Choosing Joy—how our choices create our dances and our wellbeing

It was my first international Salsa congress—a multi-day event where hundreds of dancers from around the world gather to learn, watch, and spend long hours on a crowded dance floor.

I was there with a group of friends from home, most of them far more experienced than I was. Dressed up, dance shoes in hand, I walked into the large auditorium, bleachers lining the walls, dancers already filling the floor. The energy was electric.

And I froze.

Everyone seemed better than me. More confident. More skilled. More at ease in their bodies. I sat down in the bleachers next to a friend who had done this many times before and asked her how she chose who to ask to dance with her.

She told me she watched the leaders’ feet—how they moved, even what kinds of shoes they wore. I tried that but it didn’t quite resonate with me.

Instead, I found myself watching faces.
Who was smiling?
Who was making eye contact?
Who looked like they were actually enjoying themselves?

That became my criteria. And it changed everything.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized something. It wasn’t the most technically skilled dancers who created the best experiences. It was the ones who were present, engaged, and genuinely enjoying the moment they were in. Even when the steps didn’t go as planned, the dance still worked. There was laughter, connection, a sense of ease that made the experience feel whole. And I began to trust myself more.

I began to trust that what I was choosing—joy, presence, willingness—was shaping the entire experience far more than technical precision ever could.

It’s hard not to notice how much that resembles the way we move through our lives.

Outside of the dance floor, we often default to very different criteria. We choose based on what we think we should do, what appears productive or impressive, what seems like the “right” next step. We push toward outcomes. We try to get the steps right. But we rarely pause to ask a simpler, more orienting question: what would it look like to choose the people, environments, and experiences that actually allow us to feel more alive while we are in them?

Because just as in dance, those choices matter. They shape not only the quality of the moment, but the patterns we live inside of every day. And over time, those patterns influence far more than mood or satisfaction. They begin to shape our physiology.

Research in positive psychology suggests that while genetics and life circumstances contribute to our baseline happiness, a meaningful portion is influenced by intentional choices—how we direct our attention, how we interpret our experiences, and who we choose to spend time with. Emotional states are not isolated within us; they move between people. Studies have demonstrated that happiness can spread through social connections, subtly influencing the wellbeing of those around us.

At a physiological level, our internal state is reflected in patterns such as heart rate variability, a measure of how the nervous system is responding and adapting. Higher variability is associated with greater emotional flexibility, improved decision-making, and overall resilience. These internal patterns are not fixed; they shift in response to our environment, our relationships, and the emotional tone of our daily lives. In that sense, the “dance” we are in is not just metaphorical—it is biological.

What began for me as a small, almost instinctive decision on a crowded dance floor—to choose partners who were experiencing joy—quietly revealed something larger. We are always selecting the conditions we step into, whether consciously or not. And those conditions, repeated over time, become the rhythm of our lives, and the foundation for our health.

We are, in a very real sense, choosing our dance. And those choices, accumulated over days and years, shape our wellbeing in ways that are both subtle and profound. We may not always control the music, and we certainly won’t get every step right. But we do have more choice than we often realize in how we enter the dance. Who we move toward. What we say yes to. What we allow ourselves to experience. And over time, those choices create a rhythm—a way of moving through life—that either constricts us or expands us. Joy is not something we stumble into by accident. It is something we begin to recognize, choose, and practice - one dance at a time.