How to live a life of joy in the face of adversity.

They put Demond Tutu and the Dala Lama in one room for five days to answer life’s most important question.

Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would put it, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet.

In 2015 these wise, cheerful spiritual leaders came together for five days to seek an answer to life’s biggest question. How do we find joy in the fact of life’s inevitable suffering?

They wrote all their insights in a wonderful, incredibly inspiring book about it called The Book of Joy. It immediately became a New York Times best seller. 

In the video below they talk about forgiveness. And how it more a signal of strength than a – as some call it – sign of weakness. 

Be the change

What we love about their advise on how to live a joyful live in the face of adversity, is that they urge us to focus on our own circle of influence. When we focus on what lies outside us (materialism, politics etc) the level of stress and frustrations we experience, will just just grow. But when we focus on the circle close to us, look at what we do have, at this moment and in this place, we can grow our circle of influence and slowly but surely change our world for the good.