Time To Get Uncomfortable On Purpose

‍Life Is More Than Wearing Your Cat

It’s Saturday evening in January in Iowa. I find myself sitting in the Target parking lot, watching a TikTok of a lady zipping her cat into the front of her sweatshirt, and wondering what I should do next to get my life in order. January is the month we count the days until March. Luckily, for now, our “why do we live here” week of -30 degree Fahrenheit weather that normally hits in January and/or February came as an early Christmas gift. It’s now a balmy 32 degree Fahrenheit with a constant dusky, gray sky illuminated only by the thick blanket of bright snow cover. Being comfortable in the cold is a matter of perspective.

Ouch, Ouch, You’re On My Hair

Discomfort can be physical or emotional. Physical discomfort is biting down on X-ray trays at the dentist or walking in shoes with a blister. Emotional discomfort happens when seeing the person to whom you sent a snarky email, tripping over your tongue in front of important people or the process of meeting the other parents at your kid’s sporting event. Dr. Carol Dweck nods at emotional discomfort when she describes “your fixed-mindset persona” in Mindset; this pesty persona is the voice warning us not to step out of our comfort zone. And thanks to Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers, we know first-date moments can be emotionally and physically uncomfortable (ouch, ouch you’re on my hair ;).

Comfort, on the other hand, comes from stretchy pants, your mom’s food, warm seats, hanging with your best people, or watching an entire season of White Lotus alone in your bathrobe. There are times we need comforted, but sometimes comfort is just a nice-looking storefront for fear.

Comfortable Is A Zone

Comfortable is a zone, a spectrum. In the last few years, I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. I’ve been uncomfortable to the point of burnout and too comfortable to the point of depressing nothingness. I’ve concluded work-life balance is not about removing discomfort; it’s about finding the right amount of it. After all, balance isn’t about the lack of tension, it requires equal forces in opposite directions. (The engineer in me wants to analyze the use of the work-life balance phrase closer at a later time, because I’m not sure it accurately represents what we are trying to achieve but moving on for now.)

No One Wants To Work

I continue to hear the phrase: “No one wants to work.” I can’t speak to all the different reasons this may or may not be true, but I can say that 2020 and after made a lot of us ball up into our safe turtle shells, and it’s taken a while to shed the shell. We are learning to go back outside and face the world as it is now. Our perception of safety must be high enough to take risks again. We need to relearn why it’s important to have healthy discomfort and why it’s good for us as humans to be productive.

The physics formula for work is Work equals Force times Distance. I always imagined this formula as a primitive human pushing a giant boulder along a measuring stick, presumably for a productive reason. You can’t make the proverbial boulder go far from the comfort of your couch. What’s the real value of work? Yes, the money is helpful if the work you’re doing is paid, but the real rewards of work include confidence and improving your life and the lives of those benefiting from your work. The guy moving the boulder probably protected his family from saber tooth tigers, and some humans are still walking around Earth because of it.

I like this quote from Anais Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” It’s a hopeful way to say you bloom when you’re brave enough to let go of what’s holding you back, when you recognize you’ve outgrown it. We have to let go of comfortable to bloom, because it’s not the end-all for self-care.

Happy Discomfort

I revisited the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. For a whole year she did monthly experiments to improve her state of happiness. What struck me is that each chapter is doing some new work to change an aspect of her life. None of it is sitting around doing nothing. Her conclusion is not: “Being as comfortable as possible brings happiness.” In fact, it seems every time she does work to expand her world, her skills, her relationships, she increases her enjoyment of life.

Looking back over the great things in my life, there isn’t a single one that didn’t come from a path with some discomfort. Graduating. Learning an instrument. Being on a winning team. Giving birth. Loving. Can you truly love without some discomfort? I do not think so. “The total agony of being in love.” (Thank you, Love Actually.)

I recently spent a dinner laughing with twenty-year work friends — four of us that grew up together from our twenties to now celebrating some of them turning 50. That deep bond is built on the back of years of both dumb and great things we did at work. I feel for young people who aren’t building those experiences and relationships right now. Every great career move for each of us was on the back of project or mission that involved a lot of relationship building, discoveries, buckets of wine, laughter, sweat, long flights, sleepless nights, reams of emails, excessive PowerPoint presentations, some tears and many cheers. No one has ever written a book about their success based on being comfortable the whole time.

Reframing Healthy Discomfort

The worthy challenge is to reframe discomfort to be the friend it is. Stop finding excuses to stay comfortable. COVID gave us excuses. Aging piles on excuses. Elastic-waist pants start to look possible. Talking to people takes energy. Business happy hour hangovers are days instead of hours. But what about the down side of staying put? What if you try to stay wrapped up tightly in the bud, hiding in your stretchy pants, watching cat videos? How can we spotlight what is good about getting uncomfortable to the point of doing something about it?

What’s In A Name?

The first rule of reframing is renaming, giving your brain a new story to tell. Here are some alternative, more positive, stories I’m telling myself about putting myself in healthy, uncomfortable places:

1. Every day you show up and do the work, it will build until something great happens
2. Learning something new has always led to something positive
3. You are the hero overcoming the challenge
4. Solving problems is really fun
5. Celebrations only come after there is something to celebrate
6. Live the sh&t out of your life — leave it all out there, no regrets
7. Show your kids the best version of you
8. Honor the work of those before you and build on it
9. You love it when you make it happen
10. Put yourself in situations to rock the jeans and jacket like the badass you are
11. People in their 80s are making movies and winning awards
12. You’ve never felt worse for doing the workout or the work
13. Relaxing activities are that much sweeter when they are a reward
14. Start, the rest will happen

My Happiness Project

These new stories are motivating, but this isn’t just a will-yourself-to-do-it thing. James Clear shows us we have to build habits. Dr. Dweck talks about strategies and plans; change is a continuous process, not a moment in time. Gretchen Rubin gave us one roadmap to chip away at improving things. The stories are the “why” but they need a “what” and “how” to happen.

I’ve started my own happiness project. It’s basically just one rule right now — find ways to get uncomfortable every week to push myself physically, mentally and emotionally. I started on New Year’s Day with a new exercise class that almost killed me (a zillion burpees and squat reps in a sauna-like room). I didn’t die, I did the whole workout and I’m still here. Three weeks later, I can sit down again without grabbing the wall and grunting, and I feel more motivated to get in shape. I proved to myself I can still do the work. Time to find the next thing to do on purpose — the next rock to push, the next reason to wear pants with a button and shoes with a heel, the next thing to remind me how good it feels to blossom.

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