Return On Joy

We all know what Return On Investment means, don’t we? If you are a creative entrepreneur then you know more than anyone the importance of putting the right work into the right projects and the right people in order to get the most back.

Leverage leverage leverage.

You may know what your ROI is on the coaching you get or the software you buy. Perhaps you have a clear figure in mind for your cost per lead or whatever else seems to be important to your bottom line.

But what is the ROI on walking outside in the fresh air for 30 minutes every single day?

Or savouring a perfect square of impossibly bitter dark chocolate?

Or reading one more bedtime story to your child at night?

What about that note scrawled with playful kisses you were too busy to leave on your partner’s pillow?

Because we measure and rate the stuff we put into the earning and the work and the career and the school fees.

But honestly, it’s not about how you are making a living.

It’s how you are Making A Life.

This.

What if you spent your day focusing on your investment of passion?

What is your return on commitment? On keeping your promises? On exceeding expectations?

What is your Return On Joy?

It’s all too easy to forget to pay attention to the constants in your life because they don’t belong to the business or the career.  Tiny things you just don’t do because they’re not part of the bottom line. You have a website to put up. An ebook to write. A meeting to run.  Ship ship ship ship ship.

But even if all this shipping juices you like nothing else, what other parts of your life are thirsting for just a splash of your bliss?

These were the questions I asked myself yesterday, as I meditated on my own patchwork quilt of a working life. The singing (which is back with a vengeance), the coaching, the mothering. My roles as guardian to myself and soul mate to my man.

I wondered where was the love and the throb and the thrill being compounded? What was I not doing that I needed to do to feel great, to feel right? Where was I making a living and where was a Life Being Made?

I closed my eyes and pictured the things that gave me joy.

I thought of cuddles in the dark and my daughter’s gentle strokes on the back of my neck.

I thought of freshly ground coffee. I imagined the fruity pucker of extra-virgin olive oil slopped generously over a buffalo mozzarella made that very morning. I felt the warm sun on my bare arms and my toes nestled in grass so green that it bounced.

I actually saw a perfectly clean kitchen.

I heard Ray Lamontagne’s roar, Ava’s little fingers exploring the keys on our piano or Sophia’s tiny voice singing her favourite song about crocodiles.

I felt my man’s hand in mine.

And I remembered that my investment of bliss matters – despite the overwhelm and the busy and the stress and the desire to carve out a financial independence in line with who I am, who I serve and what I create. It matters more than anything else.

It matters so much that without it, all the scurrying to make a living will be in vain.

How are you investing your bliss? And how can you start to measure the return on joy in your life?

Tagged as: bliss, investment, joy, life, time, Work