I am often asked, as an accountability coach, what is the main struggle in actually achieving goals and making lasting change in life, and what I have found in my clients, and in myself, is our inability to face, and even embrace discomfort.
Growth is uncomfortable. Doing new things is uncomfortable. Thus actually making changes in your life will involve a level of discomfort.
This fact tends to surprise people.
They think that if they want something (i.e. a goal) they should be feeling motivated, inspired, and excited about it, ALWAYS. and the minute they do not feel that way, they freak out, quit, or go back to their old ways, because they made the discomfort mean something about themselves, their goal, and their ability to achieve it.
This is where people get stuck.
You are going to feel discomfort if you are trying to do something new. Embrace it. Let it be evidence that you are, infarct, on the right track because it is hard, scary, difficult to take the actions necessary to achieve your goal. If it were easy, we would all be living our best lives right now instead of constantly setting new year’s resolutions and quitting them months into the new year.
I have written elsewhere about how your brain effects your motivation and your ability to make changes in your life. TLDR; your brain does not want you to change, and therefore it will protest every step of the way. That does not make you wrong for picking your goal, or wrong for struggling to take action on it, that makes you human.
The reality is, the human experience involves both negative and positive emotions. I know some of us (myself included) hope that one day we will have the job/money/time/body etc. we want and then we will always feel amazing and never experience negative emotions.
But let’s get real.
That is just not true. And deep down we all know that.
We are all living the human experience and honestly, it’s about 50/50 — We have negative and positive emotions about half the time. Am I right? And changing and growing and pushing yourself is going to require more discomfort, and more negative emotions.
What if we could embrace that knowledge? What if we could just recognize that being human means feeling both negative and positive emotions? That goal setting involves some discomfort? That is doesn’t mean we have failed?
Wouldn’t that make you feel lighter? Breathe a bit easier even?
That is my advice; 1. accept the fact that being human means feeling negative emotions, thus, embracing the suck, and 2. reminding ourselves that “this is the part where…”
Embrace the Suck:
First, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable if you want to change your life. You just do. I am sorry. But that is a fact of life. Working out-discomfort, sales calls- discomfort, asking for a raise- discomfort, starting a new business-discomfort. Yes, there will be joy and excitement and inspiration too, but there will be a whole lot of uncomfortable feelings and emotions following you on your journey to make lasting changes in your life.
How do you face this?
Embrace the suck.
You have to learn to have a negative emotion before you can change the emotion. When you resist negative emotions you often make them stronger. Embrace the reality that feeling discomfort is okay. It will not harm you. Try looking at it as a normal part of growth, and then look at it as a possibility to learn.
Just embrace the suck. Don’t resist it. Don’t change it. Just embrace it.
Then work on some more productive thoughts like:
This is the part where…
When you watch a movie or read a story you expect there to be ups and downs. A story about someone being happy forever, the end. That would be boring, right? You know when engaging in a movie that the characters will experience both bad and good emotions and you can just look at it and think “Oh right, this is the part where the main character gets dumped. And this is the part where she meets the love of her life.” You know that it will not be permanent, any of it, the good or the bad.
So, what if you tried this with your own life?
“Oh right, this is the part where I feel terrible trying to grow and change.”
“This is the part where I get rejected for the umpteenth time but I will try again because I WILL sell this book/ get this job/ land that client etc.”
“This is the part where I feel uncomfortable because I have to take daily action.”
“This is the part where I feel depressed and hopeless because change is hard, but I can do hard.”
This is just part of the story. This is the 50% where it feels bad. Nothing has gone wrong, this is just part of the human experience. And know that there will be another part too. The other 50%, where you learn from this lesson, where you pick yourself up and accomplish that goal; find love, stop berating yourself, experience joy again etc.
“This is the part where…”
It is such a powerful way to engage your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for analytical reason. By engaging your prefrontal cortex, you get yourself out of the primitive emotional brain which is in reactionary survival mode, and allow yourself to see that:
“Oh right, this is the part where I am going to learn a lesson.”
For more on your brain and how it effects your willpower and motivation check this out.
A Final Note:
How we show up for ourselves and how we handle the negative emotions, the sucky times, that is what makes us who we are. Think about the most significant and formative things that have happened to you in your life. Chances are they were pretty uncomfortable, sucky, and negative, am I right? But chances also are that they led to your growth. They showed you your strength and resilience. Those experiences made you who you are.
How we show up during the sucky times is who we truly are. So, embrace the suck and remember, emotions can’t hurt you! Just remind yourself:
“This is the part where I feel uncomfortable because I am growing into the person I want to become!”
