JOY STRATEGY [1]: Use This Time-Honored Technique to Take Your Joy Temp

Being Joyful is a choice.

- Jonathan Jackson

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”

*silence*

That was me a while back – not happy, knew it, and could not, in good faith, clap my hands.

In fact, I still question whether I’ve ever been a truly happy person at all.

Happy moments? Sure. But am I happy?

I don’t know…

Up until 2014, I spent twenty-four years making other people happy as a professional comedy entertainer – doing standup and improvisation on stage, TV, and radio.

I got overpaid to bring others joy. That was fun.

But was I a happy person?

I’ve always been moody. I’m not a natural smiler.

Since childhood, I’ve suffered from social anxiety and resting-grumpy-face.

It didn’t start out that way.

Like most babies, I was born a happy optimist.

As I got older, though, I joined the “that’s where they getcha” crowd.

And once I was a professional performer, I became manic, hungry, hard-working, and passionate.

There were plenty of happy moments and successes.

But my ongoing daily Joy Temperature was all over the place.

From occasional massive “did my comedy on national TV” highs to ongoing “some people don’t like me” lows.

In public I pretended to be happy – I was a comedian, it was my job.

But most of the time in private my anxious engine was always revving. Quick to frustration and anger, I was a feral alley dog half the time.

The other half I was a sad squirrel.

Was not happy and I knew it, so I could not, in good faith, clap my hands.

Instead, I drank.

Daily.

Beer and wine at first.

Then a lot of whiskey.

The booze didn’t make me happy, it just helped me forget that I was not happy.

Now I’m a-beer-a-week sober and in my fifties with two young children to co-raise.

My babies don’t want to live with a drunken cynic or a no-but-er with resting grumpy face.

Who does?

Like all kids, mine want to play and laugh and be silly, especially with their old man.

Children are naturally joyful until the world (or a grumpy-face) teaches them not to be.

That’s because most of us are born feeling joyful – as infants we’re directly connected to joy.

(And to all our big emotions, for that matter.)

So, as a grumpy-faced father, I felt obligated to change, to evolve into a more joyful person.

For my kids, but really for me since I got tired of not being happier more often.

As an unapologetic problem solver, I was excited to take on this self-evolution.

As a retired comedian, though, I wanted the journey to be easy and fun.

But how to do it?

**How can a sober moody person choose to become more joyful daily?**

My first instinct as a proud nerd was to create a strategy, a Joy Strategy, which eventually became the one I am going to share with you in this blog.

And, as I’ll show you in later posts, it works.

Well, most of the time. Which is perfect.

Because the goal in life isn’t to be joyful all the time.

That’s impossible, at least here on chaotic earth.

A more achievable goal is to feel as much daily joy as I can despite the great struggles and pains and inevitable sorrows life forces me to face and feel along the way.

In other words, the goal is to begin prioritizing my Joy.

Period.

We do this in our day by creating more Joy moments for ourselves than Not-Joy ones.

We do THAT by becoming more aware of how often we shift over to negative feelings and by having a way to re-shift our inner energy back to Joy.

Which is difficult to accomplish, but it’s a lot easier if you have a strategy in place.

The Joy Strategy in this blog teaches how to use a fundamental universal law to your own joyful advantage.

Do that, and gradually your daily Joy moments will begin to outnumber your Not-Joy moments.

And smiles and laughter happen way more often.

Every day, for the rest of your life.

It’s a simple 5-step strategy to prioritize your daily Joy.

To begin consciously shifting back to more Joy, moment to moment, more often.

What’s a Joy Strategy, exactly?

A joy strategy is essentially the steps you plan to take in order to choose to be happy every moment of the day.

In that sense, most people already have a joy strategy in place by default.

There are plenty of external forces who are happy to give you their joy strategy to use and our society has been gradually ‘trained’ to follow along.

Commercials, school, church, politics, family, friends – their messaging tells us which steps they prefer us to take to find their version of ‘joy’:

Buy our product, learn our doctrines, think and act like us – only then will you be happy.

It might work at first, but over time we discover their strategies rarely create ongoing true Joy.

Instead, at best, they tend to give us fleeting moments of temporary bliss like kids on Christmas morning before the inevitable “Is that all?” phase kicks in.

**Those external joy strategies work to benefit them somehow by making us feel needy and fearful until we buy what they’re selling.**

Great for sales, not-so-great for Joy.

Better to take that joy-finding task into our own hands.

That’s what this blog is for, to help you create your own Joy Strategy.

One that prioritizes your daily Joy.

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

*clap clap*

That’s me now. A happy clapper and I know it.

Well, usually.

But when I’m not, now I notice, and I can quickly find my way back to Joy.

Joy has become my daily priority and the Joy Strategy in this blog is the main reason why.

Are you a happy clapper?

Are your days filled with more Joy than Not-Joy?

If yes, then you must already have a solid Joy Strategy in place.

Congrats! Swipe left. Carry on.

If not, maybe the Joy Strategy described in this blog can help get you started with one of your own.

If you’re unhappy and you know it, it’s worth a try.

Next we’ll talk about how your metaphysical Joy Radio works (yes, we all have one!) and then how to begin tuning it back to the Joy Station whenever it starts to drift.

Let’s get to clapping,

Mike