Hello and welcome to Decide on Joy, a podcast coming to you from Harmony Spiritual Center in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm Jim Kovalt and I'm Reverend Dr. P. J. Stanley. And today we're, well, we're, on general, we're talking about basic topics about new thought and how they relate to actual daily living. Absolutely. And perhaps a brief, as always, thing about what is new thought anyway. So again, what is new thought, I say this every time and I'm going to say it again today, is that there is nothing new under the sun. So it isn't actually about having a new thought in terms of a new idea, it's about having a new thought in terms of changing your mind. So that you have a different thought, so you can head down a different way if you're not caring about where things are going, you can just change your mind about it. And that's what new thought is. And so we the practice of new thought is about understanding that and that you have an opportunity whenever you're finding yourself upset about something or your life isn't turning out the way that you want it to turn out, you can just change your mind and have a new thought. And so that's what we're talking about. Yeah, and yes, we do do that intro every time, but I think that's okay, because sometimes you hear it differently, you know? True, exactly. Or you might be in a mood to hear it, where last time you weren't. You were just glossed over it. Exactly. So, this time we're talking about the title of our podcast, Decide on Joy, which was not easily arrived at. It was a whole process, you know, giving this list of words and seeing which ones went together and then trying to find out if there was already a podcast called that. Which a lot of them were. We weren't apparently that clever. Yeah. So, so then we landed on this by literally. Putting words together and saying, Oh, well, that, that says it. Yeah, that says it right there. And so what, what do we mean when we just say, when we say decide on joy? One of the major tenets about new thought is that that whatever life that we're living right now, today, whatever life you're living, it has been co created. And when we say co created, we mean that it's you, And that which is greater than you. Some people call it God something greater than yourself, principle, universal law, whatever you call that which is greater than you, you and that entity are creating your life and you are doing it by the powerful thoughts and beliefs that you have. So, if your love life you keep thinking about, you love life and you just keep on thinking the way you're thinking and believing the way you're believing because it's working out for you. So, no need to change it. But if things aren't quite going the way you want, if there's some dissatisfaction in your life, which I don't know anyone that doesn't have some dissatisfaction in somewhere then you can change it right now, right now, today, and you can decide on joy. Over suffering. And that's what this is about. Right the word joy, that not, doesn't exactly directly equate to say Happiness. No, no. And so it's not, I mean, it's easy to read that as, oh, just be happy. Correct. Whatever's going on, be happy and everything will be fine. Yeah. And that's not exactly, it's a, a different level of thing, I guess. It really is. And I'm glad you brought that up because joy is a word. And if you've been in any kind of, you have any kind of religious background or spiritual background, that word joy. Joy cometh in the morning. There's so many, so many things that are said about joy. And so I think, That you end up having to kind of have your own idea of what it means, but it's a combination of things, of having peace, of knowing that you have some modicum of control over what your life is going to be like, and so you're not blown about by the winds of change or what might be happening out there, what somebody else might be saying or what the trends are. You just have a joy in your life that says, I'm alright, I'm doing well, I like my life, I like my life. And I have some part in making that decision, and that brings me joy. So, that's what it means for me. And, and you can literally decide on that. Perspective. Now that, as you said about something else last Sunday, I think it's simple, but it's not necessarily easy. It just isn't. It is a simple process. And then we say the same things again and again, but actually doing it and getting rid of all the old tapes that we have in our, in our head that are playing. I was recently at a at a workshop. Talking about money and the, the, everyone, everyone in that workshop, all the participants were talking about how they were behaving based on how they were raised. Now these were no spring chickens. So we're talking about people who are still, still working on letting go of beliefs or thoughts or ways of being that they, that they understood is how life works from when they were children. And that's how we all kind of are. We're just kind of Doing things we're on autopilot and and things that people have told us in our past We've not examined it to say is that true? could be And you you might not even know it's there speaking from personal experience, you know, you don't You you have to do a bit of digging to say what where is this coming from? You know, what? What is the problem here? And exactly It might not be something that you were even aware of. And this is, you, you bring up the exact point. Is that It takes a lot of ongoing and continuous soul searching. You have to ask yourself, what's the problem? Why am, what, what am I upset about? Why am I upset about it? What makes me think it should be different? All of those questions before you can actually even get on the road of change, you have to identify the issue. And sometimes people just don't want to take the time, because it takes time. And what if you find out that it's something that you don't want to have happen? Like, say that it's time for a relationship to end, whether it's a romantic relationship or a relationship with your children that isn't going well or, or another family member, and it is time for that to, for you to let it go. Maybe it won't end, but certainly your level of, of, Not commitment, I want to say, but your level of interest in it, the feelings that you have about it, maybe it's time for you to let that go. And you don't want to, so you don't want to look at it. Okay, and that's okay, because it's your life. No one's saying what you have to do. We're telling you what you could do, if you want, if the pain is greater than the solution. Right. But on the other hand, having discovered an issue like that, it's not necessarily productive to obsess about it either. It is not. It is not. And what we know, here's a saying that we have here is that what you don't grow through, you go through again and again. So if you don't identify what the problem is, the problem isn't going to go away. Right. It's just going to have different levels and I can tell you for sure that the levels of pain increase. It's like a toothache. It's a problem there and it could start off very low and just a little niggly thing and you hardly notice it. It's going to keep on because it's a problem. And in deciding on joy, how we're applying that to dealing with an issue like that, whatever it may be. Right. How do we apply it? Right. Right. So, let me, let me, I'm going to bring up a, a, just an example. It's a small thing. I don't want to bring up something small, not something heavy. But I was talking to a woman, I was doing a workshop and this woman was talking to me about how rude one of her friends had been to her. She had just never been treated so badly and I was like, what happened? And she said, Oh my God, she served me tea without a saucer. And I said, okay. That is pretty terrible. I'm telling you, what kind of a person are we? Anyway, so I asked her, I said, so how does that work? Equate to being rude would tell me what that means and she said oh well my mother told me I was raised and my mother told me that if you are a good hostess and you serve people you serve them with a saucer and a cup to not serve them with a saucer is rude behavior and it says that you have no thought about or care about them. And I thought, okay, all right, I understand that, I can see how that might be, but not but, but in addition to that thought, what if, possible, the woman who was serving you wasn't raised with that rule? And in fact, she's never had tea with a saucer, she served teas in mugs, or she's only, only ever had cups, she's never had a whole set. How would that change your thought about her? And she said, Oh my God, I've never thought about that, right? And so that's a small thing. So many things that we have in our, in our, in our lives about how things are supposed to be, how they should be, how people are wrong about this or that or the other thing. So two things I want to say about that. We can't change other people. There's just, that's just, you're beating your head up against a wall. That's not going to happen. Who's going to change you? Just think about that. Who's going to change you? They're not. So you can't change other people. But the, the, the, the power in that is that you can change yourself and your own thoughts about it, which is what she did. She changed her mind about her thoughts about what rude behavior is in regards to serving tea. So that's how we get to do it. If something is disturbing you, sometimes you're just going to get a question about it. I'm a good person for asking questions because it doesn't make sense to me. Not that you're wrong. I just don't understand what you mean. So tell me more about that. And if you ask yourself those questions, why is that true? Why? Why? Why do I think that in order for someone to love me, they have to give me flowers? What if they're allergic to flowers? What if they have something in their background that flowers got thrown back in their face and they don't? Who knows what their history is? But that's about you. So we get to question what our thoughts are. And that's the beginning of deciding on joy. Do you want to keep that behavior? Do you want to keep thinking that people are rude because they're not serving with a saucer? Because now you got to cut out your friend, you have to cut her out. Because she's a rude person. And if you, if you stay with that thought, or you can decide. Something different is true. That's what decide on joy is like. I know I have seen or, or read recommendations that you can, like just first thing in the morning, you wake up, you can consciously decide to, on a joyful approach. You absolutely can. You absolutely can. And so, So here's, here's, here's the thing. Now, if you, if you wake up in the morning and you decide, I'm going to have a great day today. But who you are already is someone who, who when you walk out in the first, the first thing you do is you get up and you stub your toe on the couch. Then you, and then you think, Oh my God, this is not going to be a good day. So that's saying that it's going to be a good day alone, just affirming that is not enough. It's more than just, just saying affirmations. They have to be affirmations that are, that are, that are anchored in a new, in a new way of you wanting to be. So you change your perspective. Why have you decided that this is going to be a good day? What has happened that, that makes this something that is a good day? Truly something that you want to do that you're going to spend the time on making sure that that exactly what happens So it's not just about saying I'm going to have a good day. I'm going to now what's gonna be all behind that What's gonna back that up? The fact that you actually do want to have a good day and you're not going to let anything deter that and when you hit Your toe on something. Okay, you know what? That's okay That's all right. So you have to have that behind it. You know what I mean? So it has to have the power of actual, of an actual choice. And not the fact that you're just saying something. It's really something that you want. That's what's gonna happen. That's what's gonna change it. It's gonna help you. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And so, I have a question here that came from you actually, but But it says, how do you change your tomorrow? What do you mean by that? Yeah, so What we know for sure is that the life we're living today is a factor of our thoughts and beliefs that we had yesterday. That's what today is on. So if you want tomorrow to change, if you don't care for what's, what your life is like and you want tomorrow to be different, you have to start changing your thoughts today. That's how you change tomorrow. So just what you said, a person wakes up and they say, today, I am going to change I am going to have a great day. I'm going to be at peace. Let's say that's so you start thinking today About what it is and it changes tomorrow. It doesn't change today. So you still wake up and you've stubbed your toe That's okay. What you're doing is you're building the belief in it You're building the universal laws that are going to come towards you and bring you what you want the laws of attraction all those things That say yes to your thoughts. So the thoughts have to happen today, but they don't your manifestation doesn't happen today You It happens tomorrow, or many tomorrows from here, but it, but it will never change if you don't stop the thoughts that you're having that bring the negative that you don't want. You have to stop those right now and replace them with what you do want. And then consistently think about what you do want. Always thinking about what you do want, not what you don't, because the universe doesn't hear a negative. It doesn't say, I don't want that. It just hears that. It just hears the thing. Right. Right. Yeah. So that's how you change tomorrow. Today. Oh, I had a question and it went out of my head. Because I kept on talking. No, no. It was a slippery territory in my head there. Those ideas just flit right on through. I'm going to go ahead and talk then. And that may come back to you but one of the, the, one of the problems that had that if you want to call it, I don't like to call it a problem, it's because life, it isn't a problem, life isn't a problem. And, and the reason why I say it's not a problem is because we get to co create our lives, which means at any point we can change it. So it's not a problem unless you say it's one. But the issue of changing of our lives, not being what we wanted to be, is the issue of being on autopilot. The thing that I was talking about with the lady in the tea saucer. She hadn't even thought about that that's something she believed until I asked the question. And, and it was important to her that she like her friend. So it wasn't just about me asking the question because she said she could have just said, yes, well, that is still true. I, you know, she might not have, but because I think it was It was powered by the fact that she wanted to care for her friend. She didn't want her friend to be rude. She was ready to hear that suggestion. That maybe her thoughts about that are true. So we are on autopilot about so many things. And the way that we wake up to being on autopilot is when we stub our toe. When we come up against it and we're starting to not like somebody that we used to like before, what's happened? If our someone that we say we love is now actually not loving us the way we want to be loved. So something is not working the way we'd like. And that brings us out of autopilot to ask the question, What's the problem? What's the issue for me? Not, and if the issue can't be if they would change, if they would give me flowers, if they would open the door for me, whatever, if they would have had me, handed me a saucer, it's not about that. It's about what you can do, because the good news is you could only change yourself, which means nobody can change you either. So that's all good news. And the good news is it's in your hands. It really is. You get to decide. And it's, it's okay that we're on autopilot. That's, that's how we get through life. We can't be aware of everything all the time. There are some things we just want to be on autopilot about. But when it's not going right, that wakes you up out of autopilot. And you have the opportunity to decide on joy as opposed to suffering. Right. And, and we have, I, it's, it's kind of I don't want to say hardwired because you probably couldn't get rid of that, but it's one of those things that, that's, that we do that gets instilled in us one way or another, that, that we need to be fearful, that we need to be on the lookout all the time, and of course that's a survival thing. It's a survival technique, absolutely. But. Not productive No, and that's a survival technique if you're in the jungle. Yes, right. It's a jungle, sir It's not a it's not a survival technique for living a life on purpose For living a great life for living a life of joy That that's actually going to stop you from having it if you're if you're in survival mode all the time when you're you're fearful You can't but you can't move past fear. I mean you can't unless you just say i'm i'm I'm, not going to be afraid of this. I am going to surrender to something greater than me You Something, love, which is what we call God, divine love, I'm going to surrender that and believe that good is out there for me. That I am worthy of something good and that I'm going to decide on something good. I'm going to decide on joy. So we don't have to, since we, since we've, we've been able to think and logic things, we no longer have to worry about that. Yeah. Okay. All right. I think that, that, that is what our title is about. That is what it's all about. Decide on joy. So we'll stop there for today and we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us. Thank you all so much for being here today.