You Can’t Hack Joy
Oct 17, 2025It’s my Hebrew birthday - a day of reflection, blessing, and truth-telling.
And maybe that’s why I find myself a little fired up.
I’ve spent Sukkos reading far too many glossy pieces about “finding joy” and flipping through endless ads promising happiness, and I can’t help thinking: we’ve lost the plot.
We’re living in an age of shortcuts, where everything from mindfulness to meaning has been condensed into three-step programs and thirty-second reels.
We’ve just come out of Sukkos - zman simchaseinu, the time of our joy - a time we’re commanded to be joyous.
Yet it was never meant to be a highlight reel.
We’re actually commanded to be joyous all the time.
Mitzvah gedolah lihiyos b’simchah tamid.
And it’s not just a mitzvah; it’s a big mitzvah.
It doesn’t end when we (finally?) take down the sukkah.
Joy isn’t a hack. It isn’t a mood. It isn’t the same as happiness.
Happiness is reactive, it rises and falls with the weather.
Joy is different.
Joy seeps deeper. It doesn’t evaporate when the day goes wrong.
The secret to simchah is written right there in the phrase: lihiyos - to be.
It’s presence. The ability to stay awake inside your life, to be here, even when “here” isn’t easy.
That’s what simchah really is: not the absence of sadness, or pain or hardship, but the refusal to abandon yourself in it.
And yet, we keep chasing the next miracle method, the next retreat, the next “this will change everything.”
We’ve built a culture of spiritual (and material) convenience - quick results, instant transformation, guaranteed happiness (or your money back).
I see it often in my work. A client leaves a session and says, “It didn’t work.”
Translation: it didn’t make me feel better fast enough.
But real work rarely feels good at first.
Presence takes practice. Awareness takes stamina.
Joy - real joy - takes honesty.
Healing isn’t “no more pain.”
It’s living despite the pain.
It’s choosing to stay open, not polished.
To move through life instead of trying to outsmart it.
Or better yet, letting life move through you, as you remain anchored.
Once, “hard work” meant hands in the dirt- survival and sweat.
Perhaps today, it means doing the inner labor: developing ourselves to the utmost, resisting the temptation to trade depth for dopamine.
That’s what growth looks like in this generation. That’s what will carry us forward.
And dare I say it - not all facilitators are created equal.
The same words, the same modality, can either be a doorway or a detour.
It’s one thing to guide someone toward wholeness; it’s another to use the same language to sell a spiritual high.
We’ve watched sacred ideas - mindfulness, breath, energy, presence - get hijacked and hollowed out until they’re nothing more than hashtags.
(I have more to say on this, but it’ll wait for my Lo Signov email. Here’s where you can get that.)
But don’t confuse imitation for essence.
There are still real people doing the real work; the kind that doesn’t promise quick relief, but invites you into transformation.
As I reflect on the year I just lived, there have been beautiful wins, treasured experiences, hard-earned successes - and also unmet goals, hard truths, deep pains, and disappointment.
They don’t cancel each other out, or define me in any way other than human.
All can be true at the same time.
As I look to the year ahead, I hope (and kind of know) that it will be filled with more of the same.
So predictable, not at all flashy or shiny — yet so perfect it fills me with joy.
And anticipation. Because who knows what the successes will be, or what stumbling blocks will do me in this time.
(To hear more about this, you can listen in on my conversation with my friend Fally Klein: “Thriving — An Orientation of Love.” You can find the links below)
So, as I mark another year, here’s my birthday blessing — for myself, and for anyone reading:
May we learn to stop outsourcing our wholeness.
May we remember that joy isn’t a fix to be bought, but a muscle to be built.
And may we have the courage to seek the real thing - the slow, sacred, inconvenient kind that lasts.
Because yes, the shortcuts are always there.
They’re cheaper, faster, prettier.
But they’ll leave you exactly where you started.
And I think we’re ready for more than that.
Wishing us A Joyful Year,
Nechama
P.S- For anyone interested in hearing more, or entering the sphere of transformation come visit me at nechamastahl.com to hear more about who I am, what I do, and how we might work together.
Here’s where you can listen in on this Vessel Mini-Series Episode: Thriving; An Orientation of Love with Nechama Stahl and Fally Klein
https://open.spotify.com/show/2yV2BFrELZdUstJDdtALYa?si=2d9a619e72324929
Meet Nechama
