![You are currently viewing JOY STRATEGY [2]: How Your Joy Radio Works](https://mike-lukas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Joy-Radio-1.jpg)
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.
Welcome to the Joy Strategy.
Where the goal is to prioritize your daily Joy using a universal law to your advantage.
Now picture this…
GET CAUGHT UP!
If you haven’t already, please click to read the prior posts in this series:
It’s a gorgeous day.
You’re standing beside a highway, hitchhiking.
An old pickup truck driven by an even older fellah stops and offers you a ride.
The cab of his truck is littered with fast food garbage and empty snack bags.
Through the open window you smell greasy French fries and old cigarettes.
“I don’t have all day,” the old man yells. “You gettin’ in?”
You pull open the door, brush some trash off the passenger seat and try to get comfortable.
“Thanks,” you say.
The old fellah ignores you and pulls back into traffic.
Now as a hitchhiker, you’d normally be grateful for the ride.
Despite the rudeness and the messy conditions, it sure beats walking.
Except you realize this truck’s radio is cranked up to full volume.
It’s blasting some kind of dramatic soap opera and it’s painfully loud.
But the cranky old man seems clueless and just keeps driving.
After a while, you speak up.
“Wow, sir, you must really love this soap opera.”
“What?” he says. “Hell no. It’s the only damn thing this radio picks up. Every town, every state.”
“I see,” you say.
The drive continues and the soap opera drones on loudly so your eardrums start to ache.
“Well,” you say, “you sure have your radio turned up loud. Are you hard of hearing, sir?”
“Hell no,” he says. “I hear just fine. That’s just how loud it comes out of that radio. It’s constant.”
“Well, if you hate it and it comes in too loudly, why don’t you just shut it off?”
He laughs. “I wish. That dang radio don’t turn off. Ever.”
You sit there, a few more miles pass, and the soap opera keeps blasting.
It’s giving you a headache, and not just because it’s deafening.
Also, because the soap opera script is dramatic and upsetting with lots of screaming, weeping and frustration.
Good lord, you think, how can this poor fellah stand this?
Finally, after a few more miles, you say, “Sir, could you please pull over and drop me off?”
“Hmf. Thought you needed a ride.”
“I do, but that radio of yours is starting to make ME cranky.”
“Yup. Does the same to me. Nothin’ I can do about it.”
You say, “Or maybe…”
He gives you a suspicious look. “Or maybe…what?”
“Well,” you say, “you might consider replacing that radio.”
He stares at you for another second, jaw clenched, brow furrowed.
Finally, he says, “With what? How? You even allowed to do that? What are you talking about?”
Then you explain what seems obvious.
“Well, sir, you could replace it with an updated radio, one that lets you change the channel to a program that you enjoy with volume control and the ability to turn off the shows you don’t like.”
The cranky old fellah stares at you for a second, then back at the road.
The soap opera blares on.
Suddenly, he slams on the brakes and the truck comes to an abrupt stop.
“Get the hell out of my truck, fancy pants,” he says. “Your ideas are ridiculous and frightening.”
You hop out and smile, relieved to finally be away from those loud speakers.
Without another word, the truck squeals away, the soap opera still blaring away inside.
“Poor fellah,” you say to yourself. “I’d be cranky, too, if I had to listen to that all day.”
You stick your thumb out for another ride.
“Poor fellah. Imagine being so clueless you don’t even know how your radio works.”
Poor fellah is right.
Funny thing is, that’s sort of how the Dead People look at most of us humans here on earth.
(More about the Dead People in a future post…)
To the Dead People, those watching us from the other side, we humans are like that cranky old truck driver.
Clueless as to how our own radio works.
Your built in Joy Radio
What radio am I talking about?
The radio each of us is born with. Stuck with, really.
It’s true – we all have our own metaphysical version of a radio installed internally at birth.
Though most of us don’t realize it and never do.
Regardless, our internal metaphysical radio broadcasts and receives a signal all day long.
Whether you know it (or like it) or not!
This is as universally true and impersonal as math and gravity, by the way.
As is the idea that your metaphysical radio connects you directly to the energy of the universe.
Directly to the what?
To the energy of the universe, or whatever you happen to call the source of earthly life.
Your greater power.
AKA God or Yahweh or Mohammed.
Or Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva or Buddha or Source or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Whatever you happen to call the energy of the universe that’s bigger than all of us (and that scientists refuse to confirm as provable)…
…this metaphysical radio signal you were born with connects you directly to it.
Even if you’re not trying.
On the road trip of your life, your metaphysical radio is cranked up to full volume, all day.
Whether you know it (or like it) or not.
Again, this is as universally true and impersonal as math and gravity and later I’ll explain how and why.
And just like with that cranky old fellah, your radio is typically tuned to a dramatic soap opera.
YOUR soap opera. The Days of YOUR Life.
It’s all YOUR daily dramas blasting out of the mental speakers inside your brain.
In every city, every state you’re in.
Here’s how that works:
As your day unfolds, the things that happen to you, good and bad, trigger lots of thoughts.
Each thought, in turn, triggers emotions, which trigger even more thoughts and emotions.
The momentum of these good and bad spirals creates a mental soap opera storyline that plays ongoing in your head if you allow it.
Its plot originates from and are driven by all those emotions caused by all those thoughts.
If you let it, your mental soap opera runs in your mind all day long, every day. Full blast!
The tricky thing about emotions is that they are endless and complicated and extremely personal to each of us.
Therefore, I’ll never fully understand your emotions; you’ll never fully understand mine.
But that’s okay. We don’t have to.
Luckily for our Joy purposes, emotions can also be divided into two simple categories.
Two basic groups of feelings that even strangers can readily agree on:
- Emotions that bring you joy
- Emotions that don’t
Joy and Not-Joy. It’s truly that simple.
![Read more about the article JOY STRATEGY [6]: How to Begin Prioritizing Joy](https://mike-lukas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Choose-Joy-300x250.jpg)
![Read more about the article JOY STRATEGY [1]: Use This Time-Honored Technique to Take Your Joy Temp](https://mike-lukas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Kid-Joy-1-1-200x300.jpg)
Pingback: JOY STRATEGY: Use This Time-Honored Technique to Take Your Joy Temp - Mike Lukas
Pingback: JOY STRATEGY [4]: How to Use the Law of Attraction to Your Advantage - Mike Lukas