Most people strive to be comfortable, in the clothes we wear, the people we associate with, in places we live or work. I have sought to be comfortable the older I got.
Then I had a shift in thinking. Comfort breeds mediocracy.
If you truly want to grow, in your relationships, your wealth, your physical health, your spiritual health, or in your intellect, you have to push yourself in each one of these areas to the point of being uncomfortable.
Now my new mantra is “I like to be uncomfortable”.
So how do you challenge yourself to be uncomfortable? There are several ways:
1. Do what you don’t want to do. Pick the path that is the hardest and take the first step.
2. Push yourself past “the wall”. When you get to the point that you can’t run another minute, or make another sales call, or study another chapter, do it, you’ll be amazed at what is on the other side. As a former college athlete and a 56-year old man I have a lot of knee and hip pain. I have found in my running that if I push myself through the pain that I feel when I start to run, I don’t die and have a great workout.
3. Go for failure. The greatest lessons learned are when you fail, If you don’t go for failure you are missing out on a lot of different experiences. Do not be afraid to fail, it is not fatal.
4. Embrace the suck. Know that the hard stuff sucks, it always will, but the reward is great. Enjoy the journey.
5. Set challenging goals. Don’t talk yourself out of them, and don’t figure out how you are going to reach them before you start down the path towards the goal. Just take the step, try something, if it doesn’t work, try something different. Then set a series of smaller goals that leads to the larger, more challenging goal with what you have learned. The processes of trying, failing and repeating shows you the way.