What's on the other side of your comfort zone?

 
Befriend Your Discomfort

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anaïs Nin

What stands between you and your most important contribution? 

As a wise mentor told me, "this is no time for playing small." Ruth Bader Ginsberg didn't play small. May we step up and carry forward the torch. In these challenging times, we need all of our gifts and contributions more than ever, whether in big or small ways.

Having a long history with "hiding until I'm ready," I made a commitment to take the exquisite risk of being seen in service of my purpose. The more I stand in the truth that it's not about me at all, the more I'm free to create a context of healing, belonging, and contribution for others.

I've kept this line by David Whyte as a daily reminder: "To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others." 

Leaning into purpose is not comfortable but even more so is not leaning in.  

We all can get in our own way. We avoid things that could move us closer to our contribution and learning goals because they are uncomfortable. For me, it's typically things that bring up the possibility of rejection, incompetence, conflict, or failure. And the emotions I'm feeling are fear, anxiety, and shame accompanied by tightness in the chest and throat area.

Depending on the thing we're avoiding, we may divert our attention through self-judgment (my #1 go-to), judging and blaming others, rumination, worrying, questioning everything about our life, addictive behaviors, victim mindset, projects that suddenly seem urgent, etc. 

The impacts are massive. We limit our contribution, learning, and growth. We carry stress and diminish our sense of presence and aliveness. We waste vast amounts of mental and emotional energy. We may carry a sense of shame and guilt for letting others and ourselves down. The list goes on.

How might we befriend our discomfort and overcome resistance? 

In the long run, avoiding things we know are important is always more painful than facing and working through the discomfort.

Rather than seeing discomfort and difficult emotions as problems, we can open to the experience and let them move through. As Jack Kornfield writes: "Free" is not free from feelings, but free to feel each one and let it move on, unafraid of the movement of life." And we can bring kindness and self-compassion to our experience and remind ourselves that it's part of being human to want to avoid discomfort. 

Then we can re-anchor ourselves in our goal or intention for how we want to contribute or what we want to learn. And do the work. 

How's life calling you to contribute? What's the work that needs doing? What's worth risking being seen for? 

The world needs you and your contribution. 

Below are a few resources that I hope may be supportive for you.

With love,

Sarah-Marie

 

Resources 

[PRACTICES] 

Self-Reflection

  1. What are the things that you routinely avoid that would move you closer to your goals? What are the things you know you need to do but are making you most uncomfortable or anxious?  

  2. What thoughts and fears come to mind when you think of those things?

  3. What emotions or sensations arise?  

  4. What's the impact on you or others of avoiding those things? 


Power Hour

Purpose: To make progress on something important you've been avoiding. 

  1. Block off a 1-2 hour time period and eliminate potential distractions as much as possible.

  2. Write down your inner critic's chatter and any fears related to the activity.

  3. Write down your intention or goal for the activity. Why does it matter? What could you learn? 

  4. Set a timer for how long you want to focus on the activity and start working. 

  5. As you work, write down any fears and mind chatter that comes up. Reground yourself in your purpose/goal as needed.

  6. At the end, reflect on the experience. How did it go? What did you learn? What do you want to focus on in your next power hour? 

Pro tip: To make this even more effective, do power hours with an accountability buddy. :)


RAIN

Purpose: Through the practice of RAIN, we can bring mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions and experience. It invites us to be with our emotions and actual lived experience with self-compassion.

The acronym RAIN stands for:

  • Recognize: Seeing clearly what's going on and how we are stuck inside an experience;

  • Allow: Creating space to be with the experience just as it is; 

  • Investigate: Moving from the story and beliefs to getting in touch with the actual lived experience, with kindness; and 

  • Nurture: Offering kindness inwardly. 

Here's a ~16 min guided RAIN practice. 

 

[READING & LISTENING] 

Below are a few resources that I've found helpful in my own journey of befriending discomfort and overcoming resistance. I hope some of them may be supportive for you as well.  

 

[Quote] 

“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.”

- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art 


Guided Meditations