Discomfort is something most people don’t like. They will do anything in their power to get away from it, and slip into their own realm of comfort where they feel safe. This is the easy thing to do which is why most people do it. When people begin to feel the heat of being uncomfortable, the pressure gets to them and 99% of all people run away from whatever it is they are trying to do. “This just isn’t for me”, is one of the more popular things people say when they face too much discomfort. Maybe they’re right, whatever they are doing isn’t for them. Leaders recognize discomfort as moving in the right direction. When you have this feeling, more times than not you are on to something. Feeling discomfort stems from fear of failure or rejection. These two in conjunction are the core principles that build the most successful people up. So yes, the pressure of discomfort and fear of failure aren’t something everyone can handle. To differentiate yourself from the crowd, you need to conquer these emotions instead of letting them conquer you. At the end of the day, if you fail at something or something scares you, the perceived damage is oftentimes harder to overcome than the actual damage said failure may actually cause. I’ll go through some examples of this later on in my own life. So, how can we get our emotions to work for us instead of against us? Let’s take a look!
Do or do not, there is no try
Some of you make think I’m cheesy for quoting Yoda from Star Wars in the subheading of this section (lol). The meaning of this quote is pretty profound and we can actually learn a lot from it. When people are faced when uncertainty, they begin to mentally crumble. Using the verbiage, “I’ll give it a try” is actually setting yourself up for failure. If you give something a try and face discomfort not far down the road, most people would turn back. It all starts with initial mindset and carryover into whatever it is you’re trying to do. If you go into say an entrepreneurial venture, you should know and understand the risks you are taking and possible failure you may face off the bat. Seeing nothing but sunshine and rainbows will more than likely set you up for a rude awakening, one that most will probably not be able to handle. If you reach a crossroads when you have to make a decision during crunch time, you need to be mentally tough enough to get through the discomfort of having such a responsibility and make what you think is the best choice at the time. If you choose wrong, that’s ok. You must possess the mental toughness to pick yourself back up, learn from what went wrong, and do it again. This nagging persistence to face discomfort, get through it, and build off of failure will make you a success in whatever it is you do. You either have the initial mindset to do what you set out to do, or you may as well never try. That is the essence of the Yoda quote and why I brought it to light in this post.
Discomfort in my own life
Every single day, I feel some sort of discomfort in something that I am doing. I am currently learning to hone in on discomfort and mentally conquer it every day. As a real estate agent, one of the most important jobs I do every day is generate leads. In more simple terms, this just means to try and get clients. Lead gen is very difficult to do. It’s not hard because of the difficulty of actually doing the work, it just takes a ton of mental toughness and willingness to break through barriers of common discomfort. One of the biggest barriers of lead gen is cold calling prospects. This is a hump that many people fail to get over. If you don’t know, cold calling in real estate is basically calling someone who you’ve never spoken to before and building rapport with them enough to eventually sell their house. Without me saying anything, you probably already figured out that 99% of the people you call will not pick up, hang up on you, yell at you, curse you out, etc. This presents a feeling of failure to the caller. Say you call 100 people and none of them even give you the time of day. Disheartening is one word to describe how this feels. Cold calling creates major discomfort because of the fear of failure it creates. “What do I say? What if they yell at me? What if I mess up?” are the common things that go through 99% of people’s heads that do this. Getting past this discomfort and understanding that persistence is key in this scenario will make or break you. The person who has conquered discomfort will call and call every day no matter what because they know that sooner or later, they will find someone that they land an appointment with. They look at the failures as just sharpening their tools so that they don’t make the same mistakes again. This is how you get better. You need to conquer discomfort and make it work for you instead of you fearing it and running the other way. Think of discomfort as a brick wall. Behind that wall is a pot of gold. All you need to do is understand the concept that you will fail many times. The wall will reject you. It will be difficult. But finally getting over that wall and reaping those rewards will be well worth the time spent getting over it.
Run towards discomfort
Discomfort is the brick wall you see that looks unclimbable and impenetrable. You will fail many times trying to get over it, but you know “do or do not, there is no try”. You scratch and claw and fail and fail again. Slowly, you learn and piece together what needs to be done until eventually you do it. I go through a process like this every day. Now do I scale the brick wall every day? No, not even close, but I know that if I keep learning from my mistakes, I eventually will, and the reward will be well worth the effort and sacrifice. Once you climb the wall once, it’ll be much easier to do it next time since you know what tools to bring and how to approach the situation. Once a wall becomes too easy to climb, look for a bigger wall! Keep going! Don’t get complacent! Seek that discomfort and you will find success!