Get Uncomfortable! Five Reasons to Make Discomfort Your Friend
I’m delighted to have Kevin Eikenberry guest post for Leadership Freak today. Kevin is an author, speaker, trainer, consultant, facilitator, business owner, Chief Potential Officer (of The Kevin Eikenberry Group) and leader. I admire his wisdom and respect his generosity. His post exceeds my 300 word maximum so I posted the first portion of his article. You’ll find a link to the full article at the end. Enjoy!
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Ahh, the comfort zone.
As humans, this is a place we love. We look for, strive for and have created products and even entire industries to help find and maintain high levels of comfort (hello Lazy‐Boy!). We are hard wired to seek comfort.
Given that, you might be surprised by the title of this piece. (Could I really want you to get uncomfortable?)
Why would any self‐respecting personal and professional development author write something that seems so counter to what we all want?
Because like many things in life there is a difference between what we want and what we need. We all, at differing levels of fervor, want the comfort zone (it is, after all, comfortable). Yet what we need to reach our goals is likely in direct conflict with the desire for the comfort zone. So why do I suggest you make discomfort your friend? Let me count the ways.
Five Reasons Why
Discomfort allows growth. Whether you are talking physically (it’s hard to become more fit while comfortably sitting in your favorite chair, and especially when you first begin exercising, you will feel real discomfort!), mentally (thinking about new things, concepts and ideas requires energy), emotionally (doing something different can be hard), you cannot grow until you push the envelope of your comfort zone. All true growth occurs outside the comfort zone.
Discomfort builds confidence. Ever noticed that the more you do something successfully the more confident you become? How do you get better at something – by doing it exactly like you did it before? Probably not. Confidence comes in part from competence, which comes from practicing and trying new things in order to improve. See the connection? It is hard to build confidence sitting comfortably in the easy chair.
Read more here…
Dear Dan
Dear Kevin Eikenberry has rightly mentioned about comfort. Comfort creates complacency that kills creativity and competencies. It is also true the comfort is short lived and competency is long lived. I think that comfort lives perhaps in imagination but in reality, it is the state of mind where one enjoys comfort. Meaning of comfort is different to different people. Lazy people might think comfort as sitting idle, sleeping, gossiping, doing nothing etc whereas comfort for busy person might be doing the things where he has expertise and love to do that. I agree that to learn new things, one need to step out of comfort zone but it is more important to be expertise in own area of competence. When we work in our own area of comfort, we become comepetent in our area of interest. However, when circustances demand competence, one has to discomfort itself. So, changing from comfort to discomfort is the matter of need, desire and ambition. In any way, I agree that discomfort allows growth and discomfort also builds confidence. So, as a leader, one should learn the skill of being adapatable, resilient and agile. If one is master in all these three qualities, then discomfort becomes easy and so the progress.
Inertia increases adamancy and it encourages comfort. so, the best way to control comfort is to control inertia. In this way, I think, Inertia management is more important than comfort management.
Well stated Ajay…especially like the “comfort lives perhaps in imagination” as we may confuse recharging/recreation with what becomes inertia and is it actually an illusion?
Ajay/Doc – I agree, AND it is important ntot to think of comfort just being about a vacation, a snady beach and a mai tai. It is the comfort in the everyday moment that is what we must as leaders be aware of too – even in ourselves.
Thanks for the conversation!
K 🙂
When my daughter was small, she and a friend were playing hide and seek. I thought the friend’s hiding place, which I knew about, was pretty difficult for a kid of their age so I told my daughter where the friend was hiding. Both girls were mad at me for doing this, especially the “hidden” girl!! I have no clue what led me to disclose the location, except that I was having trouble handling the discomfort of my daughter’s not knowing. I think as supervisors we can do the same thing sometimes, jumping in and intervening prematurely, shortcircuiting the other individual’s time in the “discomfort zone” and by so doing, shortcircuiting their ability to learn and grow.
Paula – your analogy is a GREAt one. We as leaders must allow others to learn – which is to help them deal with, problems and discomfort and challenge, not simply resolve it for them/
K 🙂
When you get too much comfortable and sure of yourself, it’s the time you’ll get stuck, in life and in your business.
Discomfort really creates grow, it’s like weight-lifting: the only way to grow muscle is to find and work around your limits, definitely getting out of your comfort zone.
Gabriele – and to tie this to Paula’s point – no one can lift the weights for you.
K 🙂
Kevin’s point about discomfort overcoming resistance to change is key to implementing any organizational, culture or personal change. In organizations, without a ‘fruit basket upset’, people will gravitate to what is known, established, and perceived to be ‘safe’, even if it in reality is not and may even be unhealthy or dysfunctional. Still it is familiar.
Growth=life…and the antonym is….
For some reason, Don Williams, Jr’s quote rings true…”any day above ground is a good one”
Discomfort is an irritant. When you irritate an oyster you get a pearl. Maybe if you get discomforted enough, you end up with a pearl necklace.
This is the way I live.