~ Retrospective ~
This year, my word to guide my journey and growth has been joy. I’ve thought a lot about how quick we are to treat joy as an indulgence—something extra, optional, or even suspect. I often have pondered and shared the analogy that joy gets framed as the cherry on top of a sundae we shouldn’t really be eating, a reward we earn only after productivity, sacrifice, or suffering. Over time, I began to question this assumption and dared to test a new hypothesis: what if joy is not indulgent at all? What if joy is more like a vegetable—like broccoli, if you will—foundational to our wellbeing and packed with life-sustaining nutrients? In this reframing, joy isn’t excess; it’s essential. It isn’t something we tack on once life is “handled,” but something that nourishes our nervous systems, our relationships, and our capacity to show up fully in the world.
In November, I found language for this experiment in a quote attributed to André Gide and echoed by Jack Kornfield: “Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness; once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.” In 2025, I treated joy as exactly that—a moral obligation. I didn’t simply allow space for joy; I actively sought it, created it, and prioritized it. I discovered that when I do this, I feel more alive and more whole. I am more patient, more kind, more generous, more grateful, more productive, and more aligned. Joy, practiced intentionally, did not dull my edge or distract me from responsibility; it sharpened my presence and deepened my capacity. As I close this year, I don’t feel overindulgent or depleted. I feel well-nourished—blissfully full in the way that comes from being fed what truly sustains—and ready to step into 2026 as a year of hope and creation. I feel present and grateful as I see and savor moments of bliss – my kids baking with me (this year Ben chopped pecans and rolled out sugar cookie dough, Will chopped peppermint bark to top the chocolate ganache frosting atop the Berger cookies, and Sally was in charge of sprinkles), running the holiday 5k and seeing the boys reach new personal records, ending my early morning runs with a jog through the tunnel of festive lights on the local trail – I’m training to look for the glimmers of joy all around me.
As I reflect on 2025, joy’s warmth fills me with “gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love” (Fredrickson, 39), cousins of joy. Barbara Fredrickson’s Positivity offered both language and science for what I experienced firsthand: “Positivity doesn’t just change the contents of your mind…it widens the span of possibilities that you see,” and “Positive emotions are not trivial luxuries but instead might be critical necessities for optimal functioning.” Perhaps most grounding of all is her reminder that flourishing goes beyond happiness—that those who flourish not only feel good, but also do good, adding value to the world. As this year comes to a close, I wish you a joyful year-end review—one that honors joy not as a reward, but as a vital practice, a moral commitment, and a nourishing force for what comes next. As you reflect on 2025, what shifts if you focus on the moments of joy?
Questions for Reflection:
Where in your life have you treated joy as an indulgence rather than a necessity—and what beliefs or experiences shaped that view? What happened when you intentionally reframed joy as foundational (like nourishment) instead of optional (like a reward)? What specific practices, moments, or choices most consistently generated genuine joy for you this year? How did prioritizing joy influence my patience, generosity, creativity, or effectiveness in your work and relationships? In what ways did joy require courage, discipline, or intentionality rather than ease or comfort? When you actively sought or created joy, how did it change the way you responded to stress, uncertainty, or challenge? Where did you notice joy expanding your perspective—helping you see new possibilities, options, or ways forward? How did cultivating joy contribute not only to your own well-being, but to the well-being of others or the systems you are part of? What evidence do you have from this year that joy is a “critical necessity” for your optimal functioning and flourishing? As you move into 2026, what commitments will help you continue treating joy as a moral obligation rather than an afterthought?
Quotes of 2025:
“When we’ve spent years finding our worth in productivity, our nervous system perceives play, fun, and rest as unsafe.” ~Dr. Scherina
“Everyone needs a place to retreat, a spot where the world grows quiet enough for the soul to speak.” ~Angie Weiland-Crosby
“Quiet the mind, and the soul will speak.” ~ Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” ~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.
The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
~ Henry Ward Beecher
“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
~ Carl Jung ~
“You come to understand that most people are neither for you or against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.”
~ John W. Gardner ~
“You have a treasure within you that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.”
~Eckhardt Tolle
“We are human beings; we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility.”
~ Paulo Coelho
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.”
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.”
— Shirley MacLaine
“Negativity is the enemy of creativity.”
– David Lynch
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”
– Will Rogers
Novelist Anne Lamott on the power of reading:
“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
Source:Bird by Bird
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
~ Henry Miller
“I have fallen in love with my own soul. No one can hurt me now.”
~ Erin Van Vuren
“It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any other earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.”
~ Bertrand Russel, “In Praise of Idleness,” 1932
Think not lightly of good, saying “It will not come to me.”
Drop by drop is the water pot filled.
Likewise, the wise one, gathering little by little,
fills oneself with good.
~ Dhammapada 9.1.22
Stay near the ones who make
Your spirit dance like it did when
You were young – the ones who
Remind you who you were before
The world told you to be.
That’s where your healing begins,
And your joy comes back online
~ @jennydinovi
Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.
~ Andre Gide ~
Books of 2025:
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
by Katherine May
The Courage To Be Disliked
By Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
By His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with Douglas Abrams
Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking is the Beginning & End of Suffering
By Joseph Ngyuen
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
By Dacher Keltner
The Courage to Be Happy: Discover the Power of Positive Psychology and Choose Happiness Every Day
By Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier
By Arthur Brooks
The Positivity Effect: Simple CBT Skills to Transform Anxiety & Negativity into Optimism and Hope
By Dan Tomasulo, PhD
Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
Celeste Headlee (Author of Bestseller, We Need to Talk)
Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
By Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Positivity: Discover the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life
By Barbara L. Fredrickson, PhD
Featured Podcasts I’ve Listened to in 2025:
For December – Moral Obligation to Joy | Tara Brach
My Key Takeaways:
– Alchemy of joy is a combination of openness and flow
– William Blake’s short poem, “Eternity,” which says: “He who binds to himself a joy / Does the winged life destroy; / But he who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
Meaning: you shouldn’t cling to fleeting moments of happiness, but instead embrace them as they happen, allowing you to experience life freely and perpetually, like the never-ending sunrise, rather than trapping joy in the past.
– Joy takes a kind of courage to let life be as it is
How to Get Better at Saying No, January 14, 2025 HBR IdeaCast
Episode 501: SuperSoul Special: Gary Zukav: Finding Your Authentic Power
Oprah’s Super Soul Podcast | Original Air Date: July 16, 2018
Episode #57: Permission to Be Joyful: Overcoming Barriers to Happiness with Lisa Even
The Courage Effect
Hosted by Suzanne Weller, with Guest Lisa Even
Why MEL ROBBINS Says Letting Go is Key to Success
Good Life Project | Episode #1120, March 28, 2025
Inspiring Awe & Wonder, March 9, 2023
Templeton Ideas Podcast
The New Science of Awe || Dacher Keltner, May 4, 2023
The Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman
How Awe Can Change Your Life | Dacher Keltner, July 6, 2023
The Goodlife Project with Jonathan Fields
Awakening Awe: Finding Beauty in the Everyday with Dacher Keltner, April 2, 2024
Everyday Better with Leah Smart
How Awe Transforms Us with Dacher Keltner, October 22, 2023
A Slight Change of Plans with Maya Shankar
Hypervigilance: When Everything Feels Like a Threat
With Guest, Tanvi Gautam
The Anxious Achiever
Hosted by Morra Aarons-Mele
Overcoming the Power of Bad || Roy Baumeister ||March 26, 2020
Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman
It’s Never Too Late to Let the Real You Shine. A Love Story | Sherri Dindal
The Goodlife Project || Jonathan Fields
Can You Train Your Mind to Be Happier? (with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar) | August 17, 2025
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Dr. Laurie Santos and Sesame Street: Abby Cadabby and the Magic of Gratitude | September 17, 2023
It’s never too early or too late to learn how to be happier. Whether you’re aged 3, 23 or 103, we’ve teamed up with our furry friends from Sesame Street to bring you fun and fact-based tips to improve the wellbeing of you and the people around you.
We begin with Abby Cadabby – a fairy who isn’t having such a great day. Her usual spells can’t rid her of her “grumpies,” so Dr. Laurie teaches her the magical effect that being grateful for who and what is around you can have on your mood.
You 2.0: Change Your Story, Change Your Life
Hosted by Shankar Vedantam | Hidden Brain explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior and questions that lie at the heart of our complex and changing world.
TEDTalk Connected to My Ponderings and Wanderings:
In Praise of Slowness | July 2005 | Carl Honore | TedTalk
Preview of Books I am Considering for 2026:
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential by Scott Barry Kaufman
Flourish by Martin Seligman
The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning by Paul Bloom,
The Hope Circuit by Martin Seligman
Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness by Rick Hanson, PhD
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant
Let Them by Mel Robbins
The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life that Matters by Emily Esfahani Smith
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout by Cal Newport
The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward by Daniel Pink
Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas
Learned Hopefulness by Dan Tomasulo, PhD
Align Your Mind by Britt Frank, LSCSW
The Little Book of Self-Care: 30 Practices to Soothe the Body and Mind by Suzy Reading
~
You can sign up to receive my Three Thoughts for Thursday post as an email on the third Thursday of every month by clicking here. If you’ve missed any of my Three Thoughts, you can find them all on my blog. If you enjoyed this post, take a look at November’s Three Thoughts for Thursday. You may also be interested in reading my four-part Lessons of the Run series –Endurance, Resilience, Rest, and Grit. Take a look at my latest post, “YOU are the MISSING Piece!” and stay tuned for an update to this piece, along with a recent and new 5th Lesson of the Run – Humility and Adaptability! If you are interested or know someone who may be interested, I also offer leadership and emotional intelligence coaching and workshops. You can find more information on my website, or you can use this link to set up a free 30-minute introduction to coaching session.
As I mentioned, the stroke I had in February 2018 was a pivotal event and valuable turning point in my life; you can read more in my commemorative post. Please join me in celebrating these milestones, turning points, and calls to “winter,” by taking time to celebrate your own milestones and by fully embracing the opportunities in front of you, the value in the little things, and the beauty that surrounds you in this wonderful, messy life. I will forever be grateful for my stroke and the path of integrity I found in its wake.
I am currently partnering with my fellow Education and Coaching colleague, Dr. Joan Flora, to offer a series on Resolving Emotional Reactivity. This series explores emotions and their purpose, the information they hold about our human needs, and how we can learn to respond with intention and integrity instead of reacting and regretting. We are offering monthly Open Houses to learn more.
Over the course of the last two years, I’ve hosted a few local, in-person events here in the Seattle area, like Savor the Sweetness and the Serenity Retreat.The Serenity Retreat was another success! This relaxing and delightful event took place again June 14, 2025; learn more! Savor the Sweetness took place again September 20, 2025, and was also divine! I’m excited to play more in these spaces of creating opportunities for connection and reflection If you are interested in such local events, please contact me with any questions, or to join the invite list for future events!
I have the privilege of hosting the Emotional Intelligence Special Interest Group for ICFLA. We kicked off our 2025 explorations and learning journey on February 25th with guest Dr. J.D. Pincus of AgileBrain, who walked us through The LA Wildfires through the Lens of Emotional Needs: Coaching in Times of Loss. On Tuesday, June 24th, we both revisited and explored emotional intelligence in coaching through our topic, Emotional Intelligence Foundations for Coaching and Workplace Impact, with guest Maribel Hines, MBA, SPHR, CPLP. Maribel offered her insights, wisdom, and perspective through her in-house leadership and coaching and EQ practitioner lens. It was a great session as we translated theory and emotional intelligence into action and impact! Our August 26th session with Dr. Joan Flora focused on From Reactivity to Resilience: Coaching to Soften Reactivity and Strengthen Resilience. Our final session for the year was on Tuesday, October 28th, with guest speaker, Nicole Venner, who created space to explore, discuss, and practice ways of holding space for Emotional Intelligence in Threshold Spaces. Please consider joining us for the ICFLA EI SIG in 2026!
I have also joined forces with James Garrett at BrainByDesign, where I have had the distinct privilege of working with colleagues, Paula Miles and Sandra Clifton, to support aspiring female leaders in the workshop series, The Brain Science Advantage for Women Leaders. Also check out the latest work at BrainByDesign – The Confidence Challenge and The Confident Finisher Program (where I have the delight of serving as a coach) – where we leverage neuroscience to overcome the roadblocks in your brain to achieve your most important goals!
If you are interested in joining and co-creating these learning communities, please use the links above to learn more about ICFLA’s Emotional Intelligence Special Interest Group, BrainByDesign, and the Women’s Events. I hope you will come along for the journey!
I’m always looking for new inspiration, new books to read, and new podcasts to listen to, so please send your suggestions my way or comment on this post to offer some new recommendations!
As always, thank you for your continued support and readership! Stay strong, stay brave, stay true to you!
Wishing you a season of embracing joy as a moral obligation, reflecting and looking for evidence from this year that joy is a “critical necessity” for your optimal functioning and flourishing, and glimmers of joy and light in this winter season of darkness! Thank you for being a part of my journey!
Desiree Briel Rodi Consulting & Coaching 