Why You Need To Feel Uncomfortable If You Want To Grow.

We live in a world of convenience, comfort and ease. The lifestyles we live today were unimaginable to our grandparents. While all this convenience, comfort and ease feel great, it also means we have become less tolerant of discomfort and our ability to overcome real adversity has diminished. We are used to getting what we want just by tapping a few buttons on a phone or computer and when we don’t get what we want we get upset and refuse to accept the reality of the situation.

Today, we can even see this at a society level with the refusal of many to accept the election result of Donald Trump or the decision of the majority of British people voting to leave the EU. In the past, we accepted the result of an election even if it was unexpected or not to our liking, but we accepted it. Now if the result is not the one we voted for we protest, get upset and demand a new election. And on a personal level, we have turned largely self-inflicted conditions such as obesity and addiction into victimhood and expect sympathy or an app to reduce our weight or take our addictions away without any discomfort.

The truth is if you want to lose weight — and the words “want to” here are crucial — you have to go through the discomfort of feeling hungry throughout the day. There is no other way. There are no apps, drugs or anything else that can take that away. To lose weight you must go through the discomfort of feeling hungry a large part of your day. To overcome addiction to tobacco or alcohol you have to go through the discomfort of the withdrawal symptoms. It is the only way.

When I go to the gym I often see people sitting on an exercise bike or walking on a running machine watching videos and not sweating or raising their heart rate at all. It’s as if they believe that just by going to the gym they will miraculously get fit and lose weight. I can imagine them talking with their friends later saying “oh, yes, I went to the gym this morning”. The thing is if you are not raising your heart rate and getting at least a little sweaty you are doing absolutely nothing to improve your fitness. You have to push yourself to feel at least a little uncomfortable in order to get any benefit from your sessions at the gym.

If you want to achieve your goals, whatever goals you set for yourself, you have to move away from your comfort zone and into areas of discomfort. The very nature of achieving goals is about moving from one place to a perceived better place and to do that will involve some discomfort. To improve your public speaking performance you need to stand up in front of more people more frequently — something many people would find painfully uncomfortable. If you want to become a better driver, you will need to go out and drive in uncomfortable situations. Whatever you want to get better at or achieve will involve some discomfort. It is part of the process and it is unavoidable.

To become better organised and more productive will involve a lot of backend work. Work that, for most people, will be uncomfortably boring and anti-social. Developing new habits of collecting, organising what you collected and focusing on doing the work that matters every day will be a lifestyle change that will initially feel unnatural for many. As Robin Sharma says “Change is difficult at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous in the end”

But as with so much in life, once you accept the challenges and understand that the discomfort will ultimately lead you to a much better place, help you become a better human being and grow within yourself, the discomfort and change become an acceptable price to pay for the rewards that will come later. Challenging the natural human condition of moving towards pleasure and away from pain can be turned into fun. People like David Goggins and Wim Hoff have taken this discomfort to extremes and found incredible benefits from embracing discomfort and you can do the same.

You probably do not need to immerse yourself in a tub of ice water or run 100 miles in one weekend, but you do need to push yourself outside your comfort zone once in a while to grow and develop the strength required to become the person you want to become. It’s either that or you can resign yourself to a life of mediocrity

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