09 Nov 2020
Pushing yourself beyond what you already know is said to be the place where growth occurs. Once we go beyond our comfortable zone, we are to arrive in a zone of discomfort, where we can acquire new skills, expand our mindset, and increase our influence. We are constantly bombarded with advice that we should pursue the difficult path because that’s where growth occurs, to push ourselves beyond what we know, and to indulge in discomfort now so we can indulge in comfort later. Certainly, this advice comes with a basket full of good intentions. But there remains a darker side of the ‘seek discomfort’ advice that we ought to be aware of, lest we want to fall prey to it.
Comfort-discomfort as chaos-order
The comfort-discomfort dynamic can also be thought of in terms of an order-chaos dynamic. Comfort is associated with order – it is where things are in their place, and everything is known. There is hardly any anxiety associated with order as we are only focused on the here and now. It is a psychologically safe place. But order stagnates, it is subject to entropy, i.e. it will deteriorate over time. If we indulge in too much order, we do not grow, we do not learn new things, we will inevitably become dilapidated. Discomfort, on the other hand, is associated with chaos – this is the place of absolute potential, everything is unknown. There is ubiquitous anxiety as things are in constant flux and there is a lot of uncertainty. But if we are in this chaotic and full of potential zone, we can grow, we can learn new things and expand our being. Conquering even a small corner of the chaos realm leads to high positive emotion.
The dark side of seeking discomfort
Going into your zone of discomfort, or in your realm of chaos, is a threatening experience – it’s a place where there is a chance you might find a pot of gold, but you will certainly find a lot of demons. Hence, you need to go in prepared.
Following the popular advice at its face value, then, is hiding a trap: if you do end up seeking discomfort for the sake of seeking discomfort, it is the same as going into the realm of chaos unprepared. Just going into your discomfort zone because you know that there is a pot of gold there is not sufficient for you to find it. But just going there will certainly get you to face the demons.
To put that in more concrete terms, if you are reasonably fit and you do not feel like you need to exercise too much or too hard, trying to get a record time on a 25K marathon for the sake of it is probably going to bring you a lot of sweat, pain and all the other dreadful feelings associated with pushing your body to its limits. But there will hardly be anything long-lasting positive emotion associated with that achievement – should it happen – simply because from the get-go it is not something you highly value; you have just done it for the sake of doing it.
This pattern – doing something for the sake of doing it – is relatively common in the self-help world, where people keep buying one guru-recommended self-help book after another in the hopes that the next one will bring them salvation. Likewise, if you blindly tap into one uncomfortable experience after another in the hope that you will experience positive emotion and grow – well, you are in for a surprise!
The remedy
The solution is simple – and well-illustrated in the above example – if you are going to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, if you are going to face the discomfort demons and attempt to glom onto the pot of gold, you need to do it in a domain that you value. You need to do something that you find meaningful and that will sustain you for a longer period of time. A simple rule of thumb captures it for me: the more you value a goal, the more you should push yourself out of your comfort zone in service of that goal.
The paradoxical – and practical – caveat
With this rule of thumb in mind, a paradoxical question emerges – what if you value putting yourself in a zone of discomfort for the sake of it? As far as I am concerned, if you are clear with yourself that this is what you value and want; if you know why you are doing what you are doing, then more power to you.
Indeed, it can have some value to put yourself in a zone of discomfort for the sake of it. For me, the value is in the fact that it lowers my threshold for what the zone of discomfort represents. In other words, once I do something uncomfortable for the sake of it, then when I try to go into the zone of discomfort in service of a goal I value, it does not feel so anxiety-provoking anymore. For example, for me taking a cold shower in the morning is an uncomfortable experience but once I do it I feel that I am now ready to push myself in the realm of chaos in other domains of my life, domains that I value. Of course, because I place relatively little value on lowering my threshold for discomfort with a cold shower (compared to, say, doing well in my work or studies), I do it for a short period of time and I move on. If I start overdoing it by, say, taking multiple, long cold showers or straight up regular ice baths, then I might fall prey to the dark side of discomfort.
Conclusion
Going regularly outside your zone of comfort is necessary to expand your being, experience positive emotions and prevent stagnation. But it is not sufficient – you also need to ensure that going into the realm of chaos prepared, with a sword, on which your values are inscribed. Indeed, going into the zone of discomfort should be in service of a value you hold and the time and effort you spend in that zone should be proportional to the value’s importance in your life – that way you avoid going into the realm of chaos, where anxiety awaits, without a chance for acquiring anything of lasting worth.
