give and
(43:26):
receive these tiny joys you deserve, tiny joy in your life.
It is the gateway to so much more, and it
is available every day it is available, and many moments
sprinkled throughout the day, Tiny Joys.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Surprise me, God, delight me. Lord, My life is enough.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Consider seeking and saying those things to yourself every day.
Let me know how this episode lands. If you're connecting
to Tiny Joys, I would love to hear and see
about it on Instagram, on email, on DM on any
of the ways that you'd like to connect and share
in a review for this podcast. Whatever feels best for you.
(44:16):
But how are you practicing it? How are you feeling it?
How are you embodying it?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Again?
Speaker 2 (44:22):
My new book, Living in Wisdom. A lot of that
is in this book and so much more. It's available
for pre order now. I have to admit I feel
so strange selling myself to you with this book, but
it's my life's work and honestly, I'm so deeply proud
of it, so I'll be talking about it for a while.
Pree order pre order, pre order pre order Living in Wisdom.
(44:44):
Thank you for joining me this episode. Now, I'm mistay
the content presented on Deeply Well serves solely for educational
and informational purposes. It should not be concerned to replacement
for personalized medical or mental health guidance and does not
(45:05):
constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, it is advisable
to consult with your healthcare provider or health team for
any specific concerns or questions that you may have. Connect
with me on social at Debbie Brown. That's Twitter and Instagram,
or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
And if you're listening to.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
The show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget, Please rate, review,
and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply
Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
It's produced by Jacqueis.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown. The Beautiful Soundbath
You Heard That's by Jarrelyn Glass from Crystal Cadence. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows s
Take a deep breath in through your nose. Holds it.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now, release slowly again, deep in, helle hold release, repeating
(01:02):
internally to yourself as you connect to my voice. I
am deeply well. I am deeply well. I am deeply
(01:30):
I'm Debbie Brown and this is the Deeply Well Podcast.
Welcome to Deeply Well, a soft place to land on
your journey. A podcast for those that are curious, creative,
and ready to expand in higher consciousness and self care.
(01:51):
This is where we heal, this is where we transcend.
Welcome to today's episode. Now, by the time you're hearing
this episode, I'm certain that I have already announced my
new book, Living in Wisdom, A path to embodying your
authentic self, embracing grief, and developing self mastery. You are
(02:15):
a listener of this podcast. This is the deeper layer
of work that I have really been waiting and just
so heart centered and creating to really ascend on this journey,
to be able to go deeper, to be able to
go higher, to be able to have the practices that
will support all the things that you are currently working
(02:38):
on in your life, and a lot of it are
things that we dive into on this show.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So I'm so excited to get this to you.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Preorder Debbie Brown dot Com, Amazon, anywhere you get books,
you can pre order your copy officially today.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I am so proud of this beautiful little baby.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
This is my life's work, and this is really my
heart offering of some of the deepest wisdom. I have
been gratefully able to amass and ways to make it
tangible so that you can heal your life as you
live it in its fullness.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So check that out.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Living in wisdom, all right, Today's episode is all about
the art of tiny choice. I'll never forget when God
sent me that concept. In twenty twenty, I was laying
on the grass. We were in the pandemic. I was
so confused. I had a two year old child. My
life was changing really fast, and it felt really hard.
(03:41):
I had lost someone that I loved dearly, A friend
of mine left the earth, and I was grieving that
there was so much chaos and upheaval in the world.
And I laid down and I just let tears fall
down my face. And I remember the sun was so
hot and bright that day, and my eyes were closed.
(04:05):
I was listening to a song and I could feel
the warmth and the orange of the sun through my
eyelids while they were closed, and it reminded me of
this moment when I was a little girl, and I
used to do that at recess. I would go find
a quiet corner all by myself and I would lay
down and I would just feel the sun on my
(04:26):
face and it fueled me. And I remember God's voice
spoke so loud to me, and they said, seek the
tiny joys, seek the tiny joice, seek the tiny joye.
It was a profound moment for me that set me
so much deeper on my path as a person that
(04:47):
was healing, but also as a teacher, because after I
got that message, I got more ritualistic, I got more devotional,
and so much of my day became about letting myself
open to the goodness that was around, even on the
hardest day. And at that time, I had this incredible
collective of women I was working with called Karma Gang
(05:08):
through my company Karma Bliss, and I was also teaching.
I was beginning to teach quite a bit with Chopra
and taking on a role as an executive there leading meditations,
and God gave me this vision of how to teach
tiny joys, and so I started groups, I started talking
about it. I was posting about tiny joys all the
(05:28):
time on my stories, everywhere, in my posts and my
classes that I was teaching, and I even created a
little mastery challenge about how to identify.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Joy and make it real in your life.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
What I didn't know at the time as I was
doing that, because I was really at first just trying
to keep going, and I was noticing that this was
radically keeping my heart open. But at the time, what
I didn't realize was that also on my healing journey,
I was building my tolerance for joy. I didn't even
(06:01):
know at the time that I didn't know truly within
my body what authentic joy felt like. It alerted me
to the understanding that so much of the way I
and we moved through the world was really about more
so a performative joy, right. It was a lot of
the kind of extra like spire emojis, yes, yes, queen, Hey,
(06:24):
I have a big announcement, look at me, look at
what I'm doing. And I always felt the emptiness in that.
And this was the first time I could really feel
God moving in my body in a different way. So
I became incredibly enraptured by this art of finding tiny joys.
(06:48):
I would journal about it every day. I would identify
these moments for myself, and slowly, over time, I began
to create a system within my body with an healing
that is still in full use today, which is even
on the hardest day, I can find some pathway back
(07:09):
to myself. It isn't always a wide road, right, It
isn't always this kind of open, beautiful path. Sometimes it's
really tiny and I'm tiptoeing through it, But I can
always connect to the path by doing these small, beautiful
heart openers that I call tiny joys. So I want
to talk about how to do that today. I realized
(07:31):
recently that as I've kind of moved forward on my path,
and this is just an integrated part of who I am.
And I'm also someone that doesn't hold so tightly to
ideas and concepts and words that God sends me because
I know they're just here for everyone. So I'm not
always looking to trademark or monetize or you know, create
entire bodies around certain things that God reveals. But this one,
(07:55):
it felt so important to run this back. I've done
episodes probably about five years ago, four years ago that
speak to this as well. So do some investigation if
you feel called. But I thought that with the time
that we're in right now, with the ways so many
of us are experiencing the world, this is the perfect
(08:17):
moment in time to really lean back into some of
these teachings about how to activate your own inner oven,
how to light that fire for yourself that only you
can see and feel, how to bring forward a sweet
smile for yourself even in some of the hardest moments.
(08:37):
And so that's what I want to talk about today.
You know, joy can sometimes feel incredibly elusive. It is
something that happens as an embodied response to the way
you're experiencing goodness in your life, the way you're experiencing presence,
the way you're experiencing God. And so it is something
(08:57):
I found out many years later is part of what
feels like the challenge and also the excitement of this
lifelong journey of growth and self actualization and sometimes healing.
We have to build the tolerance for joy, and sometimes
(09:17):
we reject it because it feels so foreign, or we
think the other shoe is going to drop and the
thing that I want to be really honest with you
about in this episode, is that it is true that
the other shoe will drop right.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
It is true.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
It is true that our life, just because we find
moments of joy, it doesn't mean our life is going
to be free of challenge and hardship. It seems to
be that this is the way earth is designed, that
we're always oscillating between grief and joy. And I talk
about this so much, so much in my book.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Living in Wisdom.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
My book Living in Wisdom is truly like this deep
dance between how to navigate life's griefs and joys in
any and all moments. And so when we sink into
that truth, it actually, instead of filling us with more
fear about opening our hearts wide enough to feel joy,
it can actually deeply empower us. Because we now know
(10:17):
what our vitality source is. We now can identify what
our God connection can be, and it really opens up
space inside of us to see and experience God's love,
our own self love, and the beauty of life even
in some.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Of the most challenging days.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So, if joy has felt far from you, or if
it's felt foreign, or if it's felt to be quite honest, useless,
because life has just been so hard or so challenging,
or you know, so complex to navigate.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The thing I want you to know.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Is that this allows that to feel so much different.
It allows you to survive it, to go through it,
to transcend past it in such unique, beautiful ways that
are true to the core of who and what you are. So, yeah,
the other shoe is going to drop. Sometimes good times
(11:16):
aren't forever, and neither are the bad times. And I
think that's the beauty of what it is when we
connect to and accept the duality, the polarity of what
it is to be in this human experience to be alive.
We are always dancing with grief and joy, but we
really let ourselves down and we miss part of the
(11:37):
point when we're only choosing to fight with grief and
we don't choose to dance with joy when it's present,
Will it leave? Most likely, because all moments do. We're
just in the present moment. But even if you can
connect to it for a second and let it in,
it creates a light inside of you that you can
reaccess to shine on the harder days. It creates a
(12:01):
certain amount of self reverence and gratitude and connection to
the greater compassion that's possible for us to have for
ourselves and others, and it fuels your creativity, and creativity
is most often the cure for challenge. Creativity is most
often the cure the medicine for karma. All of us
(12:25):
are living very different lives, and some of them could
potentially be more complex than others or seem to have
more incidences of challenge than others. And I found that
connecting to tiny joy is the cure for that. It
connects us to our creativity, It connects us to our
(12:46):
ability to co create with what's in front of us,
to change circumstances, or to at least feel a little
bit more lovable and grateful and graceful.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Through all the other processes.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Is so, let's dive into the fibers and really kind
of have a reopening of what it is to connect
to tiny joys authentically and powerfully. So my hope for
today is that this conversation feels like a gentle exhil,
like we are diving into the art of what it
(13:22):
is to make life a little bit more beautiful. These
moments that I like to call tiny joys are those
delightful often fleeting moments that remind us of beauty in
our everyday lives. Tiny joys are the little treasures that
we often overlook that they hold immense potential to shift
(13:45):
our energy and to really help us truly feel alive
inside of our own bodies. When we think about joy,
many of us tend to envision these big life changing moments,
right like wedding, a promotion, a dream, vacation, going viral celebration,
(14:05):
all the things that we look to in this moment
of humanity. And while all those milestones are absolutely joyful
and beautiful, what about those small, quiet joys that are
really always within reach to us? The kind of joy
that is tucked into the sunlight that dances on your skin,
(14:28):
like that moment I shared a feeling that warm orange
glow behind my eyelids, Or the way that your favorite
coffee in the morning warms your hands, and the nature
of that also warms your soul a little bit. Right,
These are what I would refer to as tiny joys.
(14:48):
When your favorite song happens to come on the radio
at the exact perfect moment, or when you overhear someone
else's conversation and somehow it's really relevant to who and
what you are are, and it takes you deeper, or
it gives you access to a memory or a piece
of nostalgia that feels good, that feels warm, that turns
(15:10):
something on inside of you. It is that gateway to presence,
that gateway to gratitude, that gateway to.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Deep inner peace.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
But here is the thing for many of us, identifying
these moments doesn't necessarily come naturally. One we move really fast,
and just in the last thirty years, we have been
taught as humans to move faster than any of our
ancestors ever have in the history of humanity. We're moving
faster as a species mentally, emotionally, physically than we ever
(15:43):
have ever, ever ever in the entire history of humanity.
We are thinking about more than we've ever thought about.
We are juggling more than we have ever juggled as
a species, and we're doing it while also being highly
stimulated by everyone else's experience and every thing that we see, touch,
here feel we have more choices than ever. There are
(16:05):
more challenges globally that we can see all the time,
more than ever in addition to our day to day
lived experiences. And I really call that forward because I
want to honor the fact and be honest that it
is a lot. It is a lot, And if you
are ever feeling overwhelmed, I want you to really understand why.
(16:25):
It's not necessarily because there is something deficient or broken
about you and the way you experience your life. It
is because we are all having experiences right now for
the first time in humanity, in a way that God
didn't necessarily design our biology to uphold. So there is
so much about our physicality and our mentality and our
(16:48):
emotional experience that is catching up to how much life
has changed being human in just the last few decades.
I'm talking the last few decades, like not even the
full length of my lifetime. Yet things have changed in
a way they have never been that we can't even
(17:11):
fully conceive.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And so it's.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Important that we remember that. And if joy is a
challenge for you, if happiness is a challenge for you,
if feeling present in your life is a challenge for you,
it is not because something is wrong with you. It's
because this is really hard, and it goes against a
lot of cosmic law. It goes against a lot of
natural law and the way that we've understood it and
(17:36):
we are. No matter what age you're at, whether you
are a boomer right now, gen Z, gen X, what
are the others millennials that's me, or Generation Alpha or
the next generations to come, no matter where you are
generationally on the journey of being alive. Right now, every
single one of us, all of us are experiencing things
(17:58):
that humans have never experienced here on Earth, being alive,
and it's so important to know that we are the
pioneers of whatever this new phase of humanity is. I
think that's going to become even more obvious and relevant
to us as the decades go on. It might be
the thing that once I am, you know deeply in
(18:19):
my elderhood and in the stunset of my life, is
more widely understood and studied. And I really look forward
to being at those ages where I can see how
much we've come to understand about right now, because the
truth is, we don't really understand any of it, but
we're all being profoundly changed.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Because of it.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So keep your eyes open, and also keep investigating your
own experience and keep moving. How personal your experience may
feel right now. If you find yourself to be more
self critical or more in judgment about who you are
and how you're designed and how you operate, because there
is just so much that's unknown, and there is so
much that's being forced into us that we haven't fully
(19:02):
given our consent to because we don't know what it
can lead to yet. So I'll sit that there, and
I'll really kind of dive back into what I have
found in this moment with the tools we have and
the consciousness we have thus far, to be a true
medicine and cure for that, and that is the tiny joys.
(19:22):
So identifying these moments don't always come naturally, especially if
we're not used to experiencing joy in our body. If
we have spent years again navigating stress, navigating trauma, or
simply the busyness of being alive, joy might feel really elusive.
It might feel too slow, too foreign. So today we're
(19:44):
going to talk about again how we can begin to
notice these tiny joys, how they might show up in
our bodies. Sometimes it's a tightness in your jaw, you know,
maybe if someone, even your own child, is getting too
close to you with affection, you might notice your body
tends up or your jaw tends up. It's not because
anything is wrong with you, and it's not necessarily because
it isn't real or true. It could simply be you're
(20:07):
building your tolerance to have a feeling of deep intimacy
that you haven't felt before, even the platonic intimacy, right,
because intimacy it's depth and its closeness, and it's something
that gets into your interior. But that doesn't always mean
that it has anything or needs to have anything to
do with romance or with physicality. You know, sometimes it's
(20:30):
really just what it is to be seen and revealed
or to have a reaction to something in the most
vulnerable way. Even the really good, exciting stuff and especially
the non sexual stuff that we don't imagine, can cause
us to have some friction or some tenseness. So notice
that whenever there is a barrier which is really just
(20:52):
a felt restriction, a felt wall, or something that is
giving you a different signal that feels strange or different,
notice if that it is related to fear or need
to self protect, or notice if it just happens to
be a new feeling altogether, or a different kind of
tingle inside of your heart, or a different way that
you're experiencing. How you have reactions to things.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Sometimes we just.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Need to let ourselves be in deeper practice with it,
or sink into our bodies a little bit more to
heal something that we didn't have access to before, or
to feel something special we didn't have access to before.
It matters so deeply for our well being. There really
is not true wellbeing, true happiness, true sense of peace
(21:38):
without the ability to access joy. It is the opposite
side of that coin of pain and challenge, and we're
meant to know both, and some of us get deeper
degrees to within which we study that, and sometimes we don't.
But I think it is very very important to build
our tolerance for it. I remember a couple seasons ago
(22:00):
I had one of my dear friends and brothers, rasmaminicm
on this show, and he is just He's written some
beautiful New York Times bestselling books. My Grandmother's Hands is
one of them, and he he spoke quite a bit
on the last podcast we had about something I was
noticing on my journey earlier in my in my journey
that I dealt with personally, and so I think so
(22:23):
many of us do. But it is that you just
have to get your repsin. Those were his words exactly,
and I loved the way he taught that you have
to get your repsin when it comes to joy, you
have to build the practice of it. And the reason
I really look to connect to this concept of tiny joy,
not the big joys and the big celebration, the tiny
(22:44):
joys is because in some moments it is so powerful
to become more with less, become more with less. I
find it to be so much more authentic and healing
to find ways back to myself through more of the
silent self expressions. The silent joy is the small, tiny
(23:06):
moments than.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
It is those big ones.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Those moments are the ones that feel more fleeting and rare,
and then you start measuring and comparing and competing. But
the small ones, those are the moments that you give
yourself that are just for you. It's not about broadcasting them.
It's not about telling everyone about this feeling that you have.
It's about building your confidence and your ability to feel
(23:30):
joy in any moment you choose. I've had since you know,
I discovered this practice some more as all of us
challenging hard moments on the floor and tear moments in
shock and horror of the world around me moments right,
and I found that even on those days, I'm able
to find a smile for myself, even if it's for
(23:53):
that long, right, a minute, a few seconds, I can
find a smile for myself and my child. And I
can do it with so much less than I used
to think it would need to take to be quote
unquote happy or joyful or enough. Tiny joys teach you enoughness.
Tiny joys teach you that your life is enough, and
(24:17):
it's valid, and it's honorable and it's special. Another way
I like to explore this concept of tiny joys is
make love to your life. Find ways to make your
life beautiful just for you. Sometimes you might want to
share them. Sometimes it might hit the story, and sometimes
it is just so you can smile. It is your
(24:37):
way of flirting with yourself and flirting with your life.
I love to after I drop my son off at school,
I have really created something special in our world and
in our home, and I feel that I have brought
beauty to life in our lives in a way that
(24:58):
feels really special for us and really graceful for us
and nurturing for us. And so I like to create
little moments each day. So before I kind of start
my meetings and get into the workflow of my day
and of my life, I really look to come home.
After I take him to school, I usually will have
about thirty minutes to myself where I can do something
(25:21):
just on my own with no pressure, and so I'll
usually light some minsense to kind of give offering to
my day, to my house, and then I'll go pick
some flowers from my garden outside and I'll make a
little mini flower arrangement, or I'll just take a moment
as I sip to your coffee to notice the way
the light comes into my kitchen, because it comes in
(25:42):
like really beautifully in the morning. Sometimes there's just a
little bit of it, depending on what season we're in.
But I always find this like sliver of sunlight that
goes through one of the prisms I have hanging over
my windows, and it casts this little rainbow scape on
a wall somewhere. Sometimes there's like hundreds of these little
(26:03):
rainbows swimming through my house, and on some days that
the sun isn't so bright, there might be one or two.
But I always find it, and I give myself a
moment to just feel grateful and inspire to the way
the sun creates in my life.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Or it could be that I'm.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Driving and I just notice the sun as I'm listening
to my favorite yacht rock song and just feel grateful
and feel special, and for me it feels like God's kiss,
And on hard days, it's actually more than enough. On
hard days, that's even all the strength and the opening
(26:38):
I have for joy, A big joy when't feel right
on a day like that, I'd be steeped into deeply
conflicting emotions and experiences and there'd be a lot of
kind of emotional labor having to happen. But the tiny joys,
those are the ones that don't really require as much
of your participation. It just requires you to be witness
(27:00):
to it and accept that it's happening. And I think
that is the deep power of tiny joy. It teaches
you how to accept in a really beautiful way, how
to create in a really beautiful way, and how to
open for yourself in a really beautiful way. Deeply well,
(27:28):
so ways to deepen that understanding of identifying tiny joys.
The first step is creating moments of pause in a
world that is constantly pulling us in all those directions.
The pausing is revolutionary.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Truly.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It can be as simple as stopping for a deep
breath and having an appreciation for breath moving in your body.
You've been working on your breath work, having an appreciation
for how much air can come in and out that fast.
That's simple. It can be just finding moments for delight.
(28:04):
Sometimes all I can do is say, surprise me, God,
delight me, Lord, and that's the prayer, and nothing else.
Surprise me, God, delight me.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Lord.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I'm not trying to control it. I'm not creating a
definition for what I deem as good enough or important
enough to be considered as joy or to get me
out of whatever is happening. Right I'm leaving that in
God's hands, and I'm saying I am open to receiving it.
I am open to seeing it. I am open to
bearing witness to it, to being present with it. Whether
(28:39):
it lasts for me an hour or it lasts for
me a second, it's enough.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It's enough. It's enough.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
It could be the way that sunlight filters through the trees,
or the sound of a child laughing, or the feeling
of soft nabric against your skins. Are everywhere, but they
do require our attention. So start by tuning into your senses.
Maybe you catch a smell of someone cooking a delicious
(29:10):
meal through the window while you're out on the walk,
Take a deep breath, Take an extra second to take
a deep breath. Perhaps you notice that the sun is
filtering through the trees again in just such a special way,
and the wind is blowing. Instead of walking by it,
stop and look take it in. What is more important
(29:32):
than that? Truly, when I think back to some of
the deepest memories in my life, some of those core
memories that I can kind of time travel to, it's
moments that I also remember what nature was doing as
that moment was happening. So think about that. Is you
craft the ways that you will make yourself spark and
(29:54):
come to life, think about that as you craft these
ways that you're going to flirt with yourself in your
everyday life, romance yourself with these tiny joys. You don't
have to have a partner. Things don't have to be
going so well. You don't have to have the greatest friends. Yet,
you don't have to have a perfect relationship with your children,
(30:15):
or with yourself or with your coworkers. Right, those are
some of those bigger arcs that we're going to be
striving towards our whole lives. But you can have these
little moments where you get to become more with less. Now,
let's talk a little bit about how tiny joys actually
(30:39):
feel inside of your body. So joy, even if it's
smallest form, it's a somatic experience. It is something that
we feel. But if you're not used to feeling joy,
it might show up really subtly at first. And so
that's why we say get your reps up, build your
tolerance to feel it, to accept it. And also in
(31:02):
building your tolerance in these tiny, smaller moments, you're giving
yourself a chance to really really feel the fullness of
the big moments. You know, how many of us have
had experiences where you might be quote unquote living your dream.
I talk about this a lot in the book and
Living in Wisdom. You might be, you know, doing the thing,
and you're like, why.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Do I still feel empty inside?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
That was one of the biggest wake up calls I
had in my life and in my previous career where
I got the dream job, I did the thing, and
it still felt empty and ensure inside of me. It
still felt like that wasn't enough, because we're expecting that
that big thing is gonna heal everything that ever happened
to us, and it doesn't, and it won't it's not
(31:47):
supposed to. It is these small moments of deep presence,
of deep witnessing, of flirting with your life, of creating
and finding and seeking out on purpose the tiny joys.
That's what actually does that. That's what creates the bigger space.
And it all happens inside of your body. It is
(32:09):
connecting the mental and the physical. It is bringing that
elevator down from the mind into the heart so you
can feel and experience and love your life because you
deserve to. You deserve to love your life. You deserve
to love your life. You deserve to love your life
(32:31):
no matter what has happened, no matter what is happening.
You deserve to love your life. And it doesn't have
to be in these massive grand ways that you're waiting
for to happen until you get there. It can happen now,
and then you just have even more room to grow
and expand. Sometimes in our bodies, it feels like a
(32:55):
little bit of a warmth in your chest, or even
like a warmth or sometimes even like a like a
spasm in your gut and your sacral in your womb.
It's a softening in your shoulders, a softening in your jaw.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
It is the feeling of.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
A really satisfying exil. It feels like an opening to something,
and you don't know what it's opening to. You don't
need to, don't overthink it, don't try to push the
lesson forward so quickly, so fastly. It's that little spark.
(33:30):
It is that gentle, that gentle hum.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
That is what it is.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
And so if tuning into your body feels unfamiliar, or
if it even feels uncomfortable, that is okay. That is
why we start small. When you experience a moment of joy,
no matter how tiny, place a hand on your heart,
place a hand on your belly. Breathe into it, let
your body register it, let yourself have a little moan
with it. That is somatic response as well, and it
(33:59):
also does so much to heal the way you're able
to express so jess likea or.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Ah, whoa wow.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Sometimes I like to just go thank you, thank you, bang,
thank you, and really let the kind of hum happen
but through a professing of gratitude, acknowledging gratitude in the
moment expands its potency in your life. That's why you
(34:30):
might notice, like if you if it's hard for you
to share your joy or to show your joy, or
even to give compliments to others because whatever host of
restrictions might be happening inside or previous experiences with authority
figures in childhood.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
You know, you'll notice.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
That you feel guilty about that if you don't express
gratitude in real time, or you notice that you cut
it off on purpose, and then you'll ruminate on it
later or sometimes try to find a way to make
it good later, or theorize with yourself about it, back
and forth about why you did that, or why you
didn't do that, or why you had a harsh response,
(35:11):
or why you weren't more giving. It's because it's the
natural flow of the universe forgiven receive to be in
harmony with the universe. We are all giving and receiving
in real time.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
With one another.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So when we cut that off, when we keep it inside,
when we don't want to give it or when we
don't want to receive it, we're creating a balance in
our lives. We're creating a little bit more kind of
energetic and spiritual sickness inside of us. We're creating another
thing that is feeding into this narrative of experience that
we've been having, which very often is that good things
(35:48):
don't happen, or people don't see me, or people aren't
grateful for me, or people don't do for me. A
lot of times it's because we ourselves are cutting off
that give and receive, and so opening to tiny joy
helps that process spiritually as well. It advances our growth
spiritually when we do that. And so let yourself have
(36:11):
that moment, even if you want to give it to
the person when they aren't necessarily seeing you, but you
are choosing to acknowledge it. Right. I don't want to
presume what the barriers for us all especially are with
certain people in our lives, but try to find room
to even give yourself a somatic experience with gratitude at
(36:32):
the end of every day for.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
The smallest moment.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It can look like I'm grateful for that person that
just shared a smile with me for no reason or
made eye contact with me for no reason. Because no
one's looked in my eyes lately, or that person that
gave me a longer hug, or whatever small act of kindness.
I'm grateful for all the green lights I got today
because I hate sitting in traffic. Right I'm grateful for
(36:58):
the fact that my song came on the car. But
say it longer, say it slower, sway your body, close
your eyes, take a deep breath. These are ways of
training yourself to give and receive more tiny joy It's
so important. It's so important. It's so important. It creates
(37:18):
that pathway to feel safe inside of yourself and to
feel welcomed into your nervous system. Why does all of
this matter? Why focus on tiny joys well? Because they
remind us of what it means to be human. They
anchor us in the present moment, and they create ripples
of gratitude that nourish our spirit. Tiny joys are acts
(37:42):
of self love. They are a balm for stress. They
are a counterbalance to the heaviness that we all carry,
and lately it seems like we may carry certain pockets
of heaviness every day. Think about that counterbalance that bring
harm to that When we consciously choose to notice these moments,
(38:05):
we're rewriting the narrative that says that joy is something
that we have to earn. Joy is our birthright, and
these tiny sensory experiences are available to us in every
single day, And I want to take it farther than
saying joy is our birthright, because that is an idea
that we are guaranteed it, or that it's owed to us.
(38:29):
It's not so much that joy is our birthright. It's
that joy is God's intended path for us, and we
may have to do some work to get there. It
may not be this right that is automatically given to us,
as is the case with so many other quote unquote
rights that we fight for as humans on this earth.
(38:52):
But it is God's intended path for us, and it
is something that we should be walking towards and opening
to at all times. And they're all available to us
every single day if we choose it. And again, it
doesn't mean that that tiny joy is going to radically
shift what you're going through, what has happened to you,
(39:14):
what could be currently happening to you. But it is
a portal that is a gateway. It is an opening
to new chambers of who you are and how you
interact with your world and with life, and it is buildable.
You are able to travel and transcend with it.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
It is a key to.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Opening more in your life, to better in your life
and in your body. So a little soul work that
I'd like to share for the end of this episode
is I want you to really get a journal out,
and I want you to spend some time just lightly
thinking over first and examining what would you can consider
(40:00):
to be some tiny joys in this moment or in
your recent past. So think about specifically today or this
week we just had, or something recent where something just
gave you a little smile, even if you didn't express
it outwardly, inside, something that gave you a little, a
(40:22):
little spark, a.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Little oh anything.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Maybe you got a little more sleep, Maybe you did
have a day of a little better traffic. Maybe the
sun hit you in a way that felt beautiful. When
I first started connecting to tiny joys, all I could
do was connected the sun. It felt like there was
nothing going right. I was grieving the passing of someone
I love. I was grieving another passing that had happened
(40:48):
not too far removed. I was grieving myself. I was
grieving the world just greaving a relationship. There was just
so much grief, as is the case a lot on earth.
But the sun every day I took a couple extra
seconds to feel sunshine on my face. That was my
first gateway, and then that opened to more things. I
(41:10):
was able to have more epicurean experiences. I slowed down
with my coffee, I slowed down with the bite and
let myself really receive the pleasure that was possible from
it in that moment. So I would love for you
to think about it in those ways.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Again.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Sometimes it's big, like human connection, a smile, an opportunity,
but find the smaller things. Slow down and smell that flower.
I used to keep my face buried in a rose,
buried in a rose on my darkest days outside, or
my feet buried in some soil, a warm bath, whatever,
(41:49):
a favorite song, whatever, whatever it is for you, write
down things that you noticed recently in your life that
you would say, hmm, you know, I think that fits
in that catgory.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Think about it.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Then, what I want you to do is every moment
after that, every day, find a moment to slow down,
even if it's just one. Though I think you'll find
many where if you notice something feels good, decide to
pause in that exact moment as it's feeling good and
really experience it, whether it's a second or five minutes
(42:25):
or an hour whatever, Slow down enough when it registers
as something good that you might be pulling up a
wall to or not fully experiencing, and take a breath.
And then once the moment fades, take a breath again
and let it integrate in your body. At the end
of the day, journal about it, write it down, even
(42:47):
as a bullet point. I like to write and experience
my life in a highly romantic way, very poetic, very
roomy all day, so I'd be.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Like, oh my god, this smell was so invocative. That's me.
You find what's you.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It could be very very direct and just bullet point
this happened, or it could be a haiku. Whatever is
right for you, you'll know and it's enough and it's perfect.
Recapitulate it, savor it before you go to sleep at night,
think about it and take a breath. That is how
you will begin to train your body to give and
(43:26):
receive these tiny joys you deserve, tiny joy in your life.
It is the gateway to so much more, and it
is available every day it is available, and many moments
sprinkled throughout the day, Tiny Joys.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Surprise me, God, delight me. Lord, My life is enough.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Consider seeking and saying those things to yourself every day.
Let me know how this episode lands. If you're connecting
to Tiny Joys, I would love to hear and see
about it on Instagram, on email, on DM on any
of the ways that you'd like to connect and share
in a review for this podcast. Whatever feels best for you.
(44:16):
But how are you practicing it? How are you feeling it?
How are you embodying it?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Again?
Speaker 2 (44:22):
My new book, Living in Wisdom. A lot of that
is in this book and so much more. It's available
for pre order now. I have to admit I feel
so strange selling myself to you with this book, but
it's my life's work and honestly, I'm so deeply proud
of it, so I'll be talking about it for a while.
Pree order pre order, pre order pre order Living in Wisdom.
(44:44):
Thank you for joining me this episode. Now, I'm mistay
the content presented on Deeply Well serves solely for educational
and informational purposes. It should not be concerned to replacement
for personalized medical or mental health guidance and does not
(45:05):
constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, it is advisable
to consult with your healthcare provider or health team for
any specific concerns or questions that you may have. Connect
with me on social at Debbie Brown. That's Twitter and Instagram,
or you can go to my website Debbie Brown dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
And if you're listening to.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
The show on Apple Podcasts, don't forget, Please rate, review,
and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Deeply
Well is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect Network.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
It's produced by Jacqueis.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Thomas, Samantha Timmins, and me Debbie Brown. The Beautiful Soundbath
You Heard That's by Jarrelyn Glass from Crystal Cadence. For
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Host
Devi Brown
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