Joy Is Built Out of Small Gratitudes

People talk about joy as if it’s an emotion that strikes out of nowhere like a weather pattern. One minute nothing, the next minute sunshine. But joy, in the way most of us experience it, isn’t an accident. It isn’t even a feeling that arrives fully formed. In the Sheade house, we have a little plaque on our mantel that says "Happiness is something you decide ahead of time."

Joy is a spiritual principle that gets built one quiet gratitude at a time.

Most of the people I sit with want to feel more alive, more present, more hopeful. They want joy, but they imagine it as something dramatic. A breakthrough. A lightning bolt. A sudden change of fortune. And sure, those moments come. But they are rare, and they are not the foundation of a meaningful life.

The foundation is smaller. Softer. Almost embarrassingly simple.

It’s the breath you finally notice after a long, anxious day. The laugh you didn’t expect. The person who texted just when you needed it. The warmth in your chest when you remember you’re not alone. The moment you look up and realize you made it through something you once thought would break you.

These are not distractions. They’re anchors.

Gratitude is not about pretending everything is fine. It’s not spiritual bypassing. It’s not a sticky note on a mirror. Gratitude is the practice of noticing what is already holding you together. It’s the discipline of acknowledging the small things that keep your spirit from collapsing under the weight of the big things.

And when you string those small gratitudes together, something shifts. You begin to see the world with clearer eyes. You start trusting that there is more goodness around you than your fear wants to admit. You feel a steadiness that doesn’t depend on everything going right.

That steadiness is joy.

Joy isn’t the absence of pain. It’s the presence of meaning. It’s the awareness that even in the middle of uncertainty, there are threads of beauty and connection that refuse to let go of you.

In therapy, I see this unfold all the time. A client names one tiny thing they’re grateful for, and their nervous system softens. They name another, and something in their chest loosens. Gratitude doesn’t erase the hard stuff, but it widens the frame. It gives people access to parts of themselves that trauma, anxiety, and exhaustion have pushed underground.

Joy grows in that widened space.

If you want to practice joy this season, don’t chase the fireworks. Start with the embers. Ask yourself: What helped me breathe today? What surprised me? What helped me feel a little more human? Collect those moments. Write them down. Share them with someone. Let them accumulate.

You don’t build joy all at once. You build it one small gratitude at a time.

And eventually, those small pieces come together and make a life that feels worth living.