Looking for Delight

What You Seek, You Shall Find

Oct 06, 2023

I was listening to Ross Gay’s “The Book of Delights” the other day and loved the introduction where he tells the origin story of his book. Gay is a poet who decided to sit down every day and write a short essay on what delighted him.

And the thing that surprised him was that the more he looked for Delights, the more he found them. I thought that was a genius of an idea and have been attempting to apply it to my own life.

So… here’s what’s been making me happy lately.

Color: I’ve been injecting more color into my life because the mornings in my area can be a bit gray and research says that bright colors make people happy. So, I’ve been updating my wardrobe with colorful pieces (hot pink cropped jeans anyone?) and I’ve discovered an inexpensive, fast way to quickly inject color into my life: brightly colored sticky notes, purple legal notepads, multi-colored gel pens and fancy brush tip markers.
Adult Coloring Books: I’m too much of a perfectionist to be a visual artist since I’ve never really allowed myself to play with the medium. (Materials are so expensive! Make a mistake? What a waste!) However, I find coloring to be very meditative. It is repetitive, there’s very little decision making involved, and it’s hard to make mistakes. When I’m coloring I find it very calming. There’s no performance anxiety that comes from creating an original piece - no wondering how it looks, is it pretty enough, is it good enough? My daughters love to color and we’ve been working our way through old-school adult coloring books like Color Me Calm and the Lost Jungle.
New Classes at the Gym: My region experienced quite a bit of smoke from the Canadian wildfires a few weeks ago, so I had to stop exercising outside for a few days. The good thing is it pushed me to go to the gym and take classes I don’t normally take — and I discovered I really enjoy them. So now in addition to my usual Zumba classes, I’m aiming to go to kickboxing and cardio strength classes. The latter classes are an amazing workout that push me so much harder than what I’m used to, and the cardio really boosts my joy.
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What you focus on you will find — that’s part of the reason I love working on Happy Asian Woman.
I want to proactively find ways to improve the mental health of myself and the people around me.
What is making you happy these days? Do you have any happiness practices or rituals?