How do you find joy when the world feels heavy?

When stress builds and uncertainty lingers, joy can feel out of reach. The weight of responsibility, worry, and overwhelm—those “rocks in the backpack”—can crowd out even the smallest moments of lightness. This guided meditation offers a gentle reminder that joy isn’t something we wait for… it’s something we can intentionally cultivate, even in difficult seasons.

1. Learn two practical ways to cultivate joy during stressful times
2. Use gratitude and appreciative joy (mudita) to shift your emotional state
3. Experience a calming breath practice that creates space for lightness

Press play to reconnect with gratitude, rediscover joy, and create a ripple of light—even in challenging moments.

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With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Mindfulness and Resilience through Kintsugi Wisdom, listeners explore mindfulness and resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome PTSD, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on building resilience, fitness, and stress management, as well as mindfulness practices and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools such as breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress reduction. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embodies healing as a transformative process, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and overwhelm to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and

 Hey there, it's Michael on Mondays. I love sharing a short meditation with you. To help you feel grounded and safe as you navigate today's uncertainty with more mindfulness, resilience, and grace. And this week's practice is from my app. Pause, breathe, reflect, which you can download for free in Apple's App Store and on Google Play.

This week's meditation is all about finding joy. During difficult times, I hope you enjoy it.

One of my first principles is to choose joy, but that can be challenging. When we go through difficult moments, it's hard to see the joy, and this practice will take some time to see different ways we can still find joy. Even when things are challenging and. But first, let's settle into a comfortable position, and as you get set, you can close your eyes if you like.

Of course you can always leave them open if that makes you feel a bit more comfortable and we'll drop. Let's begin with a healthy breath in. If you can, try breathing up through your nose and notice your lungs expanding as you come into this moment,

and then release the breath out,

allowing yourself to slow things down. And relax the body

with all that's happening in the world. It's natural to carry with us extra stress, more rocks in our backpack as I would like to say. And sometimes all those rocks make it impossible and find space for any joy.

But there are at least two ways we can cultivate joy as humans. We can hold. The thought of worry or being anxious, but at the same time, we can also find joy. Through gratitude,

having a practice in the morning or right before bed and identifying the people or the things you're grateful for can be little morsels of joy.

You can also be intentional about seeing the mudita in your life, which is appreciative joy, the joy you feel when someone else is experiencing joy, and that can be a close friend. Or maybe someone in the public domain.

So when things get heavy as they happen to be, see if a practice of gratitude or trying to find the mudita in your life can help you find joy. Even during difficult moments, 'cause that joy you choose will put a beautiful ripple into the world.

I hope you enjoyed the practice and you might share it with someone you know. To ripple some joy to someone else. You can download this practice as well as 700 other practices and a cool feature on my app that can help you reduce your screen time on your phone so you have more time for things that bring you.

More joy. You can download it for free in Apple's App Store or Google Play. It's called Pause, breathe, reflect. And as always, thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of our community. May our practice together benefit all living creatures, and I hope you'll join us over on Substack, where I host live practices.

Throughout the week.