Cultivating Joy

Joy can show up for a second and vanish the moment your mind asks, “What if this doesn’t last?” That pattern isn’t a character flaw. It’s your nervous system doing threat detection, and your brain following a built-in negativity bias. In this episode, I unpack a different way to understand joy: not as a lucky feeling, but as a trainable process you can build through neuroscience, psychology, and an alchemy-inspired model of transformation. 

Book Recommendation: The Joy Spot by Leona DeVinne

For more insights on psychology, neuroscience, and mental wellness, you can go to my website, www.natashasheyenne.com for my blog, events, courses, and to sign up for my newsletter. 

Thank you for listening to Life, Alchemized.
If something here resonated, let it settle before you rush forward.
Awareness is already movement

Transcript

Joy As A Process

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Life Alchemized, where science meets inner transformation. I'm your host, Natasha, a leadership coach and psychologist. Today we're talking about joy, which I've really been thinking about more lately. There can be this misconception about joy, that it's light, that it's fleeting, and that it arrives only when conditions are right. But neuroscience tells a different story, and so does alchemy. Joy is not a reaction to life going well, it's a process, a construction, a transformation. And like any transformation, it requires both chemistry and heat. So today we're going to explore joy as both a biological phenomenon and an alchemical one. Not as a mood you wait for, but as something your brain and body are actively capable of building.

The Brain Chemistry Of Joy

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Let's begin in the body. Joy at its most basic level is not a single emotion, it's a pattern of neural activity, a coordination across systems, a kind of internal symphony where multiple processes begin to align. When people describe joy, what they're often feeling is the interplay of several neurochemical systems working together. So dopamine, often misunderstood as just the pleasure chemical, is actually more about anticipation and motivation. It's the signal that something matters, that something is worth moving toward. Serotonin contributes a sense of stability and contentment. And it's less about excitement and more about the feeling that things are okay and that you are okay with them. Oxytocin is the chemistry of connection. It deepens trust, social bonding, and a sense of belonging. Endorphins provide relief and lightness, often emerging after effort or movement and even laughter. Joy is what happens when these systems begin to harmonize. Not perfectly, not constantly, but enough that the brain interprets the moment as safe, meaningful, and connected. From a neuroscience perspective, joy is less like a spark and more like a network

Safety Plus Significance Creates Joy

SPEAKER_00 2:32

effect. And this is where things get interesting, because the brain does not simply receive joy from the outside world, it constructs it. Research in affective neuroscience suggests that emotions are not fixed reactions, but are actively generated by the brain based on prediction, past experience, and current input. In other words, your brain is constantly asking, what is happening? What does it mean? And how should I feel about it? Joy emerges when the brain interprets an experience as both safe and significant. Safe enough that the nervous system does not need to mobilize for threat, and significant enough that attention and energy are directed toward it. This balance is delicate. If something feels meaningful but not safe, the result is anxiety. And if something feels safe but not meaningful, the result is neutrality or even boredom. And joy sits at the intersection. It's where the nervous system says, this matters and I can be here for it. But here is the part that often goes unspoken.

Why Negativity Bias Shrinks Good Moments

SPEAKER_00 3:44

For many people, joy is not difficult because life lacks good moments. It's difficult because the nervous system struggles to stay with them. This is not a mindset problem, it is a capacity problem. The brain has a well-documented negativity bias. It's more sensitive to threat than to safety, more likely to remember what went wrong than what went right. And this bias is not a flaw, it's an evolutionary feature designed to keep us alive. But in modern environments, it can distort our experience. A moment of joy arises, and almost immediately the brain scans for what could disrupt it. What if this doesn't last? And what if something goes wrong? What if I lose this? The experience collapses under the weight of anticipation. And this is the rapid reactivation of threat detection systems, overriding reward and connection networks. But joy requires something different. It requires the ability to remain in an experience without immediately converting it into risk. And this is where we begin to move into alchemy.

Attention As The Raw Material

SPEAKER_00 4:56

So as we know, alchemy in its historical form was often misunderstood as the attempt to just turn base metals into gold. But at its core, alchemy is about transformation through stages. It was about understanding that change requires process and not force. And that transformation begins not with the final outcome, but with the material that you already have. In the context of joy, the base material is not happiness, it's attention. What you notice, what you stay with, what you allow to register. Modern neuroscience supports this in a way that feels almost poetic. The brain changes based on what it repeatedly attends to. And this is the principle of neuroplasticity. Neural pathways strengthen with use. The more direct attention towards certain experiences, the more easily the brain returns to them. Joy, then, is not something you chase, it's something you practice noticing. The first stage of this alchemy is awareness, noticing moments that could become joy before they pass. And this sounds simple, but it's not, because the brain is not naturally oriented towards subtle positive experiences. It's oriented towards contrast and urgency and change. A quiet moment of contentment does not demand attention the way a problem does. So it must be invited. Research shows that when individuals intentionally attend to positive experiences, even briefly, there is increased activation in brain regions associated with reward and emotional regulation. But the key is not just noticing, it is staying.

Amplify Joy By Lingering Longer

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And this brings us to the second stage, which is amplification. In alchemy, transformation required sustained exposure, heat applied over time. In neuroscience, something similar happens. Brief experiences do not significantly alter neural pathways, but experiences that are held in awareness for longer periods begin to consolidate. When you linger on a moment of joy for even 10 to 20 seconds, you allow the brain to encode it more deeply. And this is sometimes referred to as experience-dependent neuroplasticity. The brain begins to treat the moment as meaningful enough to store. Without this step, joy remains fleeting. It passes through without leaving a trace. With it, joy becomes something the brain can return to. Integration is not about intensity, it's about coherence. When experiences of joy are repeatedly noticed and held, they begin to influence baseline emotional states. The brain becomes more efficient at accessing these patterns, and the threshold for experiencing joy lowers. What once required a perfect moment begins to emerge in ordinary ones. And this is not because life has changed, it's because perception has. But there's another layer here, one that complicates the story a bit.

When Joy Feels Unsafe

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Joy is not always comfortable. For many individuals, especially those who have experienced chronic stress or unpredictability, joy can feel unfamiliar and even unsafe. And this is sometimes referred to as positive affect intolerance. So your nervous system, having adapted to high levels of vigilance, may interpret sustained positive states as unpredictable or even destabilizing. In these cases, joy is not avoided consciously, it is disrupted automatically. The moment begins to expand and the system pulls back. And this is not necessarily just resistance, it's protection. And it points to something essential. Joy is not just about accessing positive emotion, it's about building the capacity to hold it. In alchemical terms, this is the strengthening of the vessel. Before transformation could occur, the container had to be able to withstand the reaction. In human terms, this container is the nervous system and the ability to remain present without becoming overwhelmed even by something positive. Practices that support nervous system regulation, such as slow breathing, grounding, and emotional labeling, are not just tools for reducing stress. They're also tools for expanding the capacity for joy. Because a regulated system can stay longer. It does not need to exit the experience prematurely.

Meaning Versus Pleasure

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Now there's one more dimension to explore: meaning. Joy is often associated with pleasure, but they're not the same. Pleasure is immediate and sensory, and it's tied to the present moment. Joy, while it can include pleasure, is often linked to meaning. A sense that something matters, that it connects to something larger than the moment itself. Neuroscience research suggests that experiences tied to meaning activate not only the reward systems, but also areas of the brain involved in self-referential processing and long-term memory. So that creates a different kind of imprint, an imprint that is more enduring. And from an alchemical perspective, meaning is what transforms a reaction into a result. It's what turns a fleeting moment into something that shapes identity. So what does this mean practically? It means that joy is not found only in peak experiences. It's constructed in small, repeated moments of attention, amplification, and integration. It's built when you allow something to matter and allow yourself to be present with it. It's strengthened when the nervous system learns that it is safe to stay. And it deepens when those moments connect to a broader sense of meaning. There is a shift that happens when this becomes understood. Joy stops being something you wait for and it becomes something you participate in, not through force, not through constant positivity, but through a kind of deliberate noticing, a willingness to let moments register, to let them land, to resist the urge to immediately move past them. If alchemy teaches us anything, it's that transformation is rarely dramatic. It is incremental, layered, and often invisible in the moment. And the same is true for joy. It's not a single event, it's an accumulation, a series of small experiences that over time reshape the way the brain interprets the world. So the next time joy appears, even briefly, consider this. Your brain is offering you raw material, a moment that could pass, or a moment that could be shaped. The difference is not in the moment itself, it's in what you do with it. Do you notice it? Do you stay with it? Do you allow it to matter? This is the work, not chasing joy, but cultivating it. Because joy in the end is not fragile, it is forged.

A Practical Companion Book

SPEAKER_00 12:53

And if you want to take this exploration further, there's a beautiful companion to this work, a book that echoes both the neuroscience and the alchemy we've been talking about, but brings it down into something deeply lived and tangible. Finding Your Joy Spot by Leona Divine is built on a simple but powerful premise. Joy is not something you wait for, it's something you learn to notice. Drawing from over a decade of studying joy and working with clients, Leona offers a practical framework for identifying what she calls joy spots, the small, often overlooked moments where joy already exists in your life. And what makes her work especially compelling is that it aligns closely with what we know from neuroscience, that attention shapes experience, that what we repeatedly notice becomes easier to access, and that joy does not require perfect circumstances to exist. In fact, one of her core ideas is that joy can be found even in the most difficult moments, not as denial, but as something that coexists with pain and helps us move through it. She breaks this down into practical components like grounding, gratitude, and generosity, offering not just insight but tools. In many ways, her work is the lived expression of the theory we've explored today. If neuroscience gives us the map and alchemy gives us the metaphor, this book gives you the practice. So if you find yourself asking, how do I actually do this? that is the place to begin. Thank you for listening to Life Alchemized. If something here resonated, let it settle before you rush forward. Awareness is already moving.