The Choice to Rejoice (Part Two): Why Joy Matters

Complaining can feel like relief in the moment, but it comes with a hidden cost: it trains your brain to look for what’s wrong and makes it harder to create solutions. After coming back from a weekend conference high (and a little sleep-deprived), we slow down and get honest about what really gets in the way of joy, especially when you’re in a hard season, dealing with stress, or feeling stuck.

We walk through the “choice to rejoice” as a real-life gratitude practice, not a fluffy slogan. I talk about how your environment shapes your default thoughts, why workplace or friend-group negativity can pull you into the complaining loop, and how giving yourself grace is part of changing the pattern. Then we get concrete: what does joy look like in your life right now, and where are you already experiencing it even if your brain wants to skip past it?

We also dig into the neuroscience of gratitude and mindset management. Gratitude can support the decision-making part of your brain (your prefrontal cortex), calm stress reactivity (your amygdala), and boost feel-good chemistry like dopamine and serotonin. From there, we build a menu of simple, sustainable habits: journaling, writing thank you notes, doing a weekly “what went well” review, pausing with your morning coffee, giving thanks before meals, and even saying “thank you” when you pay a bill because you have the ability to cover it.

If you want more joy, momentum, and emotional steadiness, pick one practice and try it this week. 

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Transcript

Welcome And Nashville Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi friends, and welcome to Believe Like a Boss. I'm your host, Life Coach Mandy Camille. Join me as I teach you how to smash your goals and expand the possibility of your life through mindset management, spiritual alignment, and authentic action. I'll teach you how to create what I like to call a life of thrive with ease and authenticity. It's time to play with what's possible. Are you ready? Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Believe Like a Boss. I am your host, Life Coach, Nandi Camille. Welcome back, my friends. This week I am coming to you on the tail end of just going to a conference in Tennessee. We had so much fun. I went there with my mom, my sister, and my mom's best friend. It was Thursday through Saturday. I came back on Sunday. It's Monday. So I'm feeling tired. I'm feeling excited about what I've done, spending time with family, you know, being in Nashville, Tennessee for the very first time, which I will be back. Um, I did not know Nashville was like country Vegas. That's how it felt to me. There's just signs and bars everywhere. There's live music everywhere. It was just so much to see and experience. I feel like I just barely scratched the surface. Though I am really glad my whole thing, I was like, look, I'm going to Tennessee. I have these cowgirl boots I've never worn that my sister gave to me years ago at this point. I was like, I'm wearing these cowgirl boots like every single day. Like, this is the place to wear it. Though it's funny because I live in Colorado, and Colorado is known for being this like western state as well. So I definitely have opportunity to wear it out here in Colorado, but I just don't. So it's one of the new things that I'm gonna try to play with a little bit more, is my western side is wearing my cowgirl boots, maybe looking into a cowgirl hat, sort of infusing that into my style now. It's been a lot of fun to play around with that. So hopefully you all had a beautiful weekend. Hopefully, you had a restful weekend, eventful weekend, whatever kind of weekend you needed to have, and you are feeling good on this Monday. I definitely need to get a little bit more rest because we were up late every single night. And then I had a hard time sleeping while I was away. I don't know what that was about. Maybe just being in a different environment. My brain was just on, so I had a hard time sleeping. So I'm definitely gonna need some more rest. But other than that, I'm feeling good on this Monday. I hope that you are too. I hope you're feeling ready for the week ahead. And if you're not, give yourself some love and some grace that it's okay that I don't feel great. But my offering is don't live there, don't live in the uh disdain, the frustration. And I'm gonna help you with that today.

Why Gratitude Is A Choice

SPEAKER_01 2:24

So last week on the podcast, we talked about the choice to rejoice part one. And specifically, I talked about thank you cards. I just wanted to do a little bit different, you know, the attitude of gratitude we've heard many times. And so for these episodes, I just wanted to take a different perspective on attitude of gratitude, a little bit more of the why and some more things to add to your tool belt. So the tool we added to your tool belt last week was thank you cards. That, in fact, it's funny, as the person that writes a thank you card, it's actually not as much for you as it is for the person you're giving the thank you card to, because research showed that the person who gives a thank you card actually underestimates how great of an impact that has on the person receiving them. So last week we talked about thank you cards writing them for other people, but then I also circle circled back and uh offered that you write a thank you card to yourself, right? So that you can be the receiver of that gratitude. And that's why we chose the choice to rejoice. It's a different way to say attitude of gratitude, but I also liked saying it this way specifically because it is a choice, right? An attitude of gratitude, you're choosing to have an attitude in which you are grateful. The choice to rejoice, same thing, but I'm putting choice in that phrase. The choice to rejoice. It is a choice to have gratitude, it is a choice to look for the good, right? It is a choice to be an optimistic. And sometimes it is harder, it feels harder to make that choice than other times. So I wanted to start with this podcast.

The Comfort Trap Of Complaining

SPEAKER_01 3:43

We're gonna go in a different direction, still talking about the choice to rejoice, but starting with what gets in the way. We talked a little bit about complaining last week and how it actually can shrink your prefrontal cortex. It helps you, or rather, it does the opposite of helping you. Um, it makes it more difficult to have creative thoughts, it makes it more difficult to be solution-oriented when you're complaining. So let's go back to that for a second. What gets in the way of us being grateful? Complaining gets in our way. Complaining doesn't serve us, but it is often it gets in our way. Here's why it's easy to complain. Complaining is easy. Choosing to be in gratitude, especially when you're in a hard season, is hard. So it makes sense. Your brain's wired for comfort. It is more comfortable to complain than it is to seek joy. Let's just pause on that for a second. It is more comfortable to complain. Your brain that's wired for comfort, it makes sense why it's so easy for us to complain. It is harder for us to then overcome that knee-jerk reaction, that habit of complaining to seek joy. And again, especially when we're in a season where things are hard, where we're feeling challenged, or maybe we got let go from our job, our partner got let go from our job, we're going through a hard season. We went through a breakup, right? And so the brain, again, always wanting to protect us, is going to look for the things that we need to be afraid of so that it can protect us. So then it is, it feels more difficult to choose joy, to choose gratitude.

When Your Environment Fuels Negativity

SPEAKER_01 5:10

What else can get in the way of us choosing gratitude, besides it being easy to complain, is the people that we're around. And so just taking a moment, a mindful moment, to check in who are you around and what is the influence that those people and those places have on your life? Are you on a team in your full-time work or on your it with your job where a lot of your teammates complain? Is that part of the culture at your job or your place of work? Where the water cooler chat is you complaining about the boss, complaining about the work, complaining about students, complaining about the people you have to work with, complaining about your clients. Check in who are you around? There might be a culture of complaining. It's just comfortable to do so. Again, it's easier to complain than it is to look for the positive. It's easier to join in that conversation where everybody's complaining about the boss than it is to be the person that's like, well, I think that they're doing their best, or who completely just changes the subject and decides to talk about something positive instead. That can be more difficult. So I just want to give you some grace, right? As we're talking about the choice to rejoice, the choice of choosing gratitude. Here's why it can be difficult. I'm gonna give you some grace. It's okay that it's been difficult. It's okay that you've been complaining. What I want to offer you now is maybe we make a habit of choosing joy, of choosing gratitude instead.

Defining Rejoice And Finding Joy

SPEAKER_01 6:28

When I looked up the um definition of rejoice, which I'm surprised I didn't do on the last episode, the definition of rejoice is actually really simple. It means to give joy, to feel joy or great delight. Those are the two definitions to give joy. What does that look like in your current life? Before I give you any tips why joy is great, like what does joy look like in your life right now? Maybe you pause the podcast and you think about that for a moment. What does joy look like in my life right now? What areas of my life currently bring me joy? What areas of my life am I seeking joy? Check in. What comes up for you? Let's bathe in that for a hot second. Because I think again, so often we're wired to look for what's going wrong. We have a habit of looking for the things we need to fix. But just for a moment, right now, what's going well? And because those things are going well, those things are likely bringing you joy in your life. So what's going well? What is bringing you joy?

Neuroscience Of Gratitude And Stress

SPEAKER_01 7:28

The reasons why we love joy, and the reasons why this is helpful for the brain, and maybe a little psychology, a little bit of neuroscience, is because as we talked about last week, the prefrontal cortex, specifically the medial prefrontal cortex, lights up.

unknown 7:41

Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Meaning it gives you energy to make decisions. For the person that is feeling stuck, part of why you might be feeling stuck is because you're focused on your stuckness. When we're focused on our stuckness, that's a place of lack, scarcity, fear, complaining. It's not working out. I thought I was gonna have this many clients, but this time, but I don't. I thought I was gonna have this many clients or this many followers at this time, but I don't.

unknown 8:05

Right?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

When we're in that space, when we're complaining, when we're focused on the negative, your brain is not focused on solutions. It's not focused on being creative. So how do we override that or how do we shift it? I like to use the word transmute it, right? How do we transmute that pain into power? The pain of the anxiety, the pain of the fear. How do we transmute that pain into power through purposely choosing joy, through purposely choosing gratitude, by looking at what's going well? Not so that you can brainwash yourself or Pollyanna, but because literally your brain, your prefrontal cortex, the part of you that is responsible for decision making, lights up. You give energy to the solution-oriented part of your brain when you choose gratitude. So zoom out. What can you be grateful for so that you can be more solution-oriented, come up with solutions to solve the problem that you think is unsolvable or that you're so fixated on that it feels like it's unsolvable right now. The other benefit of doing this on purpose, choosing joy, the choice to rejoice, choosing to find joy, is that your dopamine and serotonin release increases. So talk about that. Dopamine. It makes you want to repeat the behavior. So let's say you've just developed a gratitude practice. That's what we're talking about today. Right? Last week we talked specifically about thank you notes. This week I'm gonna expand, we're gonna zoom out a little bit. What kind of a gratitude practice would you like to have regularly? We're gonna be intentional about our gratitude because when we're intentional about it, it makes us want to do it again. So let's say for my gratitude practice, it's journaling every night before I go to bed, and I journal about the things that go well. As I'm doing that, I'm receiving a dopamine hit, a hit of dopamine, positive hormones. My brain said, Oh, that felt good. I want to do it again. I'm then more likely to keep up with that gratitude practice. The serotonin part stabilizes my mood. So if you've been feeling off, cranky, up and down mood swings, gratitude is going to help with this. When serotonin is released, it's going to help to stabilize your mood. So again, this might feel hard at first, but this is why I like the science behind it. So when my brain is fighting me on being grateful or doing this gratitude practice, I know it's almost like my like a parent. The parent that tells you the kids, like, I want, I want the fruits, I want to eat strawberries. And they're like, You had strawberries. You've had enough strawberries today, you need to eat some green vegetables. Right? And the kid's like, Oh, we only want to eat the green vegetables. But the parent knows that by eating these green vegetables, you will feel stronger. Your eyesight's gonna improve all these positive benefits from eating the leafy greens, in addition to the strawberries, right? There's nothing wrong with just eating the strawberries, but the parent knows you need your leafy greens, you need to eat those vegetables in order to strengthen your body, regardless of this little fit you're throwing. So it's kind of like that with me, right? I might see myself throw a little fit of like, oh, I don't really have time for this gratitude practice. I don't really have time to sit down. But then when I know these facts, that when I do this, it makes me want to do it more because I'm getting a hit of dopamine. When I do this, it helps to stabilize my mood. When I do this, my solution-oriented part of my brain is more activated than the part of my amygdala, which is the part that's focused on fear and threat. That's the next part. So your amygdala activity often decreases, meaning joy and gratitude actively dampens anxiety and stress activity, right? So that's the part that helps me to get over the part that's like I don't have time for this, I don't have time for this. Yes, I do. Because when I make time for this, when I make time for gratitude, when I make time for joy, when I choose joy, when I choose gratitude, I only benefit. Dopamine is released, serotonin is released, my amygdala quiets down, my prefrontal cortex wakes up. These are all positives. That's why I'm giving you all this, because there will be a time in a day where you go to do your gratitude practice and you don't want to, or there's other things that you could be doing, or the brain says that there's other things that you could be doing, right? And so this helps me to ground in my why. Why am I doing this gratitude work? Why is gratitude important? Why is gratitude not just a fluffy thing? Because it actually helps me make change, because it actually helps me to feel better, because it actually stabilizes my mood. And when my mood is stable, I can be of better service to others.

Simple Gratitude Practices That Stick

SPEAKER_01 12:28

So it's gonna be a shorty because it's more so a refresher than anything else. Your growth work is to create a gratitude practice. Maybe you take last week's and you write a thank you note to yourself every single week. For a lot of people, I'm on the tail end of the conference that I went to was a Christian women's conference. So that reminded me, like church. I don't currently go to um a place of worship on a weekly basis. I listen to church online, I listen to different books. And so as I went this weekend, I was reminded that for me, for most of my life, church was my weekly gratitude practice. That was a place that I would go to and I would give thanks for myself, for my body, for the people around me, for my life. Right? Maybe it's daily journaling for you. Journaling every single morning, every evening, as you wake up, what are you grateful for? Maybe it's just with your morning coffee. I think that sometimes we get a little overwhelmed when we think about having a gratitude practice because we're like, oh, it means I'm gonna have to sit down and carve out 20 minutes every day to journal. It means I'm gonna have to go to church and I don't have time to do that, which you know, there's when when we ever, whenever we have the thought, like, I don't have time for that, I want you to just kind of revisit that. Is it that you don't have time for it or is it that you're not making time for it? It's usually the latter. You're not making time for it. And then from there, just check in the thing that you keep saying you don't have time for. Is it that you're not wanting to make time for it? Because if that's the case, just be honest with yourself and stop trying to force yourself to do something you don't want to do. You can find a different way, meet yourself where you are, a different way to practice gratitude. So instead of beating yourself up and saying, like, I don't have time for daily journaling, you could say, I don't want to make time for daily journaling. That is not an alignment for me right now. Don't I want to remove any guilt, any shame from this practice. That is not the purpose. The purpose is gratitude. I want you to feel I want you to have fun finding joy. This should be joyful. I should just shoot it on you. I want this to be joyful. So again, it could be with your morning drink. Whether you have coffee in the morning, tea in the morning, you're the person that actually does have that glass of water before they have anything else. When you're having that first glass of whatever it is, maybe that's your daily gratitude time. You're grateful for the water in your hands, you're grateful for the tea that you're drinking, you're grateful for this 15 minutes of having coffee before you have to go and start your day. Take that moment. Maybe it's with every meal. For Tyler and I, it's prayer. Every single time that we have a meal, we give thanks. Every single time. But the wake-up call for me in doing that was are you still being intentional with your gratitude practice if you already have one? So that was a good check-in for me because I'm over here like, oh yeah, I give gratitude every single day and I pray, but but it's like, okay. But if two seconds after that gratitude prayer, you're back in frustration, then then it's become a habit that I'm not actually uh participating in, right? To like, oh okay, I give thanks for the food. Okay, amen. Right? Am I just like rushing through it, or am I genuinely, when I'm giving thanks for the food that I'm about to put in my body, am I genuinely grateful for the food I'm about to put in my body? And that was a good check-in for me. Again, the question is are you still being intentional with your gratitude practice if you already have one? Or are you just going through the motions? Check in. This is not to shame anybody. It's just like, check in. It's information. Oh, I am rushing through my prayer. Oh, I am rushing through my daily journaling practice in the morning. Like I write down all the things that I'm grateful for, but I'm rushing through it. And so therefore, I'm not really actually feeling the feelings of gratitude. I'm not really feeling the feelings of joy that I'm saying, like, I'm so grateful for you know this new client. And you write it down real quick. Are you actually like, how would it actually feel to be in genuine gratitude for that new client, for that job offer, for your partner that helped you with the laundry the other day? Are you still being intentional with your gratitude practice if you already have one? Here's a few more ways that you could have a gratitude practice. Maybe you write all the things that went well each week on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I love this one. This one I fall in and out of. So as I'm going through this, this is an accountability podcast episode for me of okay, I've there's some of these things that I used to do more regularly, some of these things that I had a habit around or that I've started going through the motions through. This is one of them. Right? All the things that went well each week on your Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I love this practice when I do it because I will forget, I will forget how hard I worked throughout the week. I will forget all of the work that I put in. I will forget the efforts that I put forward in the week because our brain, wanting to focus on the negative, will be like, well, you didn't do this and you didn't do this and you forgot to do this. And so I'll be focused on the negative by the end of the week. What if on Friday, before you shut your laptop and you ended the week, you took a second to review, literally, go through your planner, go through your Google Calendar, your Apple calendar, whatever calendar you use, look at each day and look at the work that you did. Did you knock out five meetings this week? Did you handle a really important call? Did you take on a hard client? Did you have a hard conversation that ended up going really well? Take that moment on that Friday, on that Saturday, before your next week starts. That's why I like Friday, because it's still kind of fresh in your brain. You haven't, you know, close your laptop for the week. Like on Friday, I think is the best day. If not, I love to do it on Sunday before I start the following week. But what went well? You will, I I say this with hesitancy, but I guarantee you, I say with an asterisk because everybody's a little bit different. But everybody that I've done this work with always finds more things that they're grateful for than they thought. When they write down all the things that they did throughout the week, they're like, dang, I did a lot more than I thought that I did. And then from that place, oh, there's that dopamine hit, there's that serotonin hit, and then you're feeling good about what you've done. And then you're going into the weekend with a better attitude and better energy, and therefore their snowball effect go into better energy, go into the next week with better energy as well. Maybe every time you open your fridge or pay a bill saying thank you. I really love the bill one. This is a practice that I have every time I pay a bill, even if it means that even if it's a bigger bill than I thought,

Choosing Joy When Life Is Hard

SPEAKER_01 18:46

or it's an unexpected bill, saying thank you, not for the bill itself, but for my ability to pay for it. That is what I'm grateful for. Thank you that I have the money to pay this bill. Thank you that I have a roof over my head, especially when I'm paying the mortgage. We're in Denver, so our mortgage is a little expensive out here. So when I'm paying the mortgage, even though it's a bigger chunk of change than other people in other parts of the country, I am so grateful. I love living in Denver. I love our home, I love my vaulted ceilings, I love my sunroom, I love our kitchen. I I just I truly do love my home. And so instead of being grouchy about the mortgage payment, I am grateful. Check in. How do you feel about your bills, my friends? Maybe you create something else. Maybe as I'm reading through these different gratitude practices, you're coming up with one of your own. Great. Do that. My offering, my growth work push for you this week is to decide on a weekly or daily gratitude practice. You have the choice to rejoice, my friend. It is a choice, and it is much easier to choose complaining, it is much easier to choose fear, it is much easier to choose doubt. It is harder to choose joy, it is harder to choose gratitude. Again, especially when you're in a tricky season. So give yourself some grace, zoom out. Remember, this too shall pass, my friend, and then lock in. What are you grateful for? Being in gratitude will only help. I promise, it serves you, it serves your creative thinking, it serves your feel-good hormones. Let's get that cortisol down, let's get the dopamine up. Choose joy on purpose, even when it's hard. If not, especially when it's hard. Because then your brain changes and then you start to build new neural pathways. It will be hard at first. If you've been practicing complaining, if you've been saying I'm depressed for a very long time, first thing I would offer again, I'm not a doctor, but I would offer to just stop saying that statement. Even if it is true, stop saying the statement, I am depressed. It's not serving you. Instead, say something else, literally anything else. I am a human. Even that, something neutral. I am growing, I am working on my joy every day. I find new things to be grateful for. What are you affirming about yourself? If you're walking around affirming, I am anxious, I am depressed, I am sad, your brain will look for evidence of that. To choose joy is to choose joy. You have to choose it. You have to choose it. You don't have to do anything. But if you want to feel better, you have to choose joy. As always, my friends, take what sticks to you, leave the rest. I'll see you next week.

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SPEAKER_01 21:56

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