Our Breakthrough Lives Where We Don’t Want To Look

We're not stuck because we don't know the answer. We're stuck because the answer is hard.

Please take a moment to hit the ❤️button to send some love into the Universe!

I can tell when the door closes. Sometimes it’s slammed in my face, other times it’s a gentle closing, but either way it’s a done deal.

They’re not interested.

At that moment there’s nothing I can say that will help them walk through that door.

For the first ten years I wasn’t as tuned in to the barrier going up but, with two more decades of experience in private practice, now I see it instantly. It’s the moment my patient tunes me out. It tends to happen when I suggest they do something they think will be hard – like move their body when they are sore or make a change to their diet that will reduce inflammation and, therefore, their joint pain.

The hard truth is that, more often than we’d like, feeling good requires us to first do something that doesn’t feel great in the moment. And even when we’re actively seeking help to feel better, we often still resist getting uncomfortable.

See the tracks in the bottom right corner? My son made them. If that was me I would’ve been VERY uncomfortable, how about you? 📸J Swallow

It’s all too easy to take comfort in, well, comfort. It feels sooo good to slide into, but the deeper we go, the goopier it gets until what once felt comforting stops serving us and might even start hurting us. It’s our responsibility to recognize where that line is, so we don’t get stuck.

Now don’t get me wrong Dear One, if you’ve been around TBL for any length of time you know I’m a champion of listening to our body to rest when we’re tired or need a break, just as you know how my favorite thing in the world is my snuggly blanket and a book, and the importance I place on giving ourselves some slack when we need it or when we screwed up. But the key here is WHEN WE NEED IT - which is not all the time. Sinking into comfort is something we do to regulate our nervous system and restore ourselves back to fullness — but to keep our system adaptable we don’t want to live there constantly.

Let us not mistake the trappings of modernity for ease, because our conveniences and distractions often get in the way of us being able to hear our one true voice and it’s that voice, our higher power or best self, that leads us to peace.

According to Jeff Krasno:

We develop adaptive mechanisms in relationship to our environment and when we constantly engineer convenience and comfort, we become much less adaptable.

To be clear, what I mean by the term chronic comfort is a gradual move away from anything difficult – from things that feel unpleasant – until we’ve curated our life to do whatever it takes not to get poked. But what if we’ve fooled ourselves about what a life of ease really means and what if our well-being lies on the other side of discomfort, or even within it? If we are chronically sore, or tired, or depressed and we choose not to move our body because we are sore, tired, or depressed it might seem easier — but down the road it may be much harder because, in choosing comfort too often, our life becomes the opposite of ease as a result of losing our ability to be adaptable.

Adaptability, or the skill of allowing ourselves to be temporarily uncomfortable, is a superpower that helps us deal with life much more effectively.

Holding ourselves to a certain standard, which I wrote about recently, sometimes calls us to our edge. Inner peace is deeply entwined with integrity and maintaining that connection isn’t always comfortable.

We see this tension play out in every part of life:

• in relationships, where difficult conversations stretch us, seeming so scary that we make no move to speak up, so all that tension remains within us,

• in our bodies, where we need to stress bones and joints to keep them strong and this sometimes means moving through pain (not always Hon, listen to your healthcare provider on this),

• in our diets, where we summon the will to turn down processed junk and after a few days of managing the craving we get to feel like a different person,

in our minds when we choose contentment over irritation again and again until it’s who we are (or we do the opposite and become a grumpy old person).

Greater well-being and inner strength definitely lie on the other side of these actions. But here’s the thing - we often start feeling better the moment we stop putting it off and step into discomfort. Seriously Hon, just try getting into a cold shower for 30 seconds, then step back out and see how great you feel. (Caveat: the water doesn’t have to be a cold as it will go, it just needs to make you feel like yelling swear words. That being said, we want to breathe and not shriek swear words because one of the key things we are doing is training our brain to stay calm when we are very uncomfortable. This skill becomes useful in tricky conversations!)

The need to take responsibility and push through discomfort does not apply in every situation, nor am I advocating that we adopt a push-push-push attitude all the time. What I am saying is that, for the sake of our well-being, we need to stop fearing discomfort or we run the risk of becoming inflexible in body and mind.

Rigidity is a sneaky bastard, let’s not let it get the better of us.

xoxo Donna

P.S. A great way to increase our tolerance to discomfort is to add it into our day in little snippets. Some folks do push ups throughout their work day or do hard brain puzzles on the computer. One of the things I do is play with the temperature in my house and have some hours where I have to work harder to be comfortable or I go outside when I’d rather not. What is one small way you push yourself out of your comfort zone?

HERE is a podcast with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon interviewing Jeff Krasno about how discomfort and stress can be the key to reversing chronic disease and living a healthier, longer life.