Dr. Regina's Healing & Psychotherapy Blog

If you do one thing for yourself today, I highly suggest reading this blog: ZENHABITS.

In his latest post, Leo Babauta coined the term JOYFEAR and I think it's not only a brilliant term, but an empowering and inspiring way to approach and interpret one's life.

We have so often been trained to run from fear, to interpret bodily responses to fear as something "bad" (this is especially true with Panic Disorder and other anxiety related conditions) and to be avoided at all costs. We live in a culture defined by distraction in service of comfort. Eat this, watch this, text this, drink this, play with this, take this pill and get comfortable, indulge, relax, you deserve it! This leads most of us to feel like something is seriously wrong when we are uncomfortable in any way.

But here's the rub, the more you live in service of finding comfort, the less you will experience JOYFEAR.

JOYFEAR presents itself at those times when we've pushed beyond what we know, when we have stepped beyond our comfort zone. Here we find joyfear waiting, it surfaces like a wave and washes completely through and fills us completely with this thing called the human experience.

Check out ZENHABITS for his full definition and experiences.

Practice stepping beyond comfort in some small way today, maybe in your exercise class, try to go a bit deeper or maybe at work, volunteer for a project, say hello when you might usually hide ... in some way move beyond what you know and get closer to JOYFEAR.

Picture from: ZENHABITS