Discomfort is not a bad thing. That tenseness that you feel inside your stomach when you think of asking for that promotion, that gut-wrenching sensation you experience as you ponder asking someone out on a date, all of those feelings are natural reactions to going outside of your comfort zone. Comfort is something that you are used to. It’s enjoyable and acceptable. When you are comfortable, there isn’t much reason to seek change. Likewise, when you begin to experience discomfort, it is because you are in the process of some sort of change.
Discomfort isn’t pain, it is merely the response to change. The problem lies in the fact that when you are experiencing change, you are often giving up something for something else. So suppose that you want to start working out. You will begin to feel a discomfort at having to wake up early each morning so that you can get your work out time.
You are experiencing something new, waking up early, and it is markedly different from your old system, which was to wake up later. You might feel an immense discomfort with having to commit your time and energy to doing such a thing. However, in the long run it will actually be very good for you because you will get all of the benefits of working out.
When we begin to take action with ourselves and move outside of what is normal for us, we’re going to experience some level of discomfort. If you think that these feelings of discomfort are bad, then you will shrink back and recoil in horror. You will seek a way to escape such feelings and that involves returning back to our comfort zone.
The solution to dealing with discomfort is being able to change how we look at it. Once we’ve started realizing that discomfort is merely an indicator that things are changing and that you are moving out of something comfortable, we can continue moving forward. If we always look at discomfort as nothing more than a bad thing, it will always hold us back.
Adapting the mindset of the problem solver is necessary if you’re looking to be able to effectively find solutions to the things in your life that challenge you. It’s not enough to simply learn how to solve a single problem, because throughout the rest of your life you’re going to encounter difficulty, hardship and struggle. By adapting the mindset of the problem solver you can have an extremely sharp axe that will allow you to cut down any problem in front of you.
