How Discomfort Is Your Teacher

Do you ever feel like you are just not getting where you want to be in your life? Like you have worked so very hard, yet still feel like you are just treading water, not seeing the change you want to? Maybe you’re stuck. And, of course, there are all of these pesky life transitions that just keep happening to you that are making you feel uncomfortable. Did you know that on average we have a big life transition about every year and a half and in our lifetimes we will go through about five major life transitions, like marriage/divorce, having kids, career changes, or moving? Well its true. Life change is part of the deal when it comes to being human.

Lucky for you, here at Learn to Love Your Story we are ALL ABOUT helping you get unstuck and navigate these life transitions. And honestly, not just manage these uncomfortable feelings better, we want you to be able to pivot out of any difficult barrier in your life and learn to really love your life...your whole story...no matter what change comes your way.

The first step to this is enhancing your ability to know yourself. Self-compassionate awareness is key to any kind of change process, especially one in which you want to be more of a change agent for yourself. A great place to start is remembering how you have navigated difficult things you have already been through. Let's take stock of the many things you have already done well and how you can tell that you are already a lean, mean, changing machine.

One deficit of Western culture's social programming is that it teaches us that our negative emotions are things to be avoided, pushed away, gotten past, or gotten over. These more uncomfortable emotions are great messengers and teachers for where change is needed. They are uncomfortable precisely because they are predictors of where change is needed and sometimes even what kind of change is needed. As you contemplate how you have navigated these things in the past, pay attention to what the negative feelings in these experiences really taught you. Asking yourself, “What did these emotions tell me about what I needed to do next?” and ”Did I listen?”

Learn to listen to the language of your intuitive body/mind's behavior and better hear what it is directing you to do next. If you can learn to non-judgmentally take stock of the stuck places you get into, by listening to the uncomfortable feeling of being stuck without judging it, you allow yourself the freedom of really learning what that negative emotion has come to teach you. I promise that experience is trying to tell you what move to make next, by creating discomfort in the place you are at. Its saying, “Don’t stay here...this hurts.”

And don’t worry, you aren’t supposed to know the exact move to make next. You just know that touching that specific spot hurts, which is your body/mind’s way of saying, “Move on.” Listen to this. Learn the lesson the discomfort is teaching you. And then do the next right thing in your life.?