Getting comfortable with discomfort
- nicolernolle
- Aug 24, 2022
- 3 min read
Take a moment to picture what your life will look like someday when you have earned your degree, landed your dream job and overcome all of your current weaknesses to create the perfect life. We all have dreams for the future and fantasies of what life might look like. Envisioning your future is inspiring and energizing. Those dreams are what keep us going through the challenges and hard work of accomplishing our goals.

Why don’t all of those dreams come true? Because turning dreams into reality takes action. It’s the doing not the dreaming that makes your vision more than just a daydream. Taking action often involves discomfort. This discomfort can take many different forms depending on the dream.
If your dream is to make the varsity athletics team, the discomfort might be physical. Training your body to withstand the demands of college athletics is going to take some sweat equity, sore muscles and a lot of hours in the gym and weight room.

What if your dream is to become a doctor or to start a non-profit or to travel the world? Your discomfort is going to be less physical, but not necessarily any less uncomfortable. Mental, emotional and social discomfort can be just as debilitating as physical discomfort.
You might experience discomfort in the form of vulnerability. Reaching for a goal often requires you to step outside of our comfort zone and to learn new things. You run the risk of failing or of failing to excel in the way you are used to.
You might experience discomfort in the form of having to make hard decisions. FOMO is real! Choosing to stay in and study instead of going out with your friends is not easy and listening to the stories of their exploits the next day knowing that you missed out is not comfortable.

You might experience discomfort when you put yourself in a position to be judged or rejected. Applying for jobs or for graduate school, presenting your ideas to mentors, sponsors or potential funders of your project, or trying to get other students to follow you as a leader of a movement or organization involves taking a big risk. They might say no! The potential shame and embarrassment of that rejection can cause a lot of anticipatory anxiety and discomfort.
All of these types of discomfort result in resistance – it’s instinctual to avoid discomfort and seek an easier and more pleasant situation. If you want to make those dreams come true and live that ideal life you dreamed up earlier though, you need to get comfortable with discomfort. You can use the steps below to work through your instinctual response to discomfort in a productive way which will allow you to accomplish your goals.
Step 1 – Recognize when you are feeling discomfort. Is your discomfort physical, mental, emotional, or social? What does it feel like? Do you remember feeling this way before? What was that situation like? What did you do then? Do you wish you had reacted differently?
Step 2 - Resist the urge to relieve the discomfort. How are you tempted to react to these feelings? What are your habitual ways of coping with discomfort and resistance? Fight the urge to turn to your phone or to social media. Don’t distract yourself with something else just yet. Sit with your resistance and your discomfort for a few minutes and see how it evolves.
Step 3 – Evaluate your resistance. Use the space you just created by sitting with your resistance to ask yourself a few questions about your discomfort. How uncomfortable are you? Are you mildly stressed or unbearably anxious? What specifically about this situation is making you uncomfortable? How might you feel if you face the discomfort? How might you feel if you avoid it? How important is accomplishing the goal which is causing you the discomfort? Is the current and possible future discomfort worth the potential reward?
Step 4 – Make an informed decision. There are choices to be made when progress and discomfort intersect. You could power through the discomfort if you find that it is tolerable or that it is based on a vulnerability which is objectively not as bad as your emotions might be leading you to believe. You could ask for help from friends, faculty, mentors, tutors, or a mental health professional. You could find another way to accomplish your goal – one which does not involve doing the specific task which is making you uncomfortable. Or you could concede that the path to accomplishing the goal is too difficult and pick another goal for the future.
It is highly likely that you will encounter some discomfort between your current state and your ideal desired state. The decision to work through that discomfort or to avoid it is all yours. Your future is waiting for you – are you brave enough to make it happen?
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