Seeking Discomfort = Growth

Let’s face it: it’s easily the greatest time to be alive. Not long ago, I literally had giant albums storing my CDs. Flipping endlessly just to find the Pearl Jam song I was looking for. Hell, not that long ago I was attending the habitual Friday night at blockbuster, hoping the VHS tape was actually behind the cover on the shelf.

Life is easy. It’s great—and not so great.

We are aggressively sheltered, sterile, constantly temperature-controlled, over fed and under challenged.

This inevitably leads to the dilution of actual challenges in life. For instance, in todays world, “stress” is often things like, “this traffic is going to make me late to my Pilates class” or “If Starbucks doesn’t have almond milk, this day is basically ruined”.

It’s first world stress.

When life becomes too comfortable, we often lack clarity. Unfortunately, the comfort crisis also leads to long-term physical and mental health problems. There seems to be a direct correlation between comfort and issues up to and including suicidal ideations. That sucks.

When we lack major problems (you know, I hope I find water today) type problems, we tend to create new ones. There have been many studies concluding this unfortunate fact. Most problems we face aren’t in fact “real” problems.

Without these “real” problems in our life, problem creep sets in. The threshold for what we define as a problem lowers, leading to really hollow “problems”.

So why does this matter?

It matters because we can now survive in our modern world without being truly challenged. Thankfully, we no longer need to ensure the bear doesn’t eat us for dinner, but the lasting effects of this modern, information overload era is a lower threshold for just about everything challenging.

When you can survive without challenge, you tend to live in a space within a space.

Let me explain.

Imagine a small circle inside a larger circle. The small circle is where you live now.

Comfortable.

Content.

However, the larger circle is all the space which you no longer even know is your true potential. How could you? Stretching out is uncomfortable.

In order to seek a little more discomfort, I ask myself these daily questions:

• What are you mentally and spiritually willing to put yourself through to be a better human?
• How can you ensure you are fitter or smarter after each passing day?

It kind of reminds me of John C. Maxwells “The Law of the Rubber Band”. You must stretch towards discomfort in order to grow. That means putting yourself in a space where failure is not only possible, but likely.

After all, putting yourself in an environment where there is a high probability of failure can only make you less fearful of failure and more courageous, regardless of the outcome.

For me at least, in order to seek discomfort, I had to incorporate a few habits into my life:

1. I needed to be alone more. This is because being alone, without distractions, allows for clarity. Experiencing clarity is foreign to most of us, I know it was for me. Paradoxically, society is less alone than ever; yet, we are more lonely than ever. Don’t be afraid to be alone.
2. I needed to be more comfortable with being untethered to both societal norms as well as the onslaught of social media. This was clearly aimed at compounding the likelihood of mental clarity as mentioned above. Funny, how someone should dress, act, behave, or carry themselves doesn’t really hold up when you remove society from the equation.

The goal of these new habits is really quite lame when you say it out loud—to be bored.

Boredom is where creative thoughts happen, where self-enlightenment flourishes.

Our lack of boredom may be partially responsible for burning us out, leading to unwarranted mental health effects.

When we don’t seek the discomfort (at least initially) of being bored, we also mute what boredom is trying to tell us about our own mind, emotions and needs.

Like the proverbial rubber band, we need to stretch. Thankfully, I have all my songs in one place and don’t need to navigate an entire CD book. However, todays comforts are making it harder to be uncomfortable and it’s in uncomfortable situations where we grow and truly find ourselves.

If you are looking for a place to start, take a cold shower, find alone time and just do nothing. In that empty space, you will begin to grow from within.

Your friend,

AJ