GET COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE
Disruption and Discomfort Are Necessary For Your Success.
Most people don't know much about the process of actually committing to their life, dreams and goals because most people don't keep most of their agreements. Most people add an unspoken, unconscious phrase to all their commitments: "...as long as it's not uncomfortable."
What they don't realize is that discomfort is one of the values of commitments, one of the reasons for making a commitment in the first place. Within us is an automatic goal-success mechanism. When we commit to something, we are telling the goal-success mechanism, "I want this." The goal-success mechanism says, "Fine, I'll arrange for that." And it does. Among the things it uses - individually or collectively are:
It looks to see what the lessons are we must learn in order to have our goal then it arranges for those lessons. Sometimes, these lessons come in comfortable and easy ways (we notice an article on what we need to know in a magazine; a conversation with a friend reveals something to us; a song on the radio has a line that tells us something important). At other times, the lessons are uncomfortable and hard (someone we must listen to - a boss, for example - tells us "in no uncertain terms" what we need to know; or we get sick, and the doctor tells us what we must do "or else").
The goal-success mechanism sees what is in the way of us having what we want and removes it. Again, sometimes this can be comfortable (if the goal is a new car, someone offers us a great price for our old car), or uncomfortable (our car is stolen, totaled or breaks down altogether).
In order to have something new, our comfort zone must be disrupted or expanded to include that new thing. The bigger the new thing, the greater the comfort zone must expand. And comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort.
When people don't understand that being uncomfortable is part of the process, they use the discomfort as a reason not to move forward. Then they don't get what they want. We must learn to tolerate discomfort in order to grow.
This process of growth and success is uncomfortable and sometimes downright painful. It’s iron sharpening iron or the screeching sound of chalk on the chalkboard. The friction is necessary to achieve the goal.
Go ahead and get comfortable being uncomfortable!
On the Sideline of Your Life,
Dr. C