Can’t make omelets without breaking eggs:
on accepting discomfort
I’ve written a section on uncertainty, but there are other types of discomfort that come with a life of your own designing. Generally our tendency is to avoid discomfort as much as possible, but I’ve found that that’s not always the most productive path. (As they say, the best way out is often through!) A little bit of discomfort can prove highly productive, as that friction gets new thoughts churning into insights.
In Julia Cameron’s amazing book, The Artist’s Way, she describes this discomfort as necessary contractions for birthing a new you (read original post). As with birth contractions, personal growth happens in fits and starts — it’s more cyclical than linear. I’ve found that off-days or off-weeks are always followed by very fruitful and exciting new phases in my life (read my post about creative cycles). Another way to think of discomfort is as growing pains, the kind we see in teething infants and awkward teenagers. Growth rarely happens on all fronts at once, so while we’re becoming our new spectacular selves in one area, other areas lag behind, and that disconnect can be acutely uncomfortable (read original post).
Moreover, even chasing dreams isn’t 100% thrilling 100% of the time. Big things happen in an accumulation of small steps, and inevitably, many of those small steps are boring. At first this frustrated me, because if the aim is “live each day as if it were your last,” who wants to spend that day uploading photos or learning how to slip stitch (read original post)? This is the stuff they never show in movies or documentaries; the day-to-day slog just isn’t as dramatic or glamorous as the huge triumphs or the devastating setbacks (read original post). But it all adds up. For me it has been very helpful to remember what my main goals are, and also to recognize that foundation work has its own beauty and significance.
Inner work — the work you do to change your outlook and habitual behavioral patterns — is hard enough, but then you have to deal with other people. I wrote in the Who Cares What They Think? chapter about letting go of others’ expectations; one side effect of that is you start coming across as more eccentric, which some people may experience as self-indulgent (read original post). Because I’ve always been seen as extremely nice and accommodating, it’s sometimes been scary to own my eccentricity and voice my desires. It’s been empowering for sure, but I still wonder on a regular basis whether people like me or think well of me. My path to my truest self has also led me to commit to keeping an open heart, which means I constantly feel vulnerable and unprotected when I deal with those I love (read original post).
This all takes us back to my earlier chapter, Uncertainty Is Your Friend. It is just not possible to grow without getting friendly with uncertainty, discomfort, vulnerability, and anxiety. As one of my yoga teachers said, “When has change ever come from a place of comfort and ease?” It is all part of the journey.
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