LEAN INTO YOUR DISCOMFORT

I must admit that learning to lean into my discomfort has had a very positive effect in my life!                                 

It was a process over time but the value of being able and willing to do it, was magnified 10 fold during my two year battle to survive my deteriorating lungs, followed by another two year journey back from the edge of death to good health, after surviving a 13 hour double lung transplant operation.                                     

My new lungs came from a 40 year old man who lost his life in a car accident when he was killed by a drunk driver. His incredible gifts saved the lives of four people.

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M. Scott Peck became famous for saying in his book; The Road Less Traveled, that; “life is difficult,” and until we accept that fact it will remain so. I wholeheartedly agree with this assertion based upon my life experiences and if we are to make the best of our lives, we must make a decision about how we are going to approach that belief and behave in our world.              

Unfortunately, far too many are reluctant to experience the pain and discomforts of life. In particular our unwillingness or tendency to avoid the discomfort that comes from seeing ourselves as we truly are in situations that could offer opportunities for growth. This accounts for much of the reason for why we lack self-awareness and do not experience the kind of personal growth we could otherwise. 

If you value heightened self-awareness and personal growth then an essential ingredient to progressing along this path is a “disciplined” approach to living, another way to say lean into your discomfort. 

The practice of discipline requires a number of tools and practiced techniques;

·          accepting responsibility (owning the problem),

·          always telling yourself the truth (seeing reality),

·          delayed gratification (i.e. scheduling the pain first in order to enhance the pleasurable feeling later), and

·          balancing (the flexibility to maintain balance between your emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual self).

Beside the discomfort to you of some feeling or emotions is the insecurity around questioning your ability to manage your emotions in an appropriate way. That of course is  

often why we avoid them and the sometimes pain that comes with them. Too often we fear how we might behave because of a feeling we try so hard to suppress. I say, don’t be afraid of making emotional mistakes. They give you valuable information about how you should behave and they tell you what you should be doing differently and provide the steady stream of information you need to understand yourself as life unfolds.

“Rather than avoid a feeling of discomfort your goal should be to move toward the emotion, into it, and eventually through it.”                   

Just remember ignoring or minimizing an emotion, no matter how insignificant you may feel that it is, prevents you from doing something productive with it.       

And in this discussion too, let’s not forget a critically important point that if one attempts to avoid the pain and emotional suffering associated with life’s problems this becomes the primary basis for mental illness. I must admit to occasionally avoiding at least for a little while some of my life’s problems and the discomfort that comes with it and in that avoidance behaviour experience what is affectionately called neurosis. All of us at times are at least a little bit neurotic.

Carl Jung, famed Swiss psychologist stated that; “neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” I say; “just be careful not to be labeled something else because you are not prepared to suffer, even a little bit.”   

So, bite down on the bullet and lean into the pain and discomforts of life, you will be better for it, believe me!

Just remember too that at the end of the day beauty is in the nature of our flaws and most important of all, it is in our reflective self-awareness and acceptance of our imperfections that we  discover our true selves.        

 And finally, an important piece of advice in all this discussion; “To be effective in life we all need to discover our arrogance – those things we don’t bother to learn about and dismiss as unimportant.”    

Excerpts from: Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves

Coach Ladd