Spiritual Autobiography for Joy

Your spiritual autobiography, or spiritual story, can be a joy. It can help you bring greater joy into your life. Your spiritual autobiography, or spiritual memoir, can be a tool to prioritize and reorganize your life, bringing you the peace and happiness you keep reaching for but never quite find. Consider a jar: an empty jar just waiting to be filled. First you add some golf balls to that jar: golf balls right up to the rim. Is the jar full now? Consider adding some pebbles. As you drop the pebbles in the jar, they fill the spaces between all those golf balls all the way up to the rim of the jar. Is the jar full now? Try adding some sand. Watch the sand fill the spaces the pebbles could not fill. The sand fills all these spaces all the way up to the rim of the jar. Is the jar full now? Reach for a tall glass of water and pour it slowly into that jar. See the water fill the tiny spaces between all those grains of sand. Watch the liquid as it makes its way up the sides of the glass as it reaches towards the rim. Now the jar is full. Often our lives are a lot like this jar: we keep filling it up with stuff. But, unlike this jar, we don't walk away full. Instead, we walk away empty, and we wonder why we do not have joy. Imagine those golf balls are like the most important things in our lives. Everything else that filled that jar took up space but, like in our lives, these other space takers are not always important or necessary. Maybe peace and joy is found when we figure out how to toss out all those space takers in our lives?  Maybe some of our plans, and even some of our old hopes and dreams, need to go. Maybe they are just taking up space that does not need to be filled? Maybe those space takers are robbing our joy? Are you having trouble letting things go? Is there just not enough time to do everything you want to do? Are you having trouble deciding what to let go and what to hold on to? The road to joy involves figuring out your priorities, letting go of some of your plans, and embracing what is important. You cannot have it all and have joy. Keeping a spiritual journal can help you draw the line at the place where the space takers start robbing your joy. Using a spiritual journal can help you keep track of your spiritual autobiography, and it can become a tool that helps you discover the misguided priorities in your life. Your spiritual memoir can simply be your life shared inside a spiritual journal. As you use this tool to reflect on your life, you will discover its incredible power to bring more joy into your story.  You do not have to publish your story or share it with anyone if you do not want to. What you share about your spiritual life can stay right inside your journal just for you. Grab a pen and a simple journal and take a reach for something really satisfying. Writing in a spiritual journal is a choice that will allow you to experience greater joy. Some things need to be let go of in all our lives. Writing in your journal will help you make choices about what pebbles, sand and water you will allow in your jar each day. Create a space to be happy and use it. The laundry can wait, and maybe today just is not the day to clean the toilet. Maybe today is the day you put your pen to the paper and make more space for joy?