Joy Is the Only Strategy

Can you remember times when you’ve experienced pure joy? Martha recalls some key moments that led her to make joy her strategy for living, and she’s talking about it in this episode of The Gathering Room. The dictionary defines a strategy as “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim." We all want to experience joy, and yet we have a society that tells us joy is not a strategy—that we should be strategizing to achieve success instead. But until you have joy, Martha argues, what good is a strategy of success? There is no point in having success without joy. So, how do you make joy your strategy? All the way to joy feels joyful, Martha says, and that feeling is letting you know you’re on your right path— because joy is what we all are in our essence. When we feel misery or flatness or bitterness, the message is that we’ve gotten off track and need to change course. Martha urges us to turn toward joy and join with other people by sharing our joy and asking what we can do to help others experience more of it. Because as joy grows, it more than multiplies! To find out how to connect with joy even in times of pain or sorrow, learn the difference between happiness and joy, and join Martha in a meditation to help open yourself up to joy, be sure to listen to the entire joy-filled episode.