How Is Your Relationship with Discomfort?

I roll out of a comfortable, warm bed every morning and step into an icy cold shower for 40 seconds.

Why?

I intend to develop a more intimate bond with:

• fear
• discomfort

My mind fears the idea of stepping into a cold shower. My mind also fears the uncomfortable sensation of cold water coming into contact with my body. My mind fears the cold shower idea and the physical union of cold water and Ryan Biddulph body. I have 2 layers of discomfort to face, feel and release:

• the fear of the idea of the cold shower
• the fear of the cold water touching my body

One fear is a fear of an idea, the other fear is the fear of water touching body, and the 3rd level of discomfort is the sensation of cold water touching my entire body, especially sensitive areas like the back of my neck, lower back and the sides of my upper body.

Following this habit daily for years allowed me to develop a better relationship with discomfort, online and offline. I learned how fear is not real, even though fear feels real and fear appears to be real. Like all appearances or illusions, fear is not real because fear is not what it seems.

I also learned how I can sit, observe and actually release uncomfortable sensations arising in my body through the practice of observing icy cold water touching my body every morning. I am not my body. Heck; I am not even my mind. I am awareness, observing it all. But I did learn how the body is slave to the mind. This is a great thing if you develop an excellent, harmonious relationship with uncomfortable emotions because facing, feeling and releasing fear makes your mind and body strong.

BUT….

….this is a terrible thing if you have an aversive, resistant relationship with fear and discomfort because every fear you resist, avoid and bury in your being makes your mind and body weak.

Carefully observing the world, most human beings spend much of their lives doing what other people tell them to do to survive. This is fear and weak-mindedness, manifest as subjugation. Work a job, do what your boss tells you to do, get a paycheck, put a roof over your head and food on your table. After 40 years of surviving, perhaps you retire and spend 10-20 years doing what you want to do.

But an absurd percentage of these human beings get sick, fall into dis-ease, and die well before the average human life span because of their weak bodies. Weak-minded people routinely duck, avoid and bury fear energies which cause havoc in their bodies, creating bodily weakness, dis-ease, and death well before the person would have died, if they faced, felt and released their fears.

Face and Feel Discomfort

Develop a strong relationship with fear and discomfort. Edge into seemingly little fears today. Walk for 20 minutes if you fear exercising. Feel the fear of rejection by reaching out to a sibling you haven't talked to in years. Write and self-publish the eBook to face your fears of criticism and failure.

Facing and feeling discomfort liberates you from the fears in your mind that ruin your life.

Developing an intimate bond with fear feels uncomfortable sometimes but the happy, peaceful, prospering, poised, healthy, strong-minded individual you become beats suffering for a lifetime and never knowing that the suffering sprouts from within.