As humans we are always in search of comfort, and why wouldn't we be? Comfort is good, comfort is nice, comfort is well, comfortable!
And because of this, discomfort is seen and labelled as 'bad'. It causes us to shy away from, to not engage with and ultimately potentially miss a chance to find the real good in what we are looking for.
As a yoga and meditation teacher I come across peoples adversity to discomfort reguarly, with comments like, 'oh I can't sit still', 'that stuffs boring', 'I can't touch my toes so yoga isn't for me'.
All of these comments are comments made by people who felt the discomfort of the situation, made an assessment that it was uncomfortable and so wasn't good for them and gave up!
I was one of those people!
I doubt many people first sat down to meditate and loved it, most people have the same uncomfortable feeling of boredom mixed with, pain, mixed with a ton of other emotions that make the experience uncomfortable. But the key is, uncomfortable doesn't mean its bad for you, and to find comfort sometimes you have to go through the uncomfortable to get there rather than turning away from it.
It makes me giggle when people say I can't do yoga as I'm too stiff! If you're that person you're probably the one in need of yoga, the first time I took a class I couldn't touch my knees let alone my toes, my body was tight, broken and in need of yoga. The comfort seeking part of my brain would tell me to not bother, to give up, it's not for me. But I knew it was wrong, I knew it was trying to help but unfortunately missing the bigger picture.
It's the same with exercise, and any first time, Brene Brown calls them 'Fucking First Times' or FFTs, the most uncomfortable times of your lives! But if we never had a first time, if we never followed up that discomfort with a second then we wouldn't never do anything.
Discomfort isn't always bad!
When we are on our own healing journey, trying to work out what we need, we will come to points that are uncomfortable, feelings that we wish would go away, thoughts that we didn't know we had, and generally it's going to feel uncomfortable and messy at times.
If we make the commitment to go through the discomfort rather than turn away from it we can find the answer on the other side, we may still not want to do the thing we are doing, it may still not align with us, but we will have learnt something and we will know something more about ourselves, and more than likely once we've moved through the discomfort we will probably have found the next key to the next door that we have been looking for.
Conversations can be uncomfortable but are needed to free up energy that's holding you or others back, exercise can be uncomfortable when you get going but is needed to help shift energy through your body and make you feel better, sitting and breathing can be uncomfortable but is needed to be able to find some sort of calm, slowing down can be uncomfortable until we find our new rhythm.
Most things are uncomfortable, don't let your comfort seeking part of your brain cause you to turn away from them before you've given them a good old go. You never know what you'll find on the other side.
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