How Do You Handle Discomfort?

by Ryan Biddulph

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I recall days long ago when I shrunk from discomfort at the first opportunity.

Life became an unpleasant experience for me because all fun, freedom, happiness, peace and success sits outside of your comfort zone.

Training myself for years helps me edge into discomfort more seamlessly.

My neck feels painfully stiff now. But I do not feel such stiffness that nausea or dizziness overcomes my being, as is the case with me sometimes. I go to bed if I feel prepared to hurl or pass out. I keep blogging if I feel pain and stiffness but intuitively know edging forward through discomfort way.

Folks speak platitudes about working even when you do not feel like it, in order to succeed. Again and again, I observed how I simply get ahead of most bloggers not because I am gifted, talented or special, but because I taught myself the skill of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Do this, and you will run circles around much of humanity because people tend to handle discomfort horribly.

I step into an icy cold shower on waking. I do so 10 seconds after rolling out of bed. Icy cold water touching my skin is a neutral act triggering something called “feelings”. Feelings triggered create uncomfortable sensations in moments. But so what?! What IS the big deal!? You would think I tell folks I step into a shower spewing molten lava when I share my ice shower practice. Most humans are so petrified of cold water touching their skin because they have largely engineered their lives to be free of discomfort and to be dominated by comfort. Not good.

Ducking discomfort only delays the inevitable. Every uncomfortable experience you dodge buries fears fueling the discomfort deeper into your being. Buried fears fester into something wicked over the long haul. Guaranteed, 100% of the time, buried fears repressed for decades manifest as:

mental illness
physical illness
alcoholism
drug addiction
sex addiction
deep depression
physical abuse

in human beings. Every single one of these problems is fear in the mind of a human being, buried, repressed, avoided, ducked and growing into an alleged demon that begins to die the split second you begin delving into the fear.

Hey; see professional specialists to help cure each malady above. But know the specialists *help* you, not being the cause of your cure; you and the specialist do the co-curing because facing, feeling and releasing fears is the process starving each mental state of its fuel.

Heck yeah, facing, feeling and releasing fears fueling suffering feels highly uncomfortable. Recovering alcoholics need to sit with the uncomfortable fear-pain of desiring another drink more than anything on earth. Ditto for recovering drug addicts who go into relapse, their egos and bodies creating a miserable hell until the fear-cravings dissolve through observation.

I told you; we all need to pay the fear-discomfort piper at one time or another. I chose to do it for 12 years and edge into discomfort daily for a liberating, fun, freeing, healthy life experience versus descending into the hell that repressed fears creates.

You choose.

I suggest you edge into discomfort a bit at a time now but you can take or leave my advice.

Everything is on you.