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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
Embodied Self-Trust, Boundaries, and the Quiet Practice of Joy with Rebecca Thomas
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of Joy Unfiltered, I sit down with Rebecca Thomas for a thoughtful conversation about joy, self-trust, boundaries, and what it means to slow down in a world that constantly pushes us to do more.
Rebecca shares how her background in hospitality, hosting, and deep relational work led her into coaching women who appear capable on the outside but are quietly carrying too much. We talk about the difference between joy and happiness, how many of us live in a constant state of bracing, and why true growth is less about having the right language and more about actually integrating what we know.
We also explore boundaries, burnout, emotional honesty, and Rebecca’s work through Maria Venus and her AI reflection guide, Mira. This conversation is full of gentle but powerful reminders about presence, discomfort, and learning to trust ourselves more deeply.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The difference between joy and happiness
- What embodied self-trust looks like
- How high-capacity women can move out of chronic self-questioning
- Why slowing down is often the real work
- How boundaries create more freedom and flow
- The idea of “bracing” against joy and life
Connect with Rebecca
Nurture Your Nature | Substack
Rebecca Thomas (@marieofvenus) • Instagram photos and videos
Nurture Your Nature | Podcast on Spotify
Connect with Rachel
