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JOY Unfiltered: Joy is the strategy
Joy Unfiltered is the podcast where joy gets real, grounded, and useful.
Hosted by Rachel Bents, author of Joy Is the Strategy, this show explores joy not as a reward you earn, but as a practical strategy for living, leading, and feeling better in real life.
Each week, you’ll hear honest conversations, solo reflections, and guest episodes that unpack how joy impacts leadership, wellbeing, resilience, mindset, and connection without bypassing hard things or pretending life is perfect.
This podcast is also the heartbeat of two growing movements:
📘 Joy Is the Strategy (the book)
A deeper exploration of how joy works, why it matters, and how choosing it can change your life and leadership.
✨ The Joy Project
A global, joy-first community built on connection, conversation, and collective momentum.
If you’re tired of hustle culture, burned out on forced positivity, or curious what changes when joy becomes the way forward, you’re in the right place.
Joy isn’t the reward.
It’s the strategy.
JOY Unfiltered: Joy is the strategy
What Happens When Joy Becomes a Habit? with Bethany Shipley
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This episode of Joy Unfiltered is a little different and a lot of fun.
Rachel welcomes speaker, writer, and personal brand guide Bethany Shipley to the podcast, but then the two flip the script and Bethany interviews Rachel. The result is a heartfelt, honest, and deeply practical conversation about joy, grief, recovery, nervous system regulation, and what it really means to make joy a way of life.
Rachel shares how joy is not just a feeling, but a choice, a practice, and eventually a habit. She opens up about her sobriety journey, why joy became the message she could no longer ignore, and how writing her first book, Joy Is the Strategy, helped her step more fully into her purpose.
Together, Rachel and Bethany explore the connection between joy and grief, how our brains are wired to notice what we focus on, and why joy is not fluffy at all. It is powerful, strategic, and deeply human.
This conversation is for anyone who has ever wondered:
- Is joy something I feel or something I choose?
- Can joy and grief exist at the same time?
- What happens when I stop waiting for joy and start practicing it?
- How do I train my brain to notice more good?
- What changes when I let joy lead?
In this episode, we talk about:
- Rachel’s personal definition of joy
- Why joy is both a feeling and a decision
- How small moments of joy build emotional resilience
- Rachel’s recovery journey and choosing joy with clarity
- The relationship between joy, grief, and nervous system regulation
- Why practicing joy expands emotional capacity
- How childhood vision and purpose shaped Rachel’s work
- The science behind joy, dopamine, and the reticular activating system
- Why morning thoughts matter so much
- Rachel’s path to writing Joy Is the Strategy
- The fear and vulnerability that came with publishing her first book
- How joy became not just a message, but a movement
Key Takeaway:
Joy is not the reward at the end of life. It is a strategy for how we live it.
Closing Thought:
If joy has felt far away, this episode is your reminder that it may be closer than you think. Sometimes it starts with a cup of coffee, a deep breath, a sunrise, or simply deciding to notice what is still good.
Connect with Rachel
