Discomfort is a sign of growth
Chosen discomfort, in the right dose, is a sign you have moved. Abraham only saw the land after leaving his own.
"Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee" (Genesis 12
).The command comes before the map. Abraham doesn't receive the destination and then decide whether to go. He leaves first and only then sees the land. The whole promise begins with leaving the familiar.
It is still like that today. The place you want to reach is, by definition, a place you have never been. And the road there is uncomfortable.
Discomfort is not the signal to stop
Most people read discomfort as an alarm: if it feels bad, something is wrong. Kaitlin Woolley, of Cornell University, and Ayelet Fishbach, of the University of Chicago, tested the opposite (Cornell Chronicle).
In five studies, with more than 2,000 adults, they asked some of the participants to seek discomfort and treat it as a sign of progress. The main study was done with more than 550 students at an improv school in Chicago. Those who received this instruction persisted longer in the exercises, took more risks and learned more than those who received the usual instruction. The effect was repeated in other hard tasks, such as writing about painful moments and listening openly to people who think differently about politics.
"People often see discomfort as a sign to stop pursuing a goal, yet discomfort often means you are making progress," Woolley summarized.
The right dose
This is not praise of suffering. The authors themselves point out that sharp, unexpected pain can indeed be a sign to stop.
Psychologists Elizabeth and Robert Bjork, of UCLA, call "desirable difficulties" the ones that make practice harder and learning firmer: varying the conditions, spacing out practice, testing instead of rereading (Bjork and Bjork, 2011). But they warn: difficulty only helps when the person has the background to respond to it. Without it, it becomes just frustration.
The discomfort that makes you grow is chosen and has a size. It is the next step, not the leap into the dark.
In practice
Comfort doesn't show up as fear. It shows up as prudence: "this isn't the moment", "I'll look into it later", "it's fine as it is". And life gets decided by what is comfortable.
Three questions help you notice it:
- What am I putting off only because it is uncomfortable, and not because it is wrong?
- What is the next step, the one that makes my stomach tighten but is within my reach?
- When was the last time I did something for the first time?
In judo, nobody improves by training only with people they can already throw. The training that makes you grow is randori with someone better than you: you fall, you understand why you fell, and you come back. A comfortable mat makes a comfortable judoka.
The land that I will show thee
The command to Abraham came with no guarantees. It came with a promise: "unto a land that I will shew thee". The discomfort of leaving was the price of reaching a place he could not yet see.
Faith is not the absence of discomfort. It is leaving anyway, trusting the one who shows the way. What you want is on the other side of that departure.
