Embodiment · “Being Precedes Having”
Choosing Joy
To deliberately choose the higher emotional response and refine what you focus on — growing through joy rather than struggle as a daily, willed orientation.
In 4 lines: Decide to grow through joy rather than struggle. When a hard feeling hits, pause, breathe, and connect with your innermost self. Feel what’s there, then use your will to choose the higher response and refine your focus toward the good. Repeat all day — it’s a practice, not a one-time fix, and never a reason to deny real pain.
What it is
This is the signature daily practice of Living with Joy, channeled by Sanaya Roman from “Orin”: the deliberate, willed choice to grow through joy rather than through struggle and pain. Moment to moment you choose the higher emotional response available to you, and you refine what you focus on, steering attention toward love, appreciation, and inner peace rather than fear, resentment, or lack.
Orin frames this as the right use of will — not forcing outcomes, but choosing your inner state and direction — anchored by a simple recurring move: pause, breathe, connect with your innermost self, and choose joy. It draws on the deeper Self as the chooser (All Is One) and the tradition’s conviction that the feeling you generate is the creative force in your life (The Inner Creates the Outer).
Distinct from the siblings in this lineage. This is not a posture or physiology hack, nor an identity-assumption. Its defining move is the repeated, conscious choice of the higher emotional response plus refinement of focus — close to and, but Orin’s emphasis is the active will: you choose joy as a discipline, “regardless of what is happening.” Note the honest difference from forced positivity: choosing the higher response includes feeling the lower one first, not suppressing it (see Safety).
The Method
A faithful representative rendering of Orin’s teaching:
- Decide to live joyfully. Orin: “If you choose, decide that you will begin living joyfully, regardless of what is happening in your life or the world around you.“ It begins as a deliberate stance, not a mood.
- Pause and connect. “To start living joyfully, pause for a moment, take a breath in, and connect with your innermost self.“ The brief inward turn re-centers you in the deeper Self.
- Notice the response you’re in. Catch the current emotional reaction — fear, irritation, lack — without yet acting from it.
- Choose the higher response. Use the right use of will to select a more loving, peaceful, or appreciative response that is genuinely available. This is reappraisal, not denial.
- Refine your focus. Deliberately move attention toward what is good, wanted, or appreciated in the situation — Orin teaches that what you focus on grows in your experience.
- Repeat through the day. Treat it as a practice, returning to the choice again and again until joy becomes a more default orientation. (Sourcing note: quoted lines are verbatim from Orin’s “choosing joy” teaching, attributed; the step structure is a faithful paraphrase of Living with Joy, not a reproduction of the copyrighted text.)
Source & Lineage
The practice is the through-line of Sanaya Roman’s Living with Joy: Keys to Personal Power and Spiritual Transformation (1986), the first of Orin’s “Earth Life” books, with the right-use-of-will theme developed across the Orin corpus (Personal Power Through Awareness, 1986; Spiritual Growth, 1989). → Voice node.
It belongs to the New Thought / New Age lineage of choosing one’s state, sharing ground with Abraham-Hicks alignment, James Allen’s mental gardening, and modern positive psychology.
Common refinements
Toxic positivity. Using “choose joy” to paper over grief, anger, fear, or injustice is the central misuse — and it harms. Feel first; choose second.
- Willing outcomes instead of responses. The “right use of will” is about your inner state and direction, not forcing people or events. Trying to will outcomes breeds strain.
- Treating a bad day as failure. Joy is a practice with a default that shifts slowly; lapses are normal, not proof you “did it wrong.”
- Spiritual bypass. Don’t use focus-on-the-good to avoid needed action, boundaries, or help.
- Refinement: pair the choice with a concrete micro-action (a kind word, one appreciation written down) so the chosen state is embodied, not just thought.