Appreciative joy is an under-appreciated quality in leaders and our culture. By joy, I don’t mean the adrenaline-pumping happiness we can get from activities like whitewater rafting or the exhilaration of reaching a big goal or scoring the winning basket. These more exciting forms of joy are important—they build our capacity to fully enjoy and engage with life. However, they can also contribute to addictions and burnout. As basketball legend Michael Jordan shared at his first retirement after winning his third NBA title at the age of 30, “I didn’t feel all the same appreciation that I had felt before and it was tiresome.” The high levels of excited joy and pressure that often accompany success are not sustainable, because they trigger the sympathetic nervous system (fight-flight-freeze).
Appreciative joy is our innate ability to delight in what’s good in the present moment, independent of our circumstances or success.
Appreciative joy is our innate ability to delight in what’s good in the present moment, independent of our circumstances or success. It’s available to us when we’re not pushing away unpleasant experiences, chasing after pleasant ones, or running in circles (because of doubt or restlessness). This kind of joy activates the parasympathetic system (rest and digest functions) that protect us from burnout and overwhelm, despite challenging situations.
Opening Up to Sustainable Joy
I first became aware of the importance of appreciative joy over the course of a difficult conversation with a person dear to me (we’ll call him Ashok). The conundrum was that I deeply admired and loved Ashok, but he was supporting a situation that involved unethical values. I tried to use logic and emotional appeal to make him see the consequences of supporting an unethical leader. The harder I tried to make him see my point of view, the more he shut down.
My obsession and disbelief about Ashok’s point of view went on for a couple of days until I stopped to meditate on the issue. After calming my mind, I asked the question, “What’s a mindful way to deal with this situation?”
In my mind, I heard two words: “appreciative joy.”
As I reflected on these words, it began to dawn on me what had been missing in my interactions with Ashok. His disagreeable comments had dominated my awareness, and I’d reduced fifty years of generosity and goodness in Ashok to his one disagreeable perspective. My myopic view of him in that moment and my striving to change him made me tense, rigid, and a little unhinged—not exactly the right conditions to have a healthy discussion, let alone change anyone’s mind. I had lost my connection to appreciative joy.
I took a few moments to return to appreciative joy. I remembered his good qualities and felt the resonance of that memory in my body. The softening in my shoulders and opening in my chest created space to approach the exchange with fresh eyes. Returning to a more balanced perspective, I could now see the bigger picture, including the causes and conditions that led to him having this perspective.
Appreciative joy opened the way for compassion, instead of judgment, to guide my interactions.
Appreciative joy opened the way for compassion, instead of judgment, to guide my interactions with Ashok. One step I took was to introduce him to stories and information that he could relate to. As a result of this mind shift, our discussions were more meaningful, and we understood each other better. I don’t know if I changed Ashok’s perspective, but he seemed more receptive to other viewpoints. Returning to appreciative joy deepened our relationship and ability to have difficult conversations.
Since then, I’ve noticed that not only in difficult situations, but also in doing work we love, we can get hyper-focused and lose connection with appreciative joy and all the benefits that flow from this essential quality of the mind. How about you? Are you able to sustain your joy for people and work that you care about, despite challenges along the way?
What is Appreciative Joy?
The essence of appreciative joy is captured in Mary Oliver’s simple “instructions for life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” In other words, appreciative joy is our ability to notice and delight in all that’s good in the present moment. This may sound simple, but it’s not easy. The kind of joy we tend to chase after usually depends upon circumstances that we may or may not be able to control. By building our capacity for appreciative joy, we can savor the different experiences of joy available to us without getting hooked on the pleasurable feelings, and we can find goodness even in challenging situations. Appreciative joy is a pervasive sense of contentment that we can find within us in moments when we’re free from any kind of restlessness, striving, and resistance.
The term appreciative joy originally comes from Eastern wisdom traditions. To distinguish it from all the other experiences of joy, appreciative joy encompasses our capacity to feel ease, contentment, and gratitude even when things are not going exactly the way we want them to. Further, appreciative joy includes our ability to delight in others’ good qualities and happiness. Research in empathy has uncovered our ability to feel not only for others’ suffering but also their happiness, which is sometimes known as empathic joy. We can train ourselves to feel empathic joy even for people we don’t care about.
How is this particular kind of joy beneficial for leaders? Let’s take a look.
3 Benefits of Appreciative Joy for Leaders
Whether you’re responsible for your family, team, community, or organization, appreciative joy is an essential quality for mindful leaders. More specifically, appreciative joy provides leaders with a balanced perspective, a foundation for success, and resilience.