The goal is really ultimately just to learn pathways back to joy from these emotions so we don't get stuck or we don't have to sidetrack.
There are things that you can do to train your brain to run on the fuel of joy, instead of always running on the fuel of fear. And it's important for people to understand what those principles are.
Welcome to building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times best seller The Five Love Languages. Is joy the icing on life's cake, or is it the fuel on which it runs? Today, Marcus Warner and Chris Coursey return to reveal what brain science says about becoming a joy filled person.
And as we begin this summer, best of broadcast from last September, we want you to know that today's resource is titled The Four Habits of Joy Filled People. 15 Minute Brain Science hacks to a more connected and satisfying life. Find out more at building relationships.us. Gary. It seems to me there are some people who come out of the womb joyful. They're exuberant, ready to rush into life. And then there are those who struggle to find joy in anything.
Well, I think that's true, Chris. And of course, those are the ones that are in my office. They're not finding joy in life and they're looking for help, you know? Uh, but I am excited about our discussion today because, listen, the Bible has a lot to say about joy. And I think this is going to be a helpful program for our listeners.
I do too. So let's get right to it. Doctor Marcus Warner is president of Deeper Walk International, former pastor, college professor. He's written on everything from how to study the Bible to dealing with spiritual warfare to emotional healing. His heart really is to equip people with practical tools for dealing with rude issues that keep them stuck. So if you're stuck, you keep listening. His co-author is Chris Coursey.
He's president of Thrive Today, a nonprofit ministry focusing on training leaders and communities and skills that make relationships work. He's an ordained minister, pastoral counselor and author. You can find out more about them and the book The Four Habits of Joy filled People at Building Relationships. Us.
Well, Doctor Warner and Chris, welcome back to Building Relationships.
Hey, this is exciting. Thank you. Gary.
We're glad you're here. Very excited about it and excited about our topic. And in this book, you've written about joy filled marriages and how to raise children to find joy. How to turn on the joy switch in your brain. So, Chris, you really believe there's something to this topic of joy? Obviously.
Yes, I do, Gary and Marcus and I really want to get this message of joy out there to the world. You know, joy just really is one of those ingredients. When it's there and it's present, we feel it. We want to share it with everybody we interact with. when it's not there. We also feel that and it's just not a fun place to visit for very long. So
this whole topic of joy is very exciting. It's just looking at how the brain works and how the brain runs, and how joy really is the fuel for our relationships, for our life, for our character, for all kinds of good things that are really important for us. So joy is just it's a fun topic and it's something we just love to talk about.
Well, Doctor Warner, why do you say that joy is important for people.
So a couple things. One, you mentioned that the low joy people are the ones who show up in your office for counseling. Right? And that is high joy, people or don't go counseling going, you know, I just got to thinking much joy in my life, right? They, uh, people don't complain about, you know? Oh, if I just get rid of some of this joy, my life would
be a whole lot better. And one of the things that we learned is from a from a neuroscience perspective, we have learned that the brain wants to run on the fuel of joy, and if it can't find it, it will run on the fuel of fear. And so most of your clients right there running on fear, and they can't find enough joy to counteract that. So what we're trying to do is help people understand that there are things that you can do to train your brain to run on the fuel of joy, instead of always
running on the fuel of fear. And it's important for people to understand what those principles are.
So there's an analogy that you use of the fear House and the Joy House. Doctor Warner explained that.
So here's the idea is that we all have an inner world, and in that inner world, I'm either going to build a fear house or a joy house. If I build a fear house in my inner world, what it means is I don't like spending a lot of time alone. It's hard for me to just be by myself. I need distraction, I need entertainment, I need something going on. I don't like to be quiet and by myself because my inner world is not a happy place to be.
And so if that's my life, and I find that I'm constantly filling it with distractions, that I'm going to fill it with addictions, that's not healthy for anybody. So what I need to do instead is learn. How do I start building a joy house? Because as I start building a joy house in my inner world, I will spend less time in that fear house and more time in the joy house. And the result will be greater emotional stability in my life.
Well, we hope that this program and the book is going to help some people build a Joy House. You know, Chris, anxiety and mental health issues are rising in our country, particularly among young people. Uh, what's your perspective on that?
Yeah.
You know, joy is one of those things that our brain is wired for. Joy means we're glad to be together. Joy is a high energy emotion. It's a high energy response. So infants, when they build joy, they they get all this energy. And you can see it and you can hear joy. And so one of the things that's happening in our day and age is some of these important skills, like joy and rest, are just kind of fading from
a lot of our families and our communities. And so ultimately, your nervous system needs a rhythm of joy and rest. And so we build high energy joy, and then we can access the low energy rest states. And what's happening is some of us are just low on joy, and our joy tanks are getting dangerously low, or some of us were not resting and quieting, um, maybe we're on our phone too much or whatever it might be. Ultimately,
we're not finding that rhythm of joy and rest. And so what happens is we get stuck and we we become kind of fear based with what Marcus was talking about. So a lot of, um, a lot of our youth are really struggling with this absence of rest and this, uh, just absence of joy. And we're turning to technology or they're turning to other things to kind of compensate. And that just doesn't go well. You know, the good news is people can learn to train their brain to run
on the fuel of joy. With a little bit of practice, we can grow joy. With a little bit of practice, we can learn to quiet and rest. And really, the absence of rest and quiet is the greatest predictor for lifelong mental health. And so this is a message Marcus and I really want to shout from the rooftops so that our families and our communities can develop these habits that really protect their mental health and really grow more joy and bring more peace into families and communities.
Yeah, I think this tool is that you have in the book is going to be helpful to parents who are working with their young people and trying to figure out, you know, what's going on here. And Doctor Warner, you know, you've created a free resource to help people start building joy into their lives. So tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah. You can go to for habits.org. And uh, what we put there is the 28 day Joy challenge. And uh, Chris actually is the primary person who crafted a lot of these exercises. But what we wanted to do is, like, the book is full of all the explanations and all the principles and a whole bunch more exercises. But we wanted to give people 28 days of exercises that they could do to start building joy now. And what we found is that it takes about 28 days, you know,
for the brain to begin forming a habit. And so that's why we've put a 28 day joy challenge together. And I think people can, uh, can download it in calendar form and stick it up on the refrigerator. They can get a daily email with their exercise of the day. But this is just in time intended to give people a simple tool to help them get jump started in this process of building their Joy House.
Is that designed for adults or young people or both?
Yeah, if you can read, you can probably go through it. It's, uh, it's it I mean, it's ideal for adults, but, um, you know, there's no reason why, uh, an older kid, uh, couldn't do this as well. The president of Deeper Walk International, Doctor Marcus Warner, is with us, as well as the president of thrive today, Chris Coursey. Again, you can find out more about them and our featured resource at Building Relationships Us.
Well, the book we're discussing, the title has to do with four habits that people can use to build joy into their lives. So let's talk about the four habits. Uh, can you give us an overview of those four?
Yeah, let me dive into this because we talked about, uh, building a joy house. So we took the idea of house, and we used the Spanish word casa, right, to remember these four habits. And the idea is that this is what you find people doing who are the sort of people you would characterize as joy filled. They they're good at calming, uh, quieting their bodies or calming from when their emotions get high. They're good at regulating their emotions.
That's calming too. They're good at appreciating they. They don't just say thank you. They stay in a state of appreciation for five minutes at a time on a regular basis. Uh, three they tell a different kind of story than people who are trapped in their fear houses. Uh, fear based stories tend to end with. This bad thing happened to me. I felt that bad emotion. And that's why I'm stuck the way I am. Uh, a joy story is this bad thing happened to me. I went through this bad emotion. But. Right.
This is how I recovered. This is how I was able to act like myself. Anyway, they tell a different kind of story. And then the last one is attacking toxic thinking. As you know, the fastest way our joy gets sabotaged is we get these, this toxic thought flow going through our head, and we got to learn how to, um, replace those thoughts if we're going to stay joy filled people. So it's calming, appreciating storytelling and attacking attacking, toxic thinking.
Uh, take a minute, either one of you and share just the first one. That calming thing. How does that work?
Calming is is really just pausing to take some deep breaths. And so calming is being able to just quiet your body, quiet your mind, take some deep breaths. Really just taking kind of a relational breather. And so we just pause throughout our day just to quiet, just to breathe. And you know what? A little bit of quieting goes a long way. And just it could be a 32nd pause
here and there. And what this does is it really just trains our brain to notice when we need a breather and to notice how it feels when we take a breather. So it's just a nice pause to refresh, recharge and then just continue to go about your day.
So calming is is both this idea of taking a break and establishing a rhythm in life. But it also gets to this idea of what do I do when I've got high energy anxiety coursing through my body? How do I quiet it? What do I do when I'm so angry, right, that my body is I'm having a
physical reaction to it? How do I quiet that? And so we talk about the importance of deep breathing, the importance of learning how to soothe the tension in our bodies, how to exaggerate an emotion and then quiet it, and then how to recognize the thought patterns that are driving it, and quiet those thought patterns as I'm also taking care of my body. So we we call those best practices. It's breathing, exaggerating, soothing and and tackling those toxic thoughts.
And I think those are things that our listeners can understand that that's doable. You know, it's a matter of focusing on them, but they're doable. We'll come back to some of those others later. But the subtitle of your book talks about 15 Minute Brain Science Hacks. Can you tell us some of those exercises and what they do to the brain?
Yeah. So the exercises start with, uh, this idea that the fastest way to grow joy is the practice of appreciation. And so by appreciation, we more than mean more than just saying thank you. It's like a lot of us say, oh, thank you for that cup of coffee and we're done. Or oh, isn't that a pretty sunset? And we're done. Appreciation is actually taking the time to really enjoy and experience and be present in that experience and and let your body feel, you know, the appreciation of what you're
going through. And so we can do appreciation in the present or we can anticipate it in the future. Like, I can't wait till I get to the lake and I get to enjoy all this stuff, and we can spend several minutes in that state of anticipation, feeling the joy of what's going to happen. Or we can do it.
In the past, we can remember times when we felt so much appreciation and we were just things felt so good, and we can relive those experiences in a way that cause our body to actually reenter a state of joy. Just remembering what, uh, had once happened in our past. So one of the brain science hacks is that appreciation is the fastest way to grow joy, and that you can do it in the past, present, or the future.
And the good, good thing about appreciation is, as Marcus said, that, you know, our body responds when we can access some of those joyful moments from our lives. And so your brain responds as well as though you went back in time and you relive the moment all over again. So the remarkable thing that we now know about experiencing appreciation is it it our body and our mind respond as though we're reliving the moment then when we share our stories.
As Marcus mentioned, the importance of storytelling. When you share your appreciation story, what we now know is good storytellers. When they tell their stories, Listeners, they've scanned the brains of listeners who are listening to stories. Then the listeners brains will light up like the storytellers brains. And so the listener is actually experiencing some of that joy as well. So just by hearing the story, imagining it and feeling it,
it's just the joy just starts to spread. And that's really the beauty of these practices that we can practice this on our own by just remembering the good stuff, but we can also share this joy with others and they benefit as well.
Can that appreciation sometimes focus on things as well as experiences? Uh, you know, I'm thinking of the person who has almost nothing, and maybe they have a bed to sleep in, and there's not much else in the house. Uh, and they feel isolated and all of that. But to focus on. Wait a minute, I have a bed, you know. Thank thank for the bed and the sheet or whatever. Can it sometimes start on that level?
No, that that's an excellent question. And yeah, I mean gratitude is is a cousin to appreciation. And so the nice thing about gratitude is we can be thankful for the bed. We can be thankful for the for the pillow. We can be thankful for the heat in the winter time. And one of the things that happens with gratitude is it also kind of charges our relational battery like appreciation. So gratitude wakes up the relational centers in our brain
and also creates a physical response. And so gratitude is just really one of the great, easy, simple ways that we can start to prime ourselves and others for sharing some joy.
Now, you mentioned also some myths about joy. Uh, so, Doctor Walter, what are some of those myths?
So one of those myths is that people are just born happy. Um, so the truth here is that the mechanics of what's going on in your brain to allow you to be a joyful person are largely undeveloped when you're born. As a result, they have to grow through exercise. And so what happens is a babies come out of the womb craving attachment. They're craving somebody to be happy to see them, and they learn to bond and get a secure bond, you know, through the smell of the mom,
through the touch and the feel, the skin. And and then that translates to the eyes and eventually those eyes light up. And what are those eyes looking for? They're looking for somebody who's happy to be with them. And so babies can go through hours and hours of day of what we call joy workouts and a joy workouts where they're there with their making eye contact with somebody who's excited to see them. They're happy that it's them, and they feel all this high energy joy and it grows.
And when that happens, it literally grows part of their brain. The same way that working out with weights would grow our muscles. And then baby needs a break and they just kind of stop and they they look away. And then a few minutes later they come back for more. But they needed that rest. And so we find as a joy workout, the baby needs both that high energy joy and then that low energy rest. And when you get those two things together, the part of their brain
that is capable of experiencing joy grows. And so the good news on this is that those joy workouts will continue to help our brain grow for as long as we live. Just like if I didn't lift weights in high school, but I want to start now, it can still benefit me. Um, there are things that I can do to grow my capacity for joy right from the beginning, so there's a whole lot more I could say on that. But the key thing here is that we aren't just
born joyful. We actually have to grow our capacity for joy by doing the kind of workouts that build that part of our brain.
Yeah. So the myth is that people are born happy. So, Chris, what what is what are some other myths that people commonly have about joy?
Yeah, there's there's quite a number of them out there. And one of the other myths is that joyful people have fewer problems than low joy people. And we always like to talk about that one, because even though I might have a lot of joy in my relational battery, I still encounter pain. I still encounter problems, I still get stuck in traffic. I still, you know, wrestle with
with different struggles in life. And so even though we're growing joy, it doesn't just mean that our problem supernaturally disappear. But what it does mean is joy. Joy filled people are anchored in the storms. And so joy really gives us the strength to suffer well and to be able to stay relational when things are hard. Whereas when I'm my joy tank is low, then what happens is pain and problems become very loud and they kind of dominate my mind and my body. So Joy is a really
good relational life preserver as well. That just kind of keeps us afloat. And whether I have a lot of or little joy, I still have hard stuff happen, but joy really trains me to be able to stay resilient in the midst of the challenges. Yeah.
All you have to do is read the New Testament to know the truth of that reality. Right? The apostles right. And all that they went through in the book of acts. I've been reading that in my quiet time recently. Wow. But it's joy in the midst of those things, because all of us have those things to be sure.
I think you'll appreciate this too. One of the stories we tell is of Corrie ten boom, right? Being in the concentration camp, and how her sister Betsy basically mentored her in appreciation, and how the joy that they were able to build through appreciation and through relational connection gave them the emotional strength that they needed to endure the hardship. And so that's what we're saying. They didn't have to get out of the concentration camp before they could build
some joy. And that's what the beauty of all of this. And that's why we say there's a kind of a myth out there that my life has to. If my life just got better, then I'd be happy. Um, we don't have to wait till then. That's the good news. Well, they gave thanks for lice, didn't they, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yes, because it kept the kept the guards away from them. And so what was something that made him itch and, you know, very uncomfortable was actually something that they could
see as thank you for this provision. Yeah, exactly. And that's why we say it's a myth that, uh, your life has to be everything has to be fixed and working in your life before you can build joy. Joy is about learning how to focus on the good things that there are to enjoy, and the things to be grateful for, even when everything else is not necessarily the way you want it.
Is there a relationship between joy and peace, or are they the same?
Well, there's absolutely a connection that you can look at it this way. Joy is high energy. I'm happy to be with you and peace is low energy. I'm happy to be with you. So it's like I can be excited that daddy has walked in the front door and I can be snuggled up next to him and resting and be happy. And one is peace and the other is joy. So they have to do with whether it's creating a high energy or low energy in my body.
And I've heard it said, uh, that joy is peace dancing and peace is joy resting. And so there, yeah, there really are complementary. And where you find joy, peace is right there.
Yeah, I like that. You know, you talk about joy robbers in people's lives. What are some of those robbers take away our joy.
Well, I think one of the top ones is toxic thinking. And I'll give you an example. It's like I got a cup of coffee and I'll sit here and I'll start to enjoy it, and I'll be intentionally trying to just enjoy the experience of the coffee. And I can have this thought come into my head that says, you know, this is the stupidest thing you've ever done. And that toxic thought that comes in there to try to snatch
it away. It's like, if I don't have a strategy or game plan for saying, nope, that's I can't let my mind go there. I need to replace that thought with something else. It'll rob me of my joy. So one of the core joy robbers are, uh, allowing these toxic thoughts to take root and, uh, not doing anything to recognize that they're there and replace them.
Yeah. Another joy robber would also be what we call traumas. And so in the book we talk about a traumas and B traumas and a traumas are the painful absences. So I'm not getting something that I need and something important that I need, like joy for example. And the B traumas are the bad things which should not happen. Marcus and I use the example of there's two ways to kill a flower. Don't water it. That would be an absence or step on it, which would be a
bad thing. And so we've all had, you know, things happen in life where we just didn't get what we needed in a moment or something bad happened that shouldn't have happened. And those do rob our joy. And the goal is not to avoid all the pain. The goal is actually to start growing some joy. So we learn to bounce back from the hard things. We learn to be able to return to joy from the big feelings. And that's that's the good news. That joy really does give us the strength to be the people that are
really proud of who God made us to be. We're relational, we're kind, and we're resilient, and joy is just that fuel for that good stuff.
Recently, I was reading the C.S. Lewis book. I think it was the last one that was published shortly after his death, and it was Letters to Malcolm, chiefly on prayer. And the quote is this joy is the serious business of heaven. And in that chapter he's talking about how frivolous some of the things that we can do here
on earth are. But even the frivolity, even the little things that happen in our day, that spark us, to give us pleasure, that this is an inkling of what joy what heaven's going to be like and what joy really is. Marcus, what do you say about that? I think it's a great insight because, you know, Jesus said, I have come that your joy might be complete. And so there is something to heaven as a place of
perfect relational life. You think about how great you know, the best parts of life are people, and the worst parts of life are people. And so heaven I look at as a place of where if you got rid of all the bad things about being with people, and it was just this relationally wonderful place, how much joy there would be, and there's joy with Jesus, and there's joy in the kingdom and all that. So I think that, uh, yeah,
he's spot on, you know? Jesus. You know, when he went to summarize what he came for, he said, I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly. I've come that your joy might be complete. So it's clearly something that's core to the kingdom.
We're talking about joy and the brain. What are the two essential brain developments?
So the two main brain developments are what we call a joy center and joy pathways. And that is literally right behind your right eye is a part of your brain that grows as you do joy workouts, and this part of your brain grows, uh, your capacity to live with joy. And the bigger that it grows, the easier it is for you to regulate your emotions. And so joy is essential to developing resilience and the ability to bounce back from heavy things. So that's the first one,
a big joy center. And we do that primarily through, uh, joy workouts of appreciation and rest. The second thing that has to develop our joy pathways and what a joy pathway is. You can think of it this way. When I go into something like depression or anger or shame, I go to the back of my brain. All the brain function goes to the back, whereas joy is in the front of my brain. So I need a pathway from each of those upsetting emotions. Back to the joy
center in the front of my brain. So that's something that has to be developed. It doesn't exist when we're born. We aren't born with any of those pathways in place. They all have to be developed and they are developed relationally as someone is relationally present and engaged with us, um, while we recover from upsetting emotions. And if we miss that, which would be an a trauma, right? I didn't get that.
Then I'm going to have to do some things later in life to be intentional about doing exercises to build those joy pathways, but those are the two things that have to develop.
And it was really these developments that Marcus and I wanted to highlight with the book that, you know, there are things we can do to grow that Joy center. And, you know, this is a part of the brain that grows throughout your lifespan. So joy, you know, really does change our brain. And the joy pathways is also very helpful, because what that means is there's a way out of our upset, upsetting emotions to get back to joy. and so we can actually learn and practice ways of returning
to joy from our from our upsetting emotions. And that's good news, that there there are things we can do. There are practices we can do to grow these abilities. And that really is life changing. When we can hold on to joy and get back to joy whenever we lose it.
Now, you mentioned trauma there briefly in all of that, but what about the presence of trauma in a person's life? I mean, we know it. We know it's traumatic and that's what the word means. But how does that impact a person's ability to experience joy?
Well, trauma can actually make it impossible for a person to experience joy at some level. And until it gets repaired and some new things are developed. So I think about a baby who's born in an orphanage that only takes care of their physical needs but isn't holding them, isn't comforting them, isn't responding to them when they cry right when you. If you're raised like that, that's trauma, right? You're they may not be abusing you, but it's a trauma.
You are not getting what you need. And so what happens is that the joy center in your brain never grows. And it stays like a shriveled up little pea up there. And as a result, you go through life with virtually no capacity for joy. So trauma can keep that that joy center from ever developing. And when that happens, it's going to take a lot of extensive work and intentional work to begin doing the exercises needed to begin growing that part of our brain as, as either older children
or adults. And so that's one way that trauma can affect our ability to experience, uh, to experience joy. And another one is that trauma tends to send us into those negative emotions in the back of our brain. And so if we never develop the joy pathways to recover from those, then we just get stuck in all of those upset emotions and they dominate our lives. And until those joy pathways get developed, it can be virtually impossible to experience joy.
And that's why, you know, that's why we need the Gary's in the world, the people in the world that can help us and help us to work through some of those hard things. And that's why we need community as well, so that we we have a support team or we have people in our lives and relationships where people are glad to be with us. And that really does give us some capacity as we work through that
hard stuff. And so it's helpful to understand these things because it's really helpful to have some wind in our sails, so to speak, as we're working through the hard stuff, just finding ways of belonging and ways to connect with other other human beings where we can experience some glad to be together. Joy will will go a long way.
You know, many of the things that I deal with is trauma in a marriage. You know, where one one of them has been abusive or unfaithful or, you know, all sorts of things happen, of course, that can certainly erase the joy that may have been there in the earlier part of the marriage. So it's not just childhood trauma. Many times it's trauma in the midst of adulthood. Right?
Yeah, that's a good point. And that is, uh, if I don't already have a well developed kind of joy system in my brain, and I go through trauma in my marriage, it's utterly overwhelming. Right. But if I do have a higher level joy system developed, my brain and I have other relational connections. What it does is it gives me the capacity to endure the trauma in my marriage and still act like myself and still be myself, and not turn into somebody else. So it's one of
the things that goes together. So the idea, one of the things we would encourage people to do who are in a high trauma marriage is to work on growing their capacity for joy independently of the marriage, because anything they can do to grow their joy independently of the marriage is going to give them the capacity to deal with this harder stuff that they have to walk through.
Yeah, I think that's a area that many of our listeners can identify with. Now there's an acrostic that you called sad. Sad sad sad. Talk about these six emotions and why they're so important.
Uh, I'll.
Jump in first. Chris, you can add on to, uh, so Chris has a book called the Joy switch. And you think about this, uh, switch on the side of your brain is an on off switch. And the idea is that when, uh, when I get triggered, my switch goes off, and when my switch goes off, it's either going to say it's either going to rob me of of emotional energy and I'm going to get really, like, just lose all the energy in my body. And when I get these low energy emotions, that's shame and, uh, sadness,
disgust and despair. So out of sad, sad, the S and the D and the s and the D are shame and sadness, disgust and despair. And those are those low energy emotions that just make me want to hide. They make me not want to get out of bed. They're demotivating emotions. Or I can get a message from my from that part of my brain that says, oh, this is scary, this is bad, or this is scary, and if it says, this is scary, then I'm going
to get these high energy fight or flight reactions. And so that's the anger and the anxiety or the being afraid idea. So that's what sad sad stands for, stands for the six core emotions that get triggered in us, and that we need a separate joy pathway back from each one of these emotions because it's a different path to return to joy from sadness than it is to return to joy from anger. And so some people are good at one emotion, but not necessarily good at another one.
And so by separating them out, spelling them out, we kind of help people understand this is what needs to get developed.
And it helps to understand this lens, because some of us, we tend to prefer high energy emotions. So we prefer being angry, opposed to sitting in hopeless despair or shame. And so when there's no pathway back to joy from these emotions, we can get stuck in the emotion or we sidetrack to a more manageable emotion. So you'll see somebody, maybe they're feeling shame, but they're really mad, but they're feeling shame. And so when you talk to them, they're
really angry, but they're actually feeling some shame. And so the shame is harder to manage than the anger. So this is where we will gravitate toward the more manageable emotions. But the goal is really ultimately just to learn pathways back to joy from these emotions. So we don't get stuck or we don't have to sidetrack.
Now give us those six again, because some of our listeners are saying, wait a minute now, what were those six? Give them, give them to us again.
Okay.
So sad. Sad. Let's just start with sadness. Sad. Sad starts with sadness and then anger and disgust. So that's the first add sadness, anger, disgust and then shame. And then A is like I'm afraid or anxious and then D is despair. Everything feels hopeless.
Well, we're talking about joy and we're also talking about the realities of life that all of us experience. So let's say something happens to a listener as they're driving down the road and they experience fear or anxiety, and that can happen easily in today's world on the highway. Can you take our listeners through a calming exercise that they can do after they've experienced that kind of anxiety?
Yeah.
So what I would suggest to people is, uh, is that it's a little counterintuitive. The first thing you probably want to do there is actually exaggerate your anger a little bit, and that is to just acknowledge that person. Cut me off. I'm so mad. And you're like, I want to take a bazooka and blow them up right now.
And it's like, just exaggerate it. It's like, well, you know, I'm not actually going to do that, but it's like you kind of got to let yourself feel how big this is and then go, but I don't want to stay here. So I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm going to be going to tense a muscle and relax it, take some more deep breaths and then I'm going to tell myself truth. How would it be like me to act? That is, you know, as a Christ follower,
as somebody who loves God. Okay, let's act like myself here and not turn into a rage monster.
Yeah.
And Marcus said something really important there that I want to highlight. And that breathing step, uh, is just crucial to this process. Because the first thing to go when we become anxious or angry is our breathing. And so we also know, you know, about two thirds of us hold our breath when we pick up our phone. And so the breathing is, is the telltale sign that, oh,
something's going on here. And so just remembering to take those deep breaths, remembering to quiet the body, quiet the mind, that alone can anchor us when we feel some of that anxiety or that anger coming on. Just take those deep breaths. There's always a reason that if you ever have to go into an ambulance, uh, they will tell you to take deep breaths because they know deep breathing is crucial to helping us stay anchored when big feelings start to arise.
Maybe we should just suggest that at this moment, all of our listeners just take a deep breath. Yes, wherever you are, whatever's going on. Okay. Uh, I can identify with that. Uh, paint a picture for us of the impact that building these habits has on an individual and your relationships long term.
Yeah. When I think of this question, I think of my wife and I. And so my we talk about my wife's story in the book and my story. But when I first met my wife, um, it was a good day for her if she got out of bed. And so she was on federal disability for anxiety and depression. And, uh, when she was 11, she was hospitalized for suicidal depression. So she had a lot of, a lot of fear,
really kind of running her life. And so when she started to practice the habits here that that Marcus and I talk about in the book, one really stood out. And it was the quieting skill. And this quieting practice just transformed her life. It was a skill. It was a habit that was missing. And so as as Jen and I started to practice exercises, these calming exercises that Marcus and I are talking about, it was like watching a flower bloom and blossom. Like Jen just came alive.
She started to grow joy. She started to rest and share appreciation and tell stories. And now if you met Jen today, you would never know that some of that hard stuff was was in her, you know, part of her story. Like she's teaching our sons these skills. She's teaching our sons how to quiet and rest. And so these, these this material has really transformed our lives and our marriage. And we practice this, this stuff as a family, around the meals, around the dinner table. We just try to
practice this stuff every day. And we find that a little bit goes a long way. And so a little joy, a little rest, a few stories, you know, noticing those, those toxic thoughts that come into the mind just a little bit goes a long way. And it's really just transformed our lives. And I just can't imagine life without, you know, being able to use this material and practice these habits. It's really changed everything.
Yeah.
Well, Marcus, Chris has given us, uh, his own personal story of how this has impacted his own life and his relationship with his wife. So let's say that a person is married to a spouse who exhibits no joy or very little joy. Is there anything that the spouse can do to help their mate at this juncture? You know, they don't have your background. They're just listening to us today. Hopefully they're going to buy the book, but what would you suggest to that person?
Um, you know.
That's a good question. If I were going to give them one thing to do, it would be validation. And validation is where I, I acknowledge the emotion that the other person is having, even if I don't agree that they should be feeling it. And so what I'm doing is I'm going to accurately name the emotion my spouse is in fact feeling, and just how big it is for them. And try to get your your spouse nodding their head in agreement like, yeah, you see me, you
see where I'm at? That's correct. There's a couple of things we got to avoid. Number one, we have to avoid using the word but. So if you're going to say something to your spouse like, I really appreciate you, the only thing that's going to ruin that is, like, I really appreciate when you do this, but I wish you'd do it more often. Right? I really appreciate, you know, when you take care of me in this way. But you know you don't. So we say there's one rule
when it comes to sharing appreciation with your spouse. And that's no buts. So if you validate the emotion they're actually at and make it a habit to try to find a way to share appreciation with them without a butt in it several times a day. Uh, then the goal here is to shrink the joy gap in the marriage so that there is less and less time passing between moments where you at least put out a bid for for joy to be shared. Um, and let that that work. But I would start with validation and then
just the practice of appreciation. Uh, we do have a whole book on this, right? And that is the four habits of joy filled marriages that have a ton of, uh, exercises and suggestions on this.
And that's really why Marcus and I wanted the exercises so that people could do something to to practice these habits and then notice the difference. And so just sitting down, you know, taking five, ten, 15 minutes to just practice an exercise, practice the calming, practice the appreciation and so forth. That's the hope that as we practice these things, they become more like reflex. And we'll start doing them without having to use a lot of energy or think about it.
Well, I can certainly see how this could be helpful to someone who's in a situation like that. Does the Bible's view of joy line up with the things that you have discovered about the brain?
Yeah, that's.
A fair question, right? You know, what does the Bible say about this? And so my you know, my background is is I was an Old Testament teacher for several years. I taught systematic theology, got a, you know, strong background of this. And and what you'll find is that the word joy in the Bible is often what we would call happiness. It's like a reactive response to, hey, we won the battle, there's joy. Or oh, the crop was great, there's joy. Or, you know, my, my child's getting married.
There's joy. So there is this sense of I'm happy because of the of what is happening right now. but it it goes deeper than that to then that there are places where you get to ideas like Jeremiah saying, the joy of the Lord is my strength, or this blessing of Aaron every day may the the face of Yahweh shine upon you. You're like, well, what is a shining face? This is just as glowing, ethereal, otherworldly face.
Or is it a face that's beaming because he's happy to see you and we're like this blessing on on the people that you're going to have peace because God's face is looking at you, and he's happy to see you and he's lit up with joy. So we find that that's exactly spot on with what neuroscience is teaching us, and that is that what we're really craving is the presence of someone happy to see us. And I find that in a lot of us, in our walk with God, one of the deepest obstacles we have to overcome is
that we don't feel joy around him. We're not convinced he's really happy to see us, and it makes it very hard, right, to be a Christian. If you're not quite sure God really likes you. And so it's a big deal. Joy is directly connected to, you know, what the Bible puts right at the center of things.
And my favorite, you know, one of my favorite examples in the New Testament is in Hebrews, where for the for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. And so to understand that joy is a relationship. So I always tell people for you he endured the cross, despising its shame. And so it's, you know, joy is a relationship. And this is a this is a hopeful word that we have a God who's glad to be with his people. The good Shepherd is glad to be with the sheep. And that's a beautiful picture.
Yeah.
Let me jump in before we end here, because I see as I'm going through the book and these four habits, I see a correlation between what Gary's written about and the love languages and joy. Marcus, do you agree with that?
Yeah.
In fact, his book was one of the inspirations for what we're doing, and that is we wanted to come up with a, you know, the core illustration and love language is this idea that we got a love tank, and when our love tank is low, the gears grind. We don't act like ourselves. And this is a very
similar concept. And that is if our joy levels drop too low, our our resilience goes away and the lower our joy levels are, the less resilience we have, the easier it is for us to snap right and turn into somebody we don't want to be, and to act like somebody we are ashamed of later. And so it's very similar. The patterning in the book is very similar, and it was definitely an inspiration to what we wrote.
Well, Marcus and Chris, let me thank you for being with us today and also for taking time to write this book. And I do hope that many of our listeners are going to get it, because I can tell you just from my own experience in the counseling office, it's greatly needed in this day. So thanks for being with us.
Thank you for having us. It's been great.
Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Once again, the title of our featured resource is The Four Habits of Joy Filled People. 15 minute brain science hacks to a more connected and satisfying life. Go to building relationships us to find out more. Again, building relationships.us and to take the 28 day Joy challenge. Go to four habits.org. Next week it's a summer best of conversation about father wounds. Don't miss a discussion with Kia Stevens.
Our thanks to Janice backing and Steve Wick for their production work on today's program. Building relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Thanks for listening.