Through Discomfort to Comfort

Disclaimer

Note: This post is a status report on my journey to attain some “things” that are in my discomfort zone.

I do not know that my plan will work for it is a journey just begun. I’m sharing my plan with you now because you may long for some things that are located in your discomfort zone and may find these ideas useful.

Care to join me on my saga?

What Is Discomfort?

It is part of who we are, each of us. We want to be comfortable. We move towards comfort and resist anything that even begins to feel uncomfortable.

But what, exactly, does comfort entail? Obviously, it is different for everyone in the way it manifests or doesn’t.

There is physical comfort, there is mental comfort, and there is emotional comfort.

Let’s consider physical comfort first. Whether I am feeling physically comfortable or not right now depends on my interpretation of what is happening to me physically. If I am training for a marathon (which I am not!), then the soreness and exhaustion of running a new best time for 5 miles could be a very pleasant and desirable feeling. But only if running the marathon is a deeply held goal for some personal reason. If someone else is pressuring me to run a marathon, then that personal best probably wouldn’t happen and if it did, it would be with lots of complaining.

As it happens, I am not in any kind of physical training so the nearly constant soreness in my leg muscles is a concern for me. It feels uncomfortable.

The Problem

The point is comfort and discomfort are interpretations of how we feel based on everything that is going on. This is true for physical, mental, and emotional comfort. It all depends on our interpretations/beliefs about what is happening *to* us and why. Is it happening to us or for us?

At this time in my life I have a few goals. Achieving my ideal weight is one that I have been working towards for a long time. In this case, I am dealing with a complex issue because certain food is a source of comfort for me, as I’m sure it is for many of you. So, when I begin to get hungry and feel uncomfortable, I want to eat to relieve the physical and emotional discomfort of hunger. IF I eat something I have told myself I won’t eat, then I feel disappointed with myself. Now I have a new form of emotional discomfort.

“Pay me now or pay me later” comes to mind.

The Solution

I have decided that I need to reframe the discomfort of hunger and wanting to feel comfortable as a *good* thing because it means that I am moving towards my goal of achieving my idea weight. Making that decision to change how I view hunger does *not* make it so.

The impulse to eat when we are hungry is coded in our genes like the impulse to draw back from a **HOT** object. That impulse predates me and you. My tendency to eat certain foods when I feel stress has been with me most of my life. It will take practicing this new positive interpretation for a fair bit of time before it changes naturally.

Another Example

In the same way, I have been avoiding working on a few books I have as first drafts in my computer. I have a fear of exposing my work to possible criticism and rejection. I have a history of working in academic science where credentials are very important. I fear that my lack of degrees in writing or in the fields I am writing about will open my work to criticism and rejection.

Despite the fact that several people have commented positively about my writing, I fear further exposure. I know that any substantial written work that makes a real point will not please everybody. Some will love it and some will hate it. And yet, I find myself distracted with mindless tasks like deleting emails when I could be writing or editing my books. I could be reading some source material that might be useful for my writing instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media.

The fear of exposing my work and, thereby, myself pushes me to procrastinate by doing much less valuable things.

Reframing

I am on this journey, this saga to attain ‘treasures’ that I desire. Everything I truly want in life is still out of my reach because it is in my discomfort zone. I become uncomfortable when I take action to obtain these things. So, I falter, I yield and I do without.

This faltering and giving in to the discomfort reinforces the idea that taking such an action will cause discomfort again. And this makes what I desire even less attainable because the discomfort seems more real.

At some level, I *know* that there really is no logical reason to avoid whatever it is that creates my uncomfortable feelings. I know that it is a ‘paper tiger’. But that is my logical mind. My emotional mind is screaming “NO!!!”. My emotional mind is all about survival and so it inhibits my logical mind which is telling me there is nothing to fear.

So, I need to learn to celebrate those feelings of fear that cause me to avoid writing. I need to reinterpret them as proof that I am taking action to meet my creative goals. By reframing my interpretation of these feelings from fear to excitement, I am empowering myself to move steadily towards my desired goals. I am making my life more joyful, comfortable, relaxed, and productive.

This is a classic example of the “two wolves” metaphor (see below). If I continue to give in to the fear, I validate it and affirm that there is something fearful going on. And so it will persist. If I challenge this fearful view by moving forward in a way that it considers dangerous, it will howl, and growl louder to get my attention. But if I persist in nourishing the gentle wolf, it will get stronger and the fearful wolf will move into the shadows.

I am becoming more creative and productive and less stressed at the same time. Now that is a state worth seeking.

The Two Wolves Within – I first learned of this classic tale from Don Miguel Ruiz in his classic The Four Agreements. As I remember his version of the story, an elder is talking to his grandson who got in trouble for fighting in school. The boy defends himself by saying that he knows he shouldn’t fight but the other boy angered him by something he said. The grandfather tells the young man that he also has two wolves that compete for his attention: an angry, mean wolf and a gentle, loving wolf. The young man asks him which one is going to win and the grandfather tells him: “Whichever one I feed will win.”