Mastering Discomfort

Hey friends,

Hope you’re having a great week and enjoying the warm weather here in London (or wherever you are!)

In today’s newsletter::

1. Mastering Discomfort
2. Snipd: Podcast Insights Capture

Let’s go!

Quote of the week:

I usually quote someone here, but when I wrote this I thought, I’m coining that!

Everyone is the same. We all feel the same emotions, a CEO feels the same as a junior. There is no hierarchy when it comes to feeling emotions.

- Milesh Patel

Mastering Discomfort

Self-doubt doesn’t go away.

No self-help book is going to help you overcome self-doubt.

Most people are unwilling to fall flat on their face but here’s why you should.

When you doubt yourself but do things anyway you get better at being uncomfortable.

Getting better at being uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean stepping outside your comfort zone. It means stepping outside your comfort zone and absolutely owning it, feeling it and being present with it no matter what the outcome is, even if you perceive it as a failure.

To be honest, I’m not a fan of the “step outside your comfort zone” approach because it’s often just a step and I personally think it leaves you thinking what next?

We can simply ask a question here instead. What areas of your life can you get better at being uncomfortable?

Here are 3 ways I got better at being uncomfortable and things you can do to help navigate and manage the emotions that come with experiencing similar:

I found it difficult to talk about my feelings which meant the relationships I had with people were what I’d describe as surface-level. When I acknowledged this was a problem I looked for help and spent around 15 months working with like-minded men. I was always nervous during our sessions when it was my turn to answer a question. I jotted notes down because I struggled to articulate my thoughts. It was uncomfortable, and the self-doubt didn’t go away. But I did it anyway, and it got easier.

Building a support network is invaluable when dealing with uncomfortable emotions. I’ve found that the energy is completely different when you surround yourself with individuals who understand and support your growth journey. When you share your struggles and successes with them, they can provide encouragement, advice, and perspective. There have been two key learnings for me here:

1. No one judges and cares about you as much as you think they do so be better at accepting this.
2. Everyone is the same. We all feel the same emotions, a CEO feels the same as a junior. There is no hierarchy when it comes to feeling emotions.

I rarely spoke highly of myself. I blamed circumstances and highlighted the lack of achievements. Social media made my achievements invisible to me. Reframing my perspective meant that I was able to see that my list of achievements far outweighed my perceived lack of achievements.

When faced with uncomfortable self-talk, remind yourself of previous experiences where you successfully navigated discomfort. I’ve learned it’s important to treat small wins equally to something you perceive as bigger. Drawing strength from small wins will help with developing the resilience and capacity to overcome the present discomfort.

I lost myself to alcohol in my teens and 20s. I relied on it at the end of the week to celebrate the “I made it through the work week” culture. Over time I lost my personality and confidence and relied on it just to feel like I could socialise. When I embraced self-care the shift was difficult. I became awkward in social situations. I had to learn how to do all that stuff again. That was uncomfortable.

Taking care of yourself is crucial when managing uncomfortable emotions. It’s important to engage in self-care practices that are good for the mind, body, and soul. For me, it’s football & gym. I’ve yet to find anything else that strips away every thought for a prolonged period and keeps me completely present. I spent the last 5+ years prioritising my physical and mental well-being by finding an outlet in the gym. It’s been uncomfortable, and I’ve literally fallen flat on my face (story for another day!) but here’s the recurring theme: I did it anyway.

Football is something I’ve been playing since I was a kid and I still love it to this day. Something I’ve been reflecting on is how I can bring the person I am on the pitch to every other area of my life. How can I bring the leadership, energy, courageousness and self-awareness to other areas that allow me to be my best?

I do believe that prioritising activities that bring you joy will strengthen your emotional well-being and resilience.

Remember, discomfort is a sign of growth. Embrace it. You have to be able to progress and do things whilst doubting yourself.

Be willing to fall flat on your face and get up again.

Capture Podcast Insights On The Go

Research shows that more than 80% of podcast listeners spend more than 7 hours a week listening to podcasts. That’s an hour a day. 365 hours a year.

The problem is that unless you’re making a note of the insights you receive from podcasts, it’s impossible to remember them unless you’re purely listening for entertainment.

One area that I talk about often is personal knowledge management.

Personal knowledge management is the process of effectively organising, capturing and accessing your own knowledge and information. It involves using tools, techniques, and strategies to help you remember, find, and make sense of the information you encounter in your daily life. It's like having a personal system to keep track of what you know and easily retrieve it when you need it.

A tool I came across recently is an app called Snipd, and they recently released a new feature that solved a problem for me. More on that later. Here’s what Snipd does:

Snipd enables users to capture specific moments or segments of podcast episodes that resonate with them. This feature allows users to bookmark and save important information, quotes, or memorable parts of podcasts which they can easily review and revisit, facilitating knowledge retention and fostering continuous learning.

What I love about Snipd is that you can save a snippet by tapping your headphones (I use my AirPods or if in the car there’s also a button to snip on CarPlay)

Previously the app did an ok job, there were some sync issues, and it often required me to go in and review the AI-generated transcript for accuracy.

Until recently!

I remember snipping quite a few insights on an episode from the Diary of a CEO podcast with Ali Abdaal and earlier last week I got access to their new feature - an AI-generated summary of my insights.

So instead of having to go in and manually review the insights (time-consuming) I received an AI-generated summary of it and eliminated the process of manually having to go through the snips.

Check out the summary below which I also sync with a Notion database to access in future:

In the interest of buying back my time, I’m not too bothered about having to go back to review the snips and check for accuracy based on this result. Some of the points captured were things I recall, and AI summarised them in a way better than I could.

You might be wondering why bother with saving insights. Well for me, I use it for inspiration. Insights from podcasts usually help me with ideas and topics for this newsletter and other creative work including reflection exercises for personal growth.

I don’t snip everything; there’s no hard rule around it. It’s usually a case of, am I listening to this for entertainment or am I listening to this because it’s something I struggling with? If it’s the latter, I’ll usually snip insights to recall later.

Let me know if you experiment with it and find any other cool use cases.

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Have a great week!

Speak soon ??

Milesh