Let me tell you about a young boy who made a model car all on his own. The boy is me, six years ago when I was just 11.

The car was small and simple, but in my imagination it was a high-speed racing car, speeding along the race road. It was during the school summer holidays and workmen were building a new driveway and garage (车库) beside our house. It meant to add something new to our home. When I watched the workmen, I came up with an idea — I would build a car to drive into the garage in celebration of it. I told my mother and began with my plans. But I couldn’t find the right things for making the car, so I gave up and sadly spent several days doing nothing. My mother noticed that I had stopped working and asked me why. I explained and she suggested that maybe I should change my plan to fit the things I had, rather than give up.

And that’s just what I did. I found small pieces of wood in my father’s workshop and made my car from anything that was lying around the house. When I found a small engine (发动机) from one of my old model planes, I added that. The power came from a battery (电池) I found in a box.

By the time the garage was finished, so was my car. I called my family together outside the house, started the engine and put the car on the driveway. It was fast and I had to run to the garage to prevent it from hitting the new door. My family began to cheer and I smiled proudly. Thanks to my mother I learned the value of continuing to do things, especially, something difficult. Soon I was making plans for my next project: a robot!

I am a big laugher. I’ve been told that even in a room of a thousand people, you can always hear me laughing over the crowd. For me, laughter is the ultimate form of embodied joy. And by “embodied”, I mean that my whole body is involved when I laugh. On the inside, it’s like a bubbling fountain of joy spilling out all over the place.

But what is joy, anyway?

Life can be terrible, but if you decide to follow the sound of the joy-fountain, you will find joy showing up in all kinds of places: pets playfully bouncing around, kindness, or even in nothingness.

How can joy be found? A friend moved into a new apartment and needed some help, so I helped him. Afterwards, he was obviously so much happier and at ease. I noticed that playing even a small part in his happiness brought me great joy, and I took a moment to let this feeling of embodied joy in. We can practice letting joy in by noticing how it feels to smile. Where does your body light up when you smile? When I smile, it makes me want to take a deep breath, and I notice my shoulders and belly relaxing. When I embody caring and loving, it feels great!

Sadly, many of us are unaware of joy, or suspicious of it. Maybe you are afraid to open up to joy, or maybe you are so unfamiliar with what joy feels like that you ignore or resist it when it comes knocking. No one, other than you, owns your happiness, but you might unknowingly block feelings or experiences that help you embody joy. The fact is that when you can’t embody joy, you miss out on one of life’s essential vitamins.

Want more joy? Don’t be afraid to look silly. Silliness helps us take things less personally. It helps us see the world the way a kid does. When we can find more joy in the smalls of everyday life, we can embody happiness, rather than just pursuing it.

As to psychological well-being, the comfort zone is frequently perceived as a haven, a familiar location where individuals feel calm and peaceful. Pushing beyond this psychological state might have benefits.

The comfort zone can be understood as a behavioral metaphor. Within a comfort zone, an individual takes on a state of minimal anxiety without a perception of risk, responding predictably to deliver a consistent level of performance. These include behaviors that people do commonly, find relaxing, or that take them away from high-stress situations. Engaging in the same manner over time leads to a predictable and familiar zone of comfort. As creatures of habit, we become dependent on these routines that we know we can complete well to feel secure. However, by stepping outside of our comfort zone, we learn about our ability to handle new situations and control risks, leading to greater self-confidence, and lower levels of anxiety.

One study found that individuals who are more secure in stepping out of their comfort zone are more likely to be excited by and look forward to new experiences, feeling greater confidence in their ability to take them on.

One behavior that demonstrates the benefits of stepping out of a comfort zone is learning to play a musical instrument. When we consider actions outside of our comfort zone, we must assess our desire to engage in that activity. By weighing the pros and cons, we evaluate how uncomfortable a situation may seem, and whether the danger of entering such an unknown situation will be worth the risk.

Music offers a safe way to step out of your initial comfort zone because you can begin by practicing in an isolated setting, which offers a casual, safe way to build a new skill set. By picking up and practicing a new instrument, you have proven to yourself that you are capable of meeting an unfamiliar objective, thus decreasing anxiety.