Defiant Delight: Why Joy is a Radical Act.
If you look at the headlines right now, or even just scroll through your feed for five minutes, the message is pretty clear: Be afraid. Be angry. Be worried.
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We are living through a moment in history that demands our constant, high-alert attention. And because of that, there is a quiet, creeping narrative that tells us that joy is inappropriate. We’ve internalised this idea that to feel happy in this world, at this moment, is a form of ignorance, or worse, indifference.
And there is merit to that. Watching the world navigate crisis after crisis, it can feel deeply indulgent, almost guilty, to pause and savour a morning coffee or laugh at a friend’s joke when the world seems to be crumbling.
But having lived through a living nightmare of my own, a health journey that stripped everything back to the studs, I’ve come to understand something crucial.
Some parts of the world, and all of the algorithms, want us to stay in a state of chronic stress. They profit from our outrage. Fear keeps us small. It keeps us doom-scrolling at 11 p.m. It keeps us paralysed. And most dangerously, it shuts us off from our communities because we are too exhausted to connect.
Which is exactly why choosing joy isn’t just “nice.” It’s an act of defiance.
The Resistance
To seek out micro-moments of joy when everything feels broken is not an act of denial. It is an act of resistance.
In psychology, there is a concept called Positive Offense. It’s the strategy of using micro-joys to actively interrupt the stress cycle.
When we are in a state of chronic worry, our nervous system is stuck in a sympathetic state (fight or flight). We are rigid, reactive, and running on cortisol. But when we pause to genuinely marvel at something, the warmth of a hug, the deliciousness of fresh sourdough with mountains of butter, or the absurdity of a toddler’s game of make-believe, we are physically disrupting that loop.
We are sending a safety signal to the body. We are refusing to let our nervous systems be colonised by fear, ensuring we have the biological capacity to keep building something better.
Joy is Not a Luxury
We often treat joy like a reward we get only after the work is done, or after something is “fixed.” But our world will always be noisy.
If we wait for the headlines to calm down before we allow ourselves to take a full breath, we will be holding our breath forever.
This is the core of true Emotional Fitness. It’s the capacity to hold two opposing truths in your hands at the same time: that the world is heavy and requires our work, and that life is beautiful and requires our presence.
The Burnout Trap
We often equate the depth of our worry with the depth of our care. But the science tells us otherwise.
If we let the heaviness take up all the space, we burn out. And in burnout, we cannot help anyone. We lose our creativity, our empathy, and our drive. A dysregulated nervous system cannot lead, it cannot create, and it cannot care for its community.
So, this week, I want to invite you to practise a little Defiant Delight.
Find the sun. Eat the good food. Laugh loudly with your people. Do it not because you are ignoring the world, but because your spark ripples out to everyone around you
Joy isn’t a luxury we save for later. It’s the fuel we need to stay standing right now.
More soon,
Jacqueline x
A Note on ELEVATE: We are currently building the containers where this “emotional fitness” training happens. We are hard at work designing our Retreats, developing Workshops, and structuring Corporate Sessions designed to help teams build resilience without the fluff. We can’t wait to share the dates with you soon.
