Living Joyfully

Helping parents cultivate a thriving unschooling lifestyle in their family.

  • Start Here
  • Deschooling
  • Unschooling
  • Parenting
  • About
  • Contact
  • Podcast
    • Q&A Episodes
    • Ten Questions Episodes
    • Interviews I’ve done …
    • TUC Talks
  • Books
    • Book Clubs
  • Network
  • Summit
  • Questions?
  • Articles
    • Spanish Translations
  • Blog
You are here: Home / Philosophy / Finding Joy

Finding Joy

July 27, 2013 By Pam Laricchia 4 Comments

First, what do I mean by the word joy? Certainly it means happiness, pleasure. Most people can find happiness in response to good things that happen to them or around them. Yet when disappointing things happen, they are thrown into despair. It’s tough to be at the mercy of outside events!

What I’d like to talk about is the deeper sense of joy that I found developed alongside my growing understanding of unschooling. It’s a sense of self that no longer seems quite so susceptible to the whims of life and luck. That’s important because a joyful life is not without problems or strains or challenges. As I wrote earlier this month, “somewhere along the line it dawned on me that it’s not about figuring it all out so I can finally, from that moment on, live a happy life. This process IS a well-lived life.” A joyful life.

So I thought I’d share a few of the insights that have helped me over the years to find joy more often. This process was, and continues to be, about perspective—discovering new ways to look at life. My life experiences make me uniquely me, which is different from you, but I share because you may find them helpful to toss around as part of your journey to living joyfully with unschooling.

One helpful realization I’ve had as part of moving to unschooling has been that being right is over-rated. Growing up a “good” student, that was a hard one for me to shake! But the world really isn’t as black and white as we were led to believe. Doing something is usually better than doing nothing. When you’re exploring yourself and how you dance with the world, instead of feeling paralyzed by the search for the “right” answer, think it through and go with your gut—try it out! You know what? Even if you’re “wrong” (wrong only in the sense that you change your mind later), the quickest and most effective way to learn whether something makes sense to you is to live with it for a while and see how it plays out. Gain more life experience with it. Make choices. Learn. Incorporate your experiences and make more choices. Life is a process. And there’s nothing wrong with quitting stuff.

Another big mind-shift that played a large part in finding joy more often was to stop giving the responsibility for my happiness to others. Moving to unschooling asks us to take responsibility for more and more pieces of our lives, to shift from doing what is expected of us, to making our own choices. Once I took ownership of my own happiness I stopped looking for it outside of myself. Looking inside is where it’s under my control, where I can make choices and take action. Instead of being at the mercy of things happening around me, instead of my emotions and mood being mostly a response to outside influences, I began choosing how I felt.

At first I worried that it this might put distance between myself and others but, playing around with it, the really interesting thing I discovered was that just because I didn’t take on others’ emotions, didn’t mean I ignored them. In fact, it turned out that I could sit more comfortably with them. Taking them on myself had been adding another layer, or filter, through which I saw the situation. When I stopped doing that, I found I could see their perspective of the situation more clearly and easily: I had more empathy, not less.

A third insight that grew from my shift to unschooling was an accompanying shift in my time-frame. As I changed my perspective on learning from compulsory school years to lifelong learning, I also began looking beyond the immediate impact of moments to the bigger picture. I could be in the moment, and realize that in the grand scheme of things, most things aren’t as dire as they may appear. My perspective shifted. I found I could be more present with both happiness and disappointment in those moments, but they no longer took me on an internal roller coaster ride because I didn’t equate the longer-term deep sense of joy I felt inside with the emotions of the moments I was in.

Another really helpful realization grew out of that shift to a longer-term perspective: I will always be learning. This always hits home when I look back at myself five and ten years earlier. I see how my understanding of things has changed and grown, yet I also refuse to think of my younger selves as “wrong”—I was doing my best at the time, thinking and evaluating and making the best choices I could in the moment.

Projecting that forward, I also realize that in ten years I may well look back at my perspective now and see it as inexperienced and incomplete: “If I knew then what I know now.” But we don’t. And we won’t. And angst and fear about the future that I let wreak havoc in the present only clouds my judgment. Instead, I choose to be kind to present-day me and to look forward with wonder, anticipating the experiences that will help me discover new things about the world, about me, about my family, and how we will swirl through life in the years ahead.

So as I continue exploring who I am, comfortable with the idea that I will always be learning, I only ask that I stay true to myself and do my best in each moment. That I continue walking towards the person I want to be. And my journey to unschooling has played a huge role in getting me to a place where I am comfortable with the person I am and with the idea that I will continue to learn and grow and change. And that’s a joyful place to be.

 

 

Filed Under: Philosophy, Unschooling Tagged With: deschooling, Jul 2013, life

Comments

  1. Amanda says

    July 28, 2013 at 11:02 pm

    Beautifully said! I recently came to the place where I refuse to see my past self as being ‘wrong’ and now see her/me as learning. This was huge for me! Love this entire post but that bit resonated with me the most. Thanks!

    Reply
  2. Ashley says

    July 31, 2013 at 7:06 pm

    Thank you for this. I am struggling with being needed at our family business, after I left to home school/un school the kids. I have found that anger is taking over and I used to be such a positive, happy Mom! I really needed to hear about choosing my reaction to the situation. It just gave me a glimmer of I can do it and choose not to be angry. Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Michelle says

    August 1, 2015 at 9:09 pm

    Your writing always meets me where I am. Your hero’s journey helped refocus me on this path we’re taking. Since this summer I’ve been deschooling, again after years of homeschooling. But, now I’m learning principles and not just rules. My biggest issues were not taking responsibility for my own choices and lack of joy. Home had turned into a chore. I’m naturally pessimistic and can dream of all sort of worries, so I have to consciously focus on joy. I’m not all the way there with unschooling, but I’m uncovering so many things about myself I’ve kept hidden for years. Thank you for sharing your life with us. Looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

    Reply
    • Pam Laricchia says

      August 2, 2015 at 10:11 am

      That’s beautiful, Michelle, enjoy the journey! 🙂

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The Living Joyfully Network community

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children. We invite you to join our candid and wide-ranging conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling!

Learn more about the Network here!

free intro to unschooling ebook

Click the book cover to get the book from your favourite online retailer, or click the link below to join my mailing list and download the book directly!

What is Unschooling? A book about living and learning without school.

Exploring Unschooling Podcast

click to listen to the archive of all Exploring Unschooling podcast episodes

Choosing to live and learn without school isn’t as intimidating as you might imagine!

The podcast archive is now home to more than 300 episodes, filled with unschooling goodness.

support the podcast on Patreon

Have you read my books?

Free-to-Learn-Cover Free-to-Live-Cover Life-Through-the-Lens-of-Unschooling-Cover Living-Joyfully-with-Unschooling-Box-Set-Cover The Unschooling Journey Libre d'Apprendre cover Libre para Aprender cover Szabadon Tanulni cover

Journey with us to a new way of seeing your child

icon-logo

Join Anne Ohman, Anna Brown, and I in our online Summit where we share the experiences, insights, and tools that we found most helpful on our unschooling journeys. We will walk with you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Looking for something?

I've been exploring unschooling for many years now and there's a lot of content here! I've been working to tag things to help you more easily find information about the questions you're curious about right now. I'll continue to work on this.

Click a topic to explore:

college

dads

deschooling

food

grown unschoolers

learning

life

math

reading

relationships

relatives

technology

teens

work

Welcome to Living Joyfully

Pam ... an online resource for parents who are curious about unschooling. If you're passionate about exploring the world with your children, this site is for you. I'm Pam Laricchia, the author and owner of this site. Thanks for inviting me along on your unschooling journey!

The Living Joyfully Network

The Living Joyfully Network is an online community for parents worldwide to explore unschooling with other like-minded parents who are also choosing to embrace lifelong learning and develop strong and connected relationships with their children.

Learn more and join us here!

SEARCH LIVING JOYFULLY

Living Joyfully participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the iTunes Affiliate Program. This allows me to earn a small commission, at no cost to you. I appreciate your support!

Read my Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

Copyright © 2023 · Living Joyfully Enterprises

By using this website, you agree to the use of cookies. I use cookies to provide you with a great experience and to help my website run effectively. OK READ MORE
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT