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I get down somtimes – I think we all do. Life can be a vigorous trial.

Remember to breathe deeply. When we breathe deeply we allow more oxygen to enter into our blood stream. A few minutes of concentrated, deep breathing can immediately alter your mood. Sometimes when I do breathing exercises I will actively think about breathing in good energy, and then breathing out the negative energy.

Our minds are very powerful. Sometimes they can get away from us and we need to reel them back in. But sometimes we can use our minds to generate greatness, happiness, and joy for ourselves. An instructor of mine once had us all lay on our backs and do a visualization exercise. We would close our eyes abd breathe deeply. Then the instructor told us all to envision the negative energy in our bodies as a viscous black liquid – like a tar. This tar was clogging up our blood-streams and jamming our airways! We needed to expell this tar from our systems. So while we breathed in and out deeply, she told us to visualize the tar as seeping out with each breath. She told us to breathe every last drop of the black liquid out of us and then to visualize that tar as an undulating ball spinning in the air above our heads. Then she told us to destroy the black ball of negativity; allow it to disintegrate and disappear back into the Universe from whence it had come.

This technique worked amazingly well – I always felt rejuvenated and alive after performing it.

Breathe deeply and breathe deeply often. In meditation there is an idea to breathe so deeply and so slowly that there is no noticeable difference between breathing in and breathing out. Breathing, instead, is one continuous action.

Walk, and take a careful look at the world around you. Look at the plants, the trees, the multitude of colors and lights in the concrete beneath your feet. Even concrete has beauty!

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“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius

Confucius was a pretty wise man. Everything has beauty. When we can grasp that simple truth, we can find joy anywhere we look. A person who once was rich and spoiled can be happy in a small room with nothing but a bed and a dresser. All the trappings of wealth and fame are illusory – they are meaningless. They can be fun, and you can derive joy from them – but ultimately they are unnecessary and meaningless.

When I was a child I spent hours playing in the dirt. I used a hose to make rivers, I made mud cakes, I made roads and hills from dirt. I found joy in dirt! How come when we get older we lose sight of the simple pleasures from dirt?

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I sat on a rocky beach on the shore of Lake Tahoe the other day. My family has been going to this same rocky beach since I was a small child. The beach is covered with pebbles – some round, some flat. They are many different colors, tumbled smooth in the gentle rolling waves of a mountain lake. As I ran my fingers through the stones, I experienced the same joy as a middle-aged man that I had experienced when I was a young boy.

Joy is not exclusive to any particular age – but sometimes I think children are better at finding joy. So to find joy, sometimes it is helpful to think like a child. Children find joy in the simplest things: a rock, a stick, a blade of grass.

Our life is so wondrous and splendid! We are all part of this life. We are all one and we can find joy!