Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking with Kelly McGonigal

I believe that joy exists as a capacity in human nature because life is hard.

I guess like you, I spent most of my career really interested in pain and suffering and looking for the resources, the internal capacities that humans have, as well as through relationships and community and connection.

What are the ways that we can get through hard times often together with hope, without despair? And I really have come to view joy as one of those core capacities.

I think that it is our greatest existential resource in the sense that our capacity to feel joy and especially our capacity to show and share joy helps us want to be alive, helps us sense the value of life, helps us know, you know, I have a list.

I'm in my office right now.

And when I started writing this book in 2022, I just had this list of things that people need to know or feel.

And I really believe that joy exists to help us know and feel these things.

Things like things can get better.

Life is worth living.

You belong here.

There's good in this world.

You're loved.

You're not alone.

You're stronger than you know.

And I think every time we share a laugh with someone, or we admire something beautiful, or we do something fun, or somebody thanks us for a way that we helped them, all these things that can bring us joy.

One of the reasons that they are so meaningful is because in that moment, we get this flash, this sense of I matter, I belong.

There's a reason to get up in the morning.

Life is worth living.

And so it doesn't just, it's not like it exists forever.

alongside suffering, I really believe that it's a capacity that evolved and that is, you know, such a core part of human nature because we deeply need to know and feel these things.

And what makes us such a beautiful capacity is it doesn't require us a huge event or change in your life.

One of the examples that I give in the book, since you mentioned despair, one of the worst forms of suffering that a lot of people are dealing with right now is a kind of moral despair, moral outrage, where they start to feel like there's no good in the world, that other human beings can't be trusted.

They start to feel their own kind of most genuine nature or most altruistic nature.

It's starting to feel beaten down.

and they're more in touch with emotions like anger or outrage or disgust.