How Anyone Can Use and Overcome Discomfort To Grow
- Paul Cleveringa
- Oct 10, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 12, 2023
Everyone says to get comfortable being uncomfortable. But how do you actually use discomfort to grow?
For endurance athletes, discomfort is a familiar feeling. It’s suffering, being uncomfortable, and a part of the mental and physical stress that is needed to improve and performance.
I see the discomfort as a tool to learn about myself and improve. There are two aspects of using discomfort in this way.
Intentionally putting yourself in discomfort
Learning how to overcome it
The results of this will be learning about yourself and growing.
Discomfort will come into your life whether you like it or not. But if you want to learn about yourself, improve, and get better at overcoming discomfort when it comes into your life, then you must intentionally put yourself in discomfort.
First, to understand what discomfort is, let me explain my definition of comfort.
Comfort is familiarity, little to no stress, and no pain in any form (mental or physical).
Familiarity can be a situation, a job, people you are used to being around, or habits. When a person is in an environment of comfort, they have complete control, and there is little to no stress or pain. Stress and pain is anything that causes our bodies to shift from a normal, relaxed state.
People love comfort because of these three aspects. It’s easy and feels good.
Discomfort takes all three of those aspects and throws them out the window. They don’t belong in discomfort’s home.
Discomfort is any situation, environment, or condition that causes fear, stress, anxiety, or pain.
Discomfort is where growth occurs because our mind, body, and spirit have to adapt in order to overcome it.
Discomfort creates opportunities to overcome. But you cannot overcome and grow by just putting yourself under discomfort. It takes willpower, resiliency, and perseverance to overcome discomfort.
I have three tactics that I use to overcome discomfort.
Acknowledge the discomfort but don’t dwell on it by shifting your focus to the task at hand
Tell myself that I will overcome it
Focus on small micro-goals
Acknowledging the discomfort triggers your mind to focus on the discomfort but not for long.
Acknowledge it but then shift your focus to the task at hand. If you dwell on the discomfort, your mind will over-emphasize the it and make you think that you cannot handle it.
This is because the mind is lazy and is a survival tool.
It wants to end any type of discomfort that comes its way as fast as possible. Don’t let your mind trick you during uncomfortable circumstances. It will tell you whatever it has to for you to stop and get comfortable again.
You don’t dwell on discomfort by shifting your focus to the task at hand. For example, if you are running a marathon, it will get uncomfortable. You will get tired, your muscles will ache, and your mind will be telling you to quit, quit, quit, please quit!
But you won’t quit!
Shift your focus to the task at hand. The task is finishing the marathon. How will you finish the marathon? By running 26.2 miles (42.2km).
Shift your focus to finishing the marathon. Think about your running form. How you are feeling? Should you reduce your pace? Do you need water, electrolytes, or food?
By shifting your focus to the task at hand, you are not thinking about the discomfort as much, which makes it not grow into a situation that you can no longer manage. You are thinking about actions to get you through the discomfort.
The task at hand will get you to the finish line, and that is the goal. The discomfort will be there whether you think about it or not, but it won’t help you to the finish line.
Once you acknowledge the discomfort and don’t dwell on it by shifting your focus to the task at hand, the next step I use to overcome the discomfort is to tell myself that I WILL overcome it.
Our thoughts are powerful, especially the ones that we intentionally tell ourselves. I firmly believe that we can give ourselves power by intentionally thinking. I believe this because I’ve done it many times before, especially under discomfort.
While you are in the marathon, tell yourself, “I will overcome this discomfort”. If you believe it, it can happen.
Let’s take a moment to look at the reverse of this. Imagine you are tired, muscles are aching, and you want to quit 14 miles into a marathon, and you tell yourself, “I will not overcome this discomfort”.
Then you won’t.
You are giving into what your mind is telling you. You are not this part of your mind. This part of your mind is the soft part that wants to stop running and climb up in a ball on your couch and be comfortable.
This part of your mind will have you regretting not finishing your marathon for the rest of your life.
Keep telling yourself that you will overcome the discomfort and you will. Even if your mind tells you to quit thousands of times, never listen to it.
Once your mind is focused on the task at hand and solidified with an unwavering will to overcome the discomfort, focusing on micro-goals will carry you towards your end goal.
Micro-goals are small milestones that make up portions of your end goal. For instance, if your goal is to finish a marathon, micro-goals are getting to the next mile. Breaking up a big goal into micro-goals makes the task at hand and the discomfort easier to manage because your mind is only focused on getting to the next micro-goal (the next mile).
As you accomplish each micro-goal (e.x., getting to mile 10 from mile 9), your mind feels that you got a win and gets a rush of dopamine and confidence that you CAN keep going. Use this as fuel and momentum to keep pushing through the discomfort.
It is not as easy as I’m making it seem but if you can focus on the micro-goal over and over again, you will accomplish your end goal.
Understand that this is not easy. You must extend yourself to the limit. But as you face and overcome discomfort more and more, your limit will get greater and greater.
Suffer.
Endure.
And overcome.
Intentionally putting myself into discomfort and overcoming it has taught me the most about myself. It has shown me that I can do a lot more than I thought I could.
Self-imposed limitations have left my mind.
Societal limitations don’t exist in my world anymore. Overcoming discomfort has led to my greatest growth, so I will not stop putting myself through it.
Now you may be wondering, Paul, how do I intentionally put myself into discomfort?
Well, I’ve been doing this for years and found three main areas where you can intentionally do things that put you in discomfort.
Do things when you don't want to
Put yourself through physical training which is non-stop suffering/discomfort
Identify something that you fear and do it anyways
Doing something that you don’t want to do is uncomfortable.
If we only did things that we wanted to do all the time, we would always be living in comfort.
You can intentionally do things that you don’t want to do. For instance, I do not like waking up early, especially to train. So I wake up at 5am and train. I want to hit snooze and roll over every morning when my alarm clock goes off. But once I get out of bed and start my training, I never regret it.
It has given me discipline, consistency, and resiliency.
Along with doing something that you don’t want to, physical training creates situations where your mind and body are under discomfort.
Running, lifting, swimming, or whatever exercise you like to do, will put you in this discomfort. Like me, you can combine the first two (wake up early and train). Physical training will make your body and mind stronger as they have to adapt to the stress and discomfort. This can be just 30 minutes of exercise a day.
The final area where I seek discomfort is doing something I fear.
Fear puts you in a state of discomfort as your mind is telling you not to do this thing at all cost. But do it anyway to intentionally put yourself in discomfort to overcome it and grow.
For example, I do not like to talk to people in social situations so I actively go out and talk to a random stranger to put myself in discomfort. Especially for this area, I’ve realized that the fear that my mind feels is never as bad as the actual reality of the situation when I go through it.
Before I go through the situation (talking to someone), my mind creates scenarios because it fears the situation. When I go and talk to someone, those scenarios never happen and it usually is more pleasant that my mind made it seem to be.
Takeaways
Discomfort is any situation, environment, or condition that causes fear, stress, anxiety, or pain.
Intentionally putting yourself in discomfort creates opportunities for you to learn about yourself and grow physically, mentally, and spiritually.
You can overcome discomfort by:
Acknowledging the discomfort but don’t dwell on it by shifting your focus to the task at hand
Telling yourself that you will overcome it
Focusing on small micro-goals to overcome it
You can intentionally put yourself in discomfort by:
Doing things when you don't want to
Putting yourself through physical training which is non-stop suffering/discomfort
Identifying something that you fear and do it anyways
Go out and seek discomfort.
Suffer, endure, and overcome it.
You will learn more than you ever thought you would about yourself and grow closer and closer to your best, most authentic self.
**************************************************************************
Whenever you are ready, there are three ways I can help you:
Comments