Note to self: Lean into discomfort
Pema Chödrön writes about three concentric circles in her book Welcoming the Unwelcome—three zones we all move between as we go through life. The inner circle is the comfort zone. In here, everything is easy. This sounds nice but of course when everything is easy, life grows dull, we get complacent, desire more and more ease, etc. The inner circle is a nice place to rest for a spell but not a place to spend a life.
The outermost circle is the danger zone. We all have moments, experiences, and phases of our lives when we are thrust into danger, extreme stress, and true heartache. Sometimes we even push ourselves into this zone, mistakenly thinking this is how we better ourselves (no pain, no gain, etc), but when we are in this outer circle there is too much stress and instead we just go into survival mode.
In between is of course the balanced place Pema refers to as the challenge and learning zone. This place is uncomfortable, and it is not an easy place to be. But this is where growth happens.
Anyway, that's a long introduction for the idea I've been working on for over a year now to lean into discomfort when I find it. That doesn't mean seek it out necessarily—discomfort for its own sake is not the point, and I think counterproductive—but when I bump into that feeling, to lean in instead of away.
For me, small things are a great place to start with stuff like this. Things like not listening to music on my drive to work, and just driving in silence,1 not looking at my phone in moments of stillness, and changing my routines and patterns when my instinct is to bend life to an old way of operating. These small discomforts train me for bigger ones, like having direct and uncomfortable conversations with people, taking on bigger responsibilities and projects that feel a little out of reach at first, or creating meaningful change in my life that feels uncomfortable, as if I'm shifting my identity, when really I'm just reaching out into an area of growth.
In Steve Magness' book Do Hard Things,2 one of his main points is that toughness comes not from pushing yourself beyond your limits (this leads to burnout, fatigue, and ultimately failure), but from having a really accurate, innate understanding of what you are capable of. Which is challenging because our minds like to trick us into staying in the comfort zone, or going to the other extreme and just pushing through beyond the point at which our bodies and minds fail, in the danger zone. The nuanced middle ground is trickier to grasp, and demands a lot of inner work to find and hold onto.
But that's important work, and this is my reminder to do it, to get to know myself continually, especially as I change and grow in that middle realm. Stay familiar with myself, stay confident in my real abilities, and spend a bit more time leaning into that good kind of discomfort.
I listen to music a lot, and it's an important part of my life. But I've also noticed that it's a bit of a medicine, too—the kind that covers up the symptoms rather than cures the cause. Music allows me to escape somewhere else, and externally alters my mood, or reflects it back to me in empathy. None of that's bad, but there's power in being able to be here, now, on my own.
I see fewer and fewer people in the world without headphones in their ears these days, which is most jarring when they're in nature and could be listening to the sound of the wind and the birds and the crunch of their feet on gravel instead. To each their own, but I worry that we're trying too hard to curate our existence by making sure the soundtrack is always in our control and exactly what we know and like. In other words, what is comfortable.
After I wrote most of this, I got this related blog post in my inbox from Steve and his co-blogger Brad. Worth a read if this idea resonates with you. And that blog is also very worth subscribing to, overall.