Dear readers, its been awhile. January has been a very transitionary month for me and before you know it, we're in the sixth week of 2018 already. Largely, I'm happy with the position I am in life right now and I think one factor has been instrumental in making my life as it is today; seeking discomfort.
You might've heard of this saying a couple (or countless) times before, and even observed and experienced it in your very own life; change is the only constant. No matter how stable things seem right now, change will eventually come to whatever the status quo is, be it in your food preferences as a person, or the technology we use on a daily basis.
When we're young, in our childhood, everything is novel. We're trying everything for the first few times in life, and we're amazed when something we explore surprises us pleasantly and we learn to avoid those which leaves us with unpleasant experiences. Our curiosity compels us to discover the next thing, and it outweighs
the fear we have of the next experience being a negative one. As a result, we're constantly learning by exploration, by discovery and by trial and error.
Growing older, things become less novel. We've experienced many a thing in life and have expectations in mind of how things work. We tend to avoid that which leaves a bitter aftertaste and do more of what we consider pleasant. Our mental models have taken over our innate curiosity which drove us on adventures when we were younger. We have entered a place known as the comfort zone.
I am not here to bash on the comfort zone today. Our comfort zone has its function in life. It is where we recuperate from a long day's work, re-energize and get ready for a new day. But I want to let you know of the perils of only staying in your comfort zone; change is happening, whether or not you're keeping up with it. Change is a force of nature that has not stopped since time started ticking, and it isn't going to stop until some other force of nature dictates it to be so. If you're not stepping out of your comfort zone, you will be left behind eventually.
This of course, brings us to the title of today's post, seeking discomfort. In a way, you could see seeking discomfort as going back to our childlike ways of relishing exploration, discovery and learning by trial and error, with the exception of our age. By the time we're young adults, our expectations and experiences in life will teach us what to avoid, but know that we're only human and that we make errors in judgement many times in life. What we deem to be negative can rise to the status of dogma, and our judgement is so far removed from reality at this point that it has to be considered delusion.
My solution to this problem has been simple; seek discomfort. What does seeking discomfort translate to in practice? It means to face something that we've been fearing head-on, and seeing if this meets our expectations or were we out of touch with reality. A personal example from my own life; speaking Mandarin. I've been poor at Mandarin all my life and thus I've been uncomfortable whenever I had to speak it. I'm talking about borderline results in Mandarin exams since I could remember, and just as often it would be a fail mark.
Imagine the horror then when I realized that nearly everyone in my previous company which I would spend two years at spoke in Mandarin. Well, my two years of employment at that company ended in December last year and I can't be more proud of telling you how I chose to speak Mandarin in that two years. For one, my spoken Mandarin is a little bit better. My confidence has improved and so has my tolerance for discomfort. I can at least hold a decent conversation in Mandarin now and no longer shun away from group conversations in Mandarin, which used to be about as intimidating as facing off a lion. I like to think that there have been spillover effects on other aspects of my life, not all of which I can describe. This is just one little application of the wisdom of seeking discomfort.
Seeking discomfort works so well because it challenges our assumptions and keeps us grounded with reality. It ensures that we're not avoiding things that have a negative connotation, one that we have conjured up ourselves. It keeps us from dogmatic thinking and keeps us open-minded. In a way, it's like a reality check mechanism. It also keeps us in tune with change, which is what we have to embrace if we don't want to be left in the dust.
I shall end today's post by saying this: given a choice between staying with the familiar and going for the unknown, take a leap of faith and discover what adventure lies ahead when you delve into the unknown. Thanks for reading and have a good day.
