I say this ALL the time:

Your joy is your job.

But let me be very clear…

That does NOT mean you have to be happy all the time.

It doesn’t mean ignoring grief. Stuffing anger. Pretending everything is fine. Or spiritually bypassing the very real experience of being human.

Quite the opposite.

In my latest Evolve Now conversation with my dear friend Amy Anfinson, we went deep into something I think so many of us need to hear:

You are not your emotions.

You FEEL them.

You experience them.

You move through them.

And you don’t have to judge yourself for where you are.

One of the things Amy shared that I LOVE is that on the Emotional Guidance Scale, anger is actually higher than guilt.

Wait… anger can be PROGRESS?

YES.

Not because we want to stay angry forever.

But because sometimes movement is movement.

The goal isn’t to shame ourselves into feeling better.

The goal is awareness.

What am I feeling? What do I WANT to feel? And what might help me move a little closer to that?

And then we talked about JOY.

Amy has walked through some incredibly difficult seasons, including losing her husband, John, after his battle with brain cancer.

And what struck me most was that she gave herself permission to feel ALL of it.

The grief.

The sadness.

The uncertainty.

AND…

The laughter. The dancing. The friendship. The travel. The dreaming. The JOY.

Because joy and grief can exist in the same life.

You can miss someone deeply and still laugh.

You can walk through heartbreak and still dream about what’s next.

You can be going through something incredibly hard and still allow something beautiful in.

That doesn’t dishonor what you’ve been through.

It means you’re still LIVING.

And then there’s AWE.

Amy introduced me to a practice we now do together called AWE:

A — Appreciations What are you grateful for?

W — Wins What’s working? What deserves to be celebrated?

E — Empowering Questions What would you LOVE to experience next?

Simple?

YES.

Powerful?

ALSO YES.

Sometimes we don’t need another giant breakthrough.

Sometimes we just need to pause long enough to notice what’s already good… and become curious about what ELSE might be possible.

Because your joy IS your job.

Not because you should never feel anything else.

But because you have the ability to keep reaching for what feels a little lighter, a little more aligned, and a little more like YOU.

My full conversation with Amy Anfinson is now available on Evolve Now, and we talk about all of this and SO much more: emotions, grief, faith, blamelessness, intention, connection, and what it means to keep dreaming even when life changes.

Watch here: https://kristenhartnagel.com/theevolvenowshow

What if the emotion you’re feeling right now isn’t something you need to get rid of… but something that’s trying to guide you toward what you need next?