500 Words a Week - Being Comfortable with Discomfort
“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Helen Keller
I recently finally finished the “The Confidence Trap” by Russ Harris and the following is my favourite takeaway. “In order to do what matters, to achieve what you want to, are you willing to make room for discomfort?”
Russ discusses there’s no such thing as a pain-free life. Growth is painful, stagnation is painful. However, we can choose the pain we want, be that from growth or stagnation. The pain of growth includes fear, fear of failure, rejection, making mistakes, embarrassment and many more. But we feel this pain in service of a great adventure and purpose. This pain is accompanied by a sense of vitality, meaning and purpose, a sense of growth and living life to its fullest.
The alternative path is to choose the path of stagnation. To experience all the fears mentioned above, with none of the feelings of meaning and purpose. It’s a place that drains our life away.
Sometimes we can be guilty of hiding from discomfort and fear. Of doing everything within our power to avoid it. However, the reality is no matter what you do in life, there will be discomfort. No matter what choice you make to do with your life. Even if you don’t make a choice, you’re making a choice.
Nobody has been an overnight success. Nobody has had a pain-free and smooth ride to where they want to go to.
James Dyson failed 5,126 times before creating the vacuum everyone knows.
Steven Spielberg was rejected twice by the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Oprah was fired from her first TV job as an anchor in Baltimore.
Stephen King’s first book “Carrie” was rejected 30 times.
Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime.
Michael Jordan famously said: “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
We need to not be so afraid of failure. Sometimes we won’t even put ourselves in a position where we can fail because of the discomfort potentially failing will bring up. This is something I’ve been guilty of and still am, it’s something I have to continuously think about. I have to catch myself endlessly worrying about potentials that might arise, getting so worked up by hypothetical situations that I end up doing nothing. That I end up taking no risks, that I hide in the comfortable. However, as above, hiding in the comfortable still brings on feelings of fear with none of the sense of meaning and purpose as if we had pursued that which interests us or calls to us.
