Stealing Joy

Perspective matters when it comes to joy.

I don’t often invite guest authors on to The Joy Luck Club. In fact, I don’t think I ever have. There’s no real philosophy behind that, no intentional decision. So, when Sarah, a consummate student of joy herself, approached me about writing a piece for this ‘Stack, I had no basis for argument. I’m telling you this because I wanted to argue, to say no, to hold your eyes on my work. It’s my nature to be selfish with anything I’ve cultivated. It’s also how some parts of my life have stayed small, insular, and immune to growth.

Sarah DeBlock approaches joy with an honesty that I both envy and respect. And while I knew what she was going to write about, I didn’t know how she would connect it to joy. May I humbly recommend you read this in the morning, let it bang around your brain all day, and come back and read it again before you go to bed. It’s one you’ll want to noodle on.

Sarah DeBlock is the founder of Soma Yoga Healing Center in Alexandria, Virginia and best-selling author of The Year of Sarah and The Year of You, with a passion for helping people thrive and rediscover their inner joy. As a lifelong student, she continually deepens her practice and knowledge, bringing that insight to her healing work with others. She is committed to guiding individuals on their path to well-being and fulfillment through the intersection of community and self-discovery.

A pile of dishes is staring at me; all stacked upon one another in the sink, with more mugs and pots laughing at me from the counter. I just want to sip my tea in peace, but I know I have to clean the dishes. There are so many other tasks I’d rather do, and it feels like it’ll take an eternity, leaving me no precious time for the creative ideas that flood my mind.

Reluctantly, I walk over to face their sneers that I have mentally constructed, feeling heavier with each step closer to the pile. And to my surprise, it’s over in under ten minutes. I’m overjoyed to move on with my night and uplifted by the spaciousness left in the kitchen with all the dishes neatly put away. But what rubs me the wrong way is that this isn’t the first time I’ve been surprised. I’ve played this game before — dreading the dishes, inflating how long the task will take, only to learn again and again that it’s a quick, simple task that leaves life feeling lighter once complete.

I started noticing how often I did this — resisting something small, inflating it, letting it drain my energy long before I ever touched it. It’s such an easy trap to fall into, one that spirals into the collective, incessant swirl of overtalking about to-do lists and overwhelm. And somewhere in that swirl, I realized I was glorifying my own overwhelm. I was giving it power. I was letting it steal from me.

Yes — stealing.

In yoga, asteya, nonstealing, is a main ethical principle that at first seems easy to follow. Of course I won’t take anything from another! Yet when I looked deeper, I realized I was stealing all the time — especially from myself. With every task I dragged behind me, every moment I spent resisting instead of allowing, I was stealing my own joy.

This was a huge revelation for me. I didn’t want to steal from myself anymore. I wanted to look at the dishes with the ease of knowing they’d be clean in a jiffy, with no strings attached.

When I looked at this situation truthfully, what I kept bumping into was that the dread wasn’t about the dishes. It was about the story I was telling myself while looking at them. I have to do this. I don’t have time for this. This is in the way of the life I want to be living.

That tiny phrase — I have to — carried the weight of obligation, resentment, and resistance. It made a ten-minute task feel like a personal betrayal of my creativity, my rest, my joy. And the more I repeated it, the heavier everything felt.

At some point, I realized I wasn’t just stealing my joy by dragging this task around. I was also stealing my agency. My aliveness. My ability to see the small, ordinary moments of my life as part of the life I’m choosing — not obstacles to it.

So, I started experimenting with a simple shift I had learned through yoga and had already applied in other areas of my life. Simple, yet profoundly transformational.

Instead of I have to, I replaced it with I get to.

“I get to” reminded me that my life is not happening to me — I am participating in it. I am in relationship with it. I am the creator of it.

“I get to” reminded me that having dishes means I nourished myself. That having a home to clean means I have a place that holds me. That tending to the small things is part of tending to myself.

Slowly, the dread dissolved. Not because the tasks changed, but because I did.

Because my story did.

Now, when I walk toward the sink, I don’t feel that familiar heaviness. I feel gratitude for the meal I enjoyed, for the hands that get to move warm water over ceramic, for the quiet ritual of resetting my space. I get to do my dishes. I get to nourish myself with homemade meals. I get to care for this beautiful home that is full of love — a home I once dreamed of.

And that shift, that tiny turn of language, has opened more space in my life than any productivity hack ever could. It’s not about doing more. It’s about seeing differently. It’s about remembering that the ordinary moments are not interruptions to my life — they are my life.

These days, I find myself quietly naming the things I get to do.

I get to answer emails to meet more clients.

I get to renew my passport to travel the world.

I get to pay my bills to receive services that sustain my quality of life.

What a relief it is to stop turning my gifts into burdens. What an upgrade it is to let myself feel joy.

Sometimes, one word may be the only barrier between dread and joy.

Where are you stealing your own joy with your words and your perspective? How can you shift “have to” to “get to” to lighten that load?

I’m so grateful to Sarah for sharing this perspective shift. It’s one I’ve heard before but never applied to something as mundane as the dishes, and it keeps popping up in my head when I internally bitch about something on my to-do list.

If you live in Northern Virginia, please check out Sarah’s studio, Soma Yoga Healing Center. They have a whole host of classes like this workshop focused on Motherhood with my fellow Deserts to Mountaintops author and yoga teacher, Tara Casagrande. Sign up by clicking the button below.