Chasing Discomfort
I recently read Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, by Adam Grant, after a recommendation on Seth Godin’s blog.
The book is a great resource for understanding how greatness is more often made than innate.
“For every Mozart who makes a big splash early, there are multiple Bachs who ascend slowly and bloom late. They’re not born with invisible superpowers; most of their gifts are homegrown or homemade. People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.”
But one of the key takeaways lines up with a common response I notice when I am asked about my personal growth journey and practices.As I share the efforts and habits I've embraced, the listener often loses interest when I describe the efforts involved. Many people want results; few people want to undertake the effort necessary to achieve those results.
(I hate to break it to ya, but if you want to make it in the bloggin’ game, you’re gonna have to crack some skulls.)
Becoming comfortable with getting uncomfortable is the first step to success. Anything you have never done before will be intimidating or awkward when you first try it. That’s part of the development process.
“Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill—an especially important form of determination. It takes three kinds of courage: to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.”
During my brief foray into jiu-jitsu, being comfortable when you are uncomfortable was sort of a mantra in the academies. It was a mark of future success if a black belt told a lower belt that they would one day be really good because they don’t lose their cool when sandwiched on the ground.
Most discomfort that people try to avoid isn’t as severe as being smothered by a black belt though. My first time going to a yoga class was uncomfortable. I was one of the only dudes in a room full of girls, I had no flexibility, and no idea what I was doing. But the second time was a little better. And then I kept going.
At this point, I am not great, but I have enough sense of what I am doing to go unnoticed. And I enjoy going much more now than I did at first. That competence came from being able to accept being uncomfortable in the first place. And the pleasure I now experience comes from overcoming the discomfort and pain involved at the beginning.
According to Dr. Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation, “With intermittent exposure to pain, our natural hedonic set point gets weighted to the side of pleasure, such that we become less vulnerable to pain and more able to feel pleasure over time… Just as pain is the price we pay for pleasure, so too is pleasure our reward for pain.”
Grant’s book argues that finding discomfort is like finding the signal you need to follow. Finding discomfort is how you grow.
“Seek discomfort. Instead of just striving to learn, aim to feel uncomfortable. Pursuing discomfort sets you on a faster path to growth. If you want to get it right, it has to first feel wrong.”
He also ties discomfort to procrastination.
“Many people associate procrastination with laziness. But psychologists find that procrastination is not a time management problem—it’s an emotion management problem. When you procrastinate, you’re not avoiding effort. You’re avoiding the unpleasant feelings that the activity stirs up. Sooner or later, though, you realize that you’re also avoiding getting where you want to go.”
On Quora, one of my more popular answers was in response to a question about what exercise at the gym I hate. My answer was, in brief, that at first I hated squats. But the more I did them, the more they became my favorite exercise. Now I do more squats than any other lift. And that sense of hating them was a sign that I needed to do them most.
I have written before about the education I experienced by spending time purposely seeking the unknown. Maybe this is another way of looking at that same experience.
The unknown can be uncomfortable. Growth comes from chasing discomfort. The things you hate doing are often the things you need to do most.
If you want to improve, you know where to head – exactly where you don’t want to.