How ‘Joy’ inspired my New Year’s resolutions

Ever since I saw Joy, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and how much it inspired me personally to look forward to all the endless possibilities for what the new year of 2016 might bring. My entire life I’ve loved watching movies and there’s no bigger reason to love them than when one moves you so much, you almost can’t wait for it to be over so you can sprint out of the theater and apply all that energy to your own life. Without spoiling anything for those of you who haven’t seen it, here are some of the reasons you should go see it and why I’m feeling so motivated now about making my New Year’s resolutions.

It’s all about making the most of what you have

Jennifer Lawrence plays Joy Mangano, a real woman who came from limited means and still forged ahead with her talent and intuition to become an entrepreneur. If you’ve done even the lightest of Google searches you’ll see that she invented the Miracle Mop among other products. Watching this movie, I kept reminding myself that Joy is an actual person. Putting the movie aside, there are lots of women just like Joy who are brilliant and tough and have a dream they want to chase. Most of us won’t have a film made about the journey and we won’t be played by an Academy award winning actress, but part of me believes one of the bigger points of this movie is that we are all Joy. Which reminded me how I’ve always felt that we all have that drive within us to create the life we want for ourselves. No matter what constitutes that perfect success scenario, we all have our own personal ones and they are important to us.

It emphasizes the importance of your support system

The talented Dascha Polanco from OITNB plays Joy’s best friend and made me think about how important it is to recognize the people in our lives who never lose faith in us and or ability. Even when we sometimes lose sight of where we are going, or if we can continue when life throws us a curveball, we need people who remind us to keep going and that we’re strong and it’s all going to be ok. Remember to thank these people.

It reminded me how important—and hard—it is to stand up for yourself

Joy’s resolute demeanor in many scenes made me literally want to jump up and give a standing ovation. Having confidence in yourself and your dream is imperative if you are going to succeed. You have to be willing to accept rejections but you also have to know when to push harder to be heard, and that stems from confidence in your abilities.

I don’t want to say any more than this about the movie because I refuse to be a spoiler, just go see it and love it like I did. Overall though this film made me think more seriously about my resolutions for 2016 as New Year’s is fast approaching. The dynamic of the female relationships are wonderful, reminding me of some of my own, and Joy’s journey galvanized me in a way that I’ve already started making a list of goals I want to accomplish in the new year, and have actually already spearheaded some of them. Because let’s face it, New Year’s is always a great excuse to begin anew or to encourage us all to try harder, be healthier, plan better, but there’s no reason why we have to wait for one day a year to pile so much pressure on ourselves to be more impressive human beings. But what I’ve decided is the most important takeaway from the movie is to make the resolution to NOT wait. To make a better effort to sit down at least once a month and make sure that I’m on track doing the kind of work that I want to be doing, and living life the way I want to and figuring out how to reasonably make time for all of these things.

It’s never too early or too late to start focusing on what it is that we want and what we’re willing to do to work towards that result, and I plan to think about that on New Year’s and every day before and after it. Remember, we are all our own versions of Joy- a woman who doesn’t shy away from living her best life. Sometimes we need a wake up call to remind ourselves of that fact. This movie was mine.

[Photos courtesy Universal]