06/01/2026
"Your joy-tolerance is the amount of joy you allow yourself to trust before it scares you. And sometimes it hits you our of nowhere, right when you are experiencing brand new levels of joy.
Because pain tolerance is so much easier to recognize.
I ought to know; I was that person who held struggle as a badge of honor. Proving just how much pain I could handle and feeling proud that I could sustain so much.
Not consciously, of course. But somewhere along the way I began to believe that life was all about struggle and survival; that only the strongest people with the highest pain tolerance would succeed.
And, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, guess what my mind was always focused on? You guessed it: struggle as a measure of accomplishment."
—excerpt from Gentle Reminder No 133, "Nothing’s more powerful than admitting what you want: on our joy tolerance and what becomes possible when we stop pretending we don't know what we want"
Read the full piece: jovannyvarela.substack.com
If you are someone who still flinches when something good comes their way—from a compliment to unexpectedly great news—I wrote this one for you.
It's about an aspect of the healing journey we don't talk about enough: increasing the capacity of our system to handle more joy without collapsing.
With love,
Jovanny
Artwork by Giulia Rosa Illustrations
