JOY COLLECTION and giving yourself permission to feel it

I was chatting to a friend yesterday about the menopause. She's in the thick of it. Luckily I am on the other side. We got onto emotions, and she mentioned anxiety. It can be crippling for women during these changes.

My story was a bit different - I lost my joy. Not in a dramatic way. I wasn't depressed or miserable. I just… wasn't joyful. For someone who is essentially a delusional optimist by nature, it was deeply weird. My hormones flatlined, recalibrated, and somewhere in that process, joy quietly left the building. For a few years I assumed this was just how things were now.

Thankfully it wasn't. But it did make me think. We don't talk about joy much - especially not in the context of hustle culture, where we're meant to be grafting, optimising, achieving.

There's almost something a bit soft about joy, a bit unproductive. And yet - it's biological.

Those small, apparently throwaway moments actually shift your nervous system. They nudge you out of chronic stress mode and into a state where your body can regulate. We're not talking about chasing euphoric highs. We're talking about noticing the small stuff and letting it actually land.

Science is showing us that it's cumulative. Stack enough of them and you're not just feeling better, your body is actually functioning differently.

Joy isn't just a mood, it's a physiological input. Small positive moments influence cortisol, immune function, vagal tone.

So even on a rubbish day, it's worth hunting for the infinitesimally small thing that gives you a little perk. The micro-moment that counts.

Maybe joy isn't something we need to find. Maybe it's something we need to stop brushing past.

What are some of your favourite minuscule joy moments?

A few of mine this week have included:

A toddler waving at a dog

The longer days

Paying for trains and buses by tapping my phone (Joy everytime!)