Joy.

My sister Brynn
recently inspired me by her post. She wrote about the differences and happiness and joy, and i wanted to tell you mine. One year at EFY, the speaker challenged us to find learn and find the differences between the two. He also said that happiness is something that will last you for a brief moment, but joy is something that will last forever. My sister also said that Joy is an accomplishment. Something that we've tackled or determined and YOU determine your own personal prescription for it.

Now from me:I am happy because I decide to be happy. There is no one that can control or take away these emotions. In a book called Man's Search for happiness, Victor Frankle concluded that that people (in this case the Nazi's) could take anything from them but their own power to feel or think. The power is in you to decide your own formula. One of the recepies to our own joy is the choices we make. We can choose to have a good day despite the circumstances of it. We can choose to have a good time in whatever our activity is, or decide that it's already going to be lame, so what's the point in even going? Everything is now, is because of what you make of it.

My personal subscription(s) for happiness include:
intellectual conversations
traveling
a good book on a rainy day
being with friends
adventures
laughing so hard it hurts
laughter is THE best medicine, remedy for happiness, period.
baking chocolate chip cookies
doorbell ditching cookies
music
a good friend.best friends.
hugs
midnight redbox and icecream runs
in and out burger

I find joy in:
serving others
visits to the temple
walking around temple square
being with family
making future plans
reading my scriptures
updating my journal
scrap booking
being busy; or anxiously engaged in a good cause
getting enough sleep
appreciating the beauty i have around me
breath-taking sunsets
cleaning for other people
motivating others
finishing my major

"In order to have joy, you need to understand that, as a child of your Heavenly Father, you inherited divine traits and spiritual needs--and just like a fish needs water, you need the gospel and the companionship of the Holy Ghost to be truly, deeply happy. Because you are the offspring of God (see Acts 17:28), it is incompatible with your eternal nature to do wrong and feel right. It cannot be done. It is part of your spiritual DNA, as it were, that peace, joy, and happiness will be yours only to the degree you live the gospel."-elder Marcus b. Nash