How to Lead Yourself: Being Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

Welcome back to The New Middle, a resource for helping you develop conflict resolution and communication skills using the heart-mind connection based on?my book?with the same name. Click subscribe above to be notified of future editions.

This newsletter's topic arose out of a conversation I was having from a Eileen Petzold-Bradley, PhD .

She interviewed me for her Ph.D. dissertation which is around the topics of entrepreneurship, conflict resolution, and becoming the best leader possible.

As we talked about how individuals can lead themselves through difficult situations, she inevitably asked me for my advice.

"How can leaders become more successful?", Eileen asked me.

"They have to learn to lead themselves first and become comfortable being uncomfortable," I said.

But that begged the question: who the heck wants to be uncomfortable?

No one.

And yet, to grow as a leader, we must learn to lean into discomfort, grow, and develop our resiliency to navigate difficult problems and situations.

What's the first step you should take? Read more below????

What does it mean to be comfortable being uncomfortable?

To be comfortable being uncomfortable is your ability and willingness to embrace unfamiliar, challenging, or uncertain situations as opportunities for growth and learning.

To become comfortable being uncomfortable, a person must cultivate certain skills:

1. You must be willing to embrace difficult situations
2. You must build your resiliency to move through such situations
3. And you should see the difficult situations as an opportunity to learn and grow

Something that I find most people don't talk about when it comes to this concept of being comfortable being uncomfortable is the role that your childhood and formative years have on building the aforementioned skills.

Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood." - Gabor Maté, Addiction Expert, Author and Speaker.

As one example: if you grew up in an environment with a lot of fighting, and self-identify as a people-pleaser, your accommodating nature could be a survival technique that puts other people's needs first before your own. Your idea of being comfortable being uncomfortable would essentially mean making sure the other is more comfortable (even at the detriment of your own comfort level).

That's why when beginning this work, I ask clients the following:

• What was your upbringing like?
• How did your parents communicate, especially during difficult periods, with themselves and with you?
• Can you point to one, two, or even a few pivotal events from your childhood that impacted how you show up for uncomfortable situations?

Your answers to these questions will help you understand how your coping mechanisms influenced your personality, which now impacts your ability to stay comfortable during moments of discomfort.

That way you can accurately diagnose your own degree of comfort and can learn to become comfortable being uncomfortable the right way.

Learning to become comfortable being uncomfortable – the right way

The right way to learn how to become comfortable being uncomfortable first has you understanding what sets you off.

Why?

If you are unaware of what triggers you, you'll have a harder time managing ambiguity or challenging situations because you'll stay reactive instead of responsive to the situation.

Which is what is required to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

In mental health, a trigger is anything that causes emotional, physical, or even spiritual distress, affecting your ability to stay present – or in this case, to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

I like to think of a trigger as holding information regarding our unhealed wounds.

As we look inward, our triggers point us to places where our psychological defense system may have covered up said wounds.

In functioning adults, this could look like aggression, pacification, people-pleasing, or avoidance when we are in difficult situations.

Now, I also recognize that the word trigger has (unfortunately) become polarized. "Watch out; snowflakes are about to be triggered" is a phrase many throw around, delegitimizing what could very well be someone's real-life experiences. We've taken the word and used it to demean others, branding them as easily offended or too sensitive, or worse yet, silencing their emotional experience completely. Sadly, we only damage ourselves by doing this. We shouldn't shame or guilt others for having emotions. In reality, the word trigger points to deeper emotional experiences that need some loving, healing, and care.

When I'm working with clients, I ask them to complete a self-evaluation regarding their triggers related to difficult conversations.

To me, these types of interactions are the perfect medium to see where we feel powerless, do not want to engage, or otherwise don't feel confident in being able to navigate and learn from the situation.

To complete the self-evaluation, and start the process of learning to become comfortable being uncomfortable, click on this link.

Save a copy to your own drive so you can begin – and know that it'll ask you to evaluate your emotional reactions based on how angry, dissociated, or anxious a situation makes.

From there, you will be asked to identify how these triggers show up for you and how you want to move forward.

Bottom Line

How we react and show up to difficult situations will determine our comfort level in being uncomfortable.

The good thing is that learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable is a skill anyone can cultivate – and you start by learning to understand what sets you off.

Once you identify your triggers, the journey from here is building the resilience to see difficult situations through. And before you know it, you'll be comfortable being uncomfortable.

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This article is inspired from my book "The New Middle: Connecting Heart and Mind to Collaboratively Disagree," available to purchase on?Amazon?and?Barnes & Noble. You can learn more about the book?here.

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Other articles from?The New Middle?that you might be interested in:

Bridging Two Perspectives in a Difficult Conversation: Creating a New Middle

Tired of Having the Same Arguments? De-Escalate & Reset the Dynamic via the Disagreement Spiral

How to Get Better at Reading a Person's Body Language in a Disagreement

Overcome the Fear of Speaking Up or Giving Someone Feedback by Leaning into Courage

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Bryant Galindo?is the Founder of?CollabsHQ, whose mission it is to help business leaders navigate complex problems easily ??