Your Courageous Life

So this word came to me the other day: joygasm.

I immediately knew that it wasn’t mine, that I must have heard it somewhere, before, and surely enough–Urban Dictionary did not disappoint.

Here’s my definition of a joygasm, and it’s pretty simple: unrestrained, surrendered, ecstatic joy.

This is…the kind of joy that doesn’t try to “look cool.” The kind that isn’t predicated upon anything other than your own internal wellspring of unfettered, uncomplicated access to pleasure.

No restraints.

No second-guessing (“Do I deserve this?” “Is it okay for me to receive this?”).

And yep, you can experience the joygasm while experiencing the other kind of ‘gasm,’ but this is something sensual without (necessarily) being sexual.

The joygasm, pure and unfiltered could include: Ecstatic laughter as easily as exquisite silence. Biting into food so delicious that the taste seems to go beyond mouth and tongue. Core-shaking moments of gratitude that you are right here, right now–you are ALIVE, baby, and it alllll feels good.

And yes, I encourage you to experience multiple joygasms, on a regular basis.

Getting to the Joygasm

So how do you get there? How do you get to the joygasm?

It’s utterly surrendered. I don’t think you can plot the course. I don’t think that there is “how to.”

But–here are the top three things that I think get in the way.

#1: Over-commitment. When there aren’t enough serendipitous moments, when life is over-scheduled, it shuts down the inner kid side of ourselves that needs a certain amount of spontaneity in order to stay fully expressed. (“Jesus, Kate–you believe in that ‘inner kid’ shit?” And I say, “Oh yes, indeedy, I do.”)

We are a society that vacillates, wildly at times, between knuckling down into responsibility, and then spinning into excess.

Want to strike something even closely resembling a ‘balance’? Something where you reclaim your life, again? Where you have more access to the joygasm?

Reduce your commitments. Be responsible for fewer things, so as to be less driven to excess because the responsibilities feel over-bearing. Then you don’t skew from one extreme to the other.

#2: Rumination. Particularly, rumination on the past, on how he or she done did me wrong. By “past,” here, I don’t even think we need to talk about your childhood–it would be fair to say that most of us can readily find examples of ruminating on what someone said or did, whether it’s a family member or that guy who cut you off in traffic.

Rumination is a waste of time. It creates a cascade of biochemical responses in the body that lead to you feeling like shit about yourself, your life, and the people in it. If you’re going to ruminate on something, ruminate on the most joyful experiences on your life. Even if they’ve been few and far between, ruminate on them until the current moment is joyful because you’re recalling joy.

That’s a choice.

#3: Living in Logic and Strategy. Strategy is one of my strengths. I geek out on it. And the moment when I’ve carefully considered a challenge, and found my way to a logical answer that makes such perfect sense that all sense of anxiety disappears? Love it.

But 100% fully-alive living doesn’t happen when you live your life wholly from logic and strategy. Logic and strategy support life, but the surrendered, creative impulse is where we are going to FEEL most alive.

Sometimes, logic or strategizing keep us from what we truly desire. When we deny what we’re really hungry for, everything inside will scream that we are out of integrity with ourselves. Logic will dictate that the stakes are high and that you’ve got to play your cards just right if you want a particular outcome, but we’ve all heard stories of people who decided to just drop their striving, and to their surprise, things came to them with ease.

There’s a time for logic and strategy, but when I spend too many days living there, it crowds out the joygasm. Logic and strategy create an environment of restraint, and restraint can create a lovely creative tension.

The joygasm is the creative tension, bursting forth, unleashed, wild. The joygasm is the untamed, rebellious, renegade within you.

Where This is Going

I’ve spent many years writing about the necessity of looking at hard truths, getting to the core even when it’s scary or painful. I have used my fear in a way that most people don’t–I’ve used it as a path to liberation and more fully-alive living.

I’ve used my fear because there was such an abundance of it, because it was a ready tutor, and because I see so clearly that fear would always be present on some level, as long as I was taking risks and trying new things–no point in trying to bullshit myself or anyone else, and avoid it.

Recently, I was thinking about using joy as a path to liberation, and realized: my skillset is not as finely honed in that area.

Whoa–what a revelation!

I have total confidence in walking alongside people in the hard things in life. I have been in rooms with people who were (literally) screaming their pain, making noises so primal that most people would be terrified to bear witness, and instead of being terrified, I found myself connected to the honesty of that pain, fully expressed (I’m not afraid of what’s honest).

I live a joyful life–but I’ve arrived at the joy by working through the hard things, by going into my own primal screaming and pain, to come out the other side.

So–what is there to explore simply by going straight into the joy?

This reminded me of a conversation I had with Brene Brown a few years ago, where we talked about how joy could feel surprisingly vulnerable.

Can you feel it, too? How there’s that tingle of hesitation, the surrender, the ecstasy, the–dare I say it?– “loss of control” that true, unrestrained joy carries with it?

This summer, despite the dictates of logic, I’m going to be experimenting with multiple joygasms, daily. I’m curious to see what effect that will have on every area of my life, from my health to my marriage to my friendships.

The current plan is simply this: more play, as a prescription for life.

Appointments? Taken off the calendar.
Teaching position I was offered? Released.
Plans for various health-related treatments? On hiatus. (I’m very curious about the healing powers of joy).

Swapping that out for: books and lots of reading. slowing down. attending all those music and film festivals that I always say I’ll go to and don’t quite make it to. more coffee dates with friends. I might not be answering emails. Two beach houses have been booked. Kansas City in June, and Portland for WDS in July.

Fewer work commitments. More focused attention to clean up any lingering points of rumination. And naturally, since I’ll be releasing income-making opportunities, clearly “logic and strategy” have been thrown out the door. The “logical” and “strategic” thing to do this summer would be to spend it working, business building.

But the promise of the joygasm cannot be denied.

Again, that question: What is there to explore by going straight into the joy, without first thinking you’ve got to “figure it out” or dissect or analyze life, the past, what happened, what the challenges are?

Consider for yourself: How would you answer that question? What’s more available to you, if you go straight into living from your joy?