How to Cultivate Lasting Joy: Jewish Wisdom on Music, Mindset, and the Soul

A healthy soul naturally tends toward joy. True joy expands the heart and flows from deep inner satisfaction- it energizes us and empowers us to move forward in every area of life. Sadness in contrast, causes tightness in the chest and emotional constriction, locking us out of growth.

Since the soul seeks truth, goodness, and inner peace, and because joy, confidence, and goodness go hand-in-hand, it’s no wonder that the pure soul longs to live in joy. It also remembers, in some subconscious way, the boundless spiritual joy it experienced before entering this world in a physical body, and it therefore seeks joy and feels suffocated by sorrow.

Music: A Gateway to the Soul

Music is one of the most powerful sources of joy. When a person hears the right kind of melody, the soul is stirred, sometimes even feeling a pull to return to that higher spiritual world it came from. Dance is the body expressing the yearning of the soul.

Try the following powerful practice: take time alone with your Creator, in nature or your own room, and sing. Choose a heartfelt song and sing it slowly, letting the emotion rise, and then shift to joyful songs of thanks for all the blessings in your life. Before long, you’ll feel deep joy, love, and closeness to G-d. You might even sense the whole world around you singing and dancing with you. As King David put it, “The rivers clap their hands, the mountains sing together with joy.”

Sometimes we sing because we’re inspired, and sometimes we become inspired because we sing. The Talmud highlights this in its phrasing: “To David, a psalm” implies the Divine Spirit came first and then he sang. But “A psalm to David” illustrates that he sang, and that act brought the Divine Presence.

Choose the Right Kind of Joy

Like all things, music can go both ways. There is holy, uplifting music that elevates the soul, and there is music that inflames desire and pulls us downward. It’s up to us to choose. The same is true for joy: there’s genuine joy, like the verse says, “Rejoice in G-d, O righteous ones,” and there’s false joy of foolishness and recklessness. King Solomon warned, “Of laughter, I said: it is madness; and of joy: what does it accomplish?” Unchecked levity can drag a person into sin.

Joy isn’t only emotionally important, but it is central to Jewish spiritual life. One of the most foundational principles in Judaism is to “Serve G-d with joy.” During special times, like holidays, we are explicitly commanded to rejoice: “You shall rejoice in your festival- you, your son and daughter, your servants, and the stranger, orphan, and widow among you.”

The Command to Be Joyful – How Is That Possible?

How can someone be commanded to feel joy? Isn’t joy a feeling that’s out of our control, especially when life brings pain or disappointment?

The answer lies in the Hebrew word “בְּשִׂמְחָה” (“with joy”), which contains the same letters as the word “מַחְשָׁבָה” (“thought”). Joy isn’t about what you have or lack, but about how you think about your life. When we view life through the right mental lens, joy naturally follows.

Three Thought Paths for Finding Joy

Following are three thought “tracks” that can help us restore joy during times of hardship or darkness:

1. Focus on the good you already have.

Write down a list of things you truly need in life such as home, health, sight, mobility- and mark the ones you do have. In most cases, you’ll find that the vast majority of life’s real needs are already met. Why let the few things missing steal your joy?

2. Trust that what seems bad now will lead to good later.

Many blessings come disguised as challenges. Looking back, you’ve probably seen how painful moments led to surprising growth or opportunity.

3. Remember: the material world is an illusion.

Scientific understanding reveals that physical matter is mostly empty space. Atoms are tiny particles with massive gaps between them and everything we see and touch is an illusion of solidity. Jewish mysticism teaches that the only true reality is spiritual which means that both physical pleasure and pain are fleeting and ultimately unreal. Only spiritual joy endures.