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Do you feel it yet? Are you struggling to contain your excitement? Has the joy of the holiday season taken hold of you firmly? If not, what is wrong with you? Haven’t you watched the Hallmark movies, seen the advertisements, and listened to the carols announcing great tidings of joy on a near-constant loop? You should be feeling intense exuberance by now. At least that is what a highly organized coalition of advertisers, big-box retailers, and algorithm-driven marketing departments would have you believe. They want you to believe that joy during the holiday season is all about excitement, excess, and celebration.

This commercial version of joy can feel like a punch in the gut for anyone who is feeling exhaustion, loneliness, family dysfunction, or financial strain. But true joy has very little to do with that glossy version being peddled by the profit sector. True joy is far deeper. It isn’t dependent on perfect circumstances or emotional highs, and it doesn’t disappear in the presence of sorrow or struggle. Real joy shows up as meaning, connection, and steadiness. It is something we can experience not just during the holidays, but all year long.

For most of my life, I understood joy to mean excitement, pleasure, enthusiasm, emotional highs, and the rush that comes with good news or special moments. Joy, in my mind, was loud and obvious and something you felt intensely or not at all. But the more I’ve studied this emotion, the clearer it has become that I had misunderstood joy entirely. What I was really describing was pleasure and exuberance. True joy, it turns out, is quieter. It is not a spike in emotion or a temporary escape from difficulty, but a steadier internal state.

I’m not suggesting that excitement, pleasure, or exuberance are somehow wrong or unimportant. Those emotions matter. They can lift our mood, energize us, and mark moments worth celebrating. A good laugh, a burst of enthusiasm, or a sense of delight can genuinely make life feel lighter, especially during hard seasons. The problem isn’t excitement itself. It is mistaking it for joy or assuming that if we’re not feeling emotionally elevated, something must be wrong. Exuberance is real and valuable, but it is, by nature, temporary. Joy is something else. It is the steadier emotional ground beneath those peaks, not the peaks themselves.

The Stoics understood this long before modern psychology figured it out. Thinkers like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius did not dismiss joy. They simply refused to confuse it with excitement or indulgence. For them, joy was the natural byproduct of living with integrity, accepting reality as it is, and remaining grounded in what is within one’s control. Stoics understood early on that joy is something different than the emotional states of pleasure, happiness, and excitement.

So, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to feel “exuberance” and “excitement” this holiday season, I encourage you to think differently about joy. When we reclaim joy from its commercial definition and understand it for what it truly is, the holiday message softens. We don’t have to feel guilt or shame for not “doing joy right.”  And when we learn to cultivate joy in its true form, we reap the benefits to our mental, physical, and emotional health. 

Over the past few decades, a growing body of evidence has shown that joy and other positive emotions play a meaningful role in mental health, resilience, and overall well-being. One of the most influential models in this area is psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s  broaden-and-build theory. Her research shows that positive emotions such as joy temporarily broaden our thinking and attention, making us more open, flexible, creative, and receptive to new possibilities. Over time, these expanded mental states help build psychological resilience, stronger social connections, coping skills, and even physical health. In other words, joy doesn’t just feel good in the moment. It helps create the internal conditions that support long-term well-being. 

Other studies have also found that joy contributes to improved well-being. Joy has been found to be central to bonding and connection. Joy also has been shown to promote resilience. And people who experience regular moments of joy tend to recover more quickly from stress and adversity, suggesting that joy acts as a psychological buffer rather than a distraction from hardship.

If joy is so beneficial, it makes sense that we would want to increase moments of joy in our lives. But is that even possible? Can we create experiences and structure our lives to have more joyful moments? Recent research suggests that we can. Here are some ways that you can expand the joy in your life.

1. Invest in positive relationships. You can make joy easier to access by spending more time with people who feel supportive, safe, and uplifting. Studies have linked joy to warm connection, empathy, trust, and the feeling that you can be fully yourself around someone. 
   
2. Get into nature on purpose. Nature is one of the most reliable “joy catalysts.” Being outdoors can restore perspective, quiet mental noise, and create moments of meaning. The emotion of awe that is often experienced in nature is commonly followed by the feeling of joy.
   
3. Live authentically and in alignment with your values. Joy shows up more often when people feel aligned with what matters to them. 
   
4. Create pockets of freedom from responsibilities. One of the strongest barriers to joy that people report is the sense of feeling overwhelmed by stress, expectations, fatigue, and the constant pressure of responsibility. Joy will appear more easily when you give yourself time to breathe without the need to do anything. Deliberately build small windows of time where you’re not performing, producing, or proving.
   
5. Use community and conversation to “wake joy up.” Studies have found that talking about and reflecting on the topic of joy is surprisingly therapeutic and can even spark joy.
   
6. Engage in activities with people who have shared interests. Joy thrives in community spaces where people connect around shared interests and a sense of belonging.
   
7. Engage in creative pursuits. Studies have shown that creative activities spark joy. By making art or music, you increase the likelihood of joy. Joy can also be cultivated by building, designing, or making something.
   
8. Serve others. Serving others strengthens bonds, which in turn makes joy more accessible. When people serve others in ways that are consistent with their values, they increase the joy in their own lives and the lives of those they serve.
   
9. Focus on something bigger than yourself. Participants in studies have described joy arising when they felt connected to something beyond their individual concerns, whether that was a spiritual belief, a sense of the sacred, nature, or a larger meaning system. This “bigger-than-me” connection reduced emotional constriction and helped joy emerge, especially during hardship.

For lawyers, this idea of expanding joy can feel unnatural and dangerous. From the earliest days of law school, we are taught to value objectivity, rational analysis, emotional distance, and clear-headed judgment. We learn to bracket our feelings, set aside subjectivity, and focus on facts, risks, and outcomes. Within that framework, emotions like joy can feel like a frivolous luxury, something best reserved for weekends or vacations, not something compatible with serious, effective advocacy. There is often an unspoken belief that staying emotionally neutral, or even emotionally guarded, is what allows us to serve our clients well.

But the kind of joy described here is not emotional indulgence or a loss of rigor. It is not excitement, cheerfulness, or distraction from the work. It is a steadier internal state that actually supports the very qualities lawyers prize: clarity, perspective, resilience, and sound judgment. Research suggests that positive emotions like joy broaden thinking, reduce cognitive rigidity, and improve our ability to see options rather than fixate on threats. Far from undermining objectivity, joy can make us more flexible thinkers, better listeners, and more grounded decision-makers. In that sense, joy is not at odds with good lawyering. It might just make us more effective advocates.

So, if your holiday season doesn’t include sustained exuberance, spontaneous cheer, or a single urge to wear a festive sweater to the office, don’t worry. That doesn’t mean you missed joy. It likely means you were experiencing true joy, which shows up as steady judgment, meaningful work, and the ability to get through hard days without unraveling. For lawyers, that kind of joy is far more practical than the version being advertised. It doesn’t require excess, performance, or emotional fireworks. It sits comfortably alongside good lawyering, supporting clarity and steadiness without demanding attention.