Maybe We Don’t Hate Discomfort. Maybe We Hate the Thought About It | Blog

There’s a line going around in personal development circles right now. You’ve probably heard it. “We don’t like discomfort.” “Humans are wired to avoid discomfort.” It gets said with such confidence that nobody questions it. It just gets repeated, interview after interview, post after post, until it sounds like a fact about human nature.

I’m not sure it is.

Here’s what I think might actually be true.

The idea that we dislike discomfort or avoid it is a thought. We have a sensation, then we label it as “uncomfortable.” We imagine a scary scene in our mind, feel something, then label it as “bad.”

We’re just having a sensation. The verdict about whether that sensation is good or bad, wanted or unwanted, comes after. It’s added on.

And once we start treating the add-on as fact, we stop looking at what’s underneath it.

I want to look underneath it.

When I think about this, I go back to my year in Scotland when I started cold-water, wild swimming. 

I keep returning here because it was such a visceral experience of resistance, the sensation of cold, at times painful, and the full-body joy and aliveness when in the water.

Every single time, my mind would start getting louder and louder as I got near the water. Why am I doing this? This is going to be miserable. It’s cold out, it’s raining out, it’s not a good time to do this.

I was full of resistance, full of anticipation, and launching a whole internal campaign against the thing I hadn’t even done yet.

Then I’d get in.

Yes, it was cold! My hands would often hurt. My feet, too. AND I loved it. In spite of the cold, I actually loved it. I felt alive and, as crazy as it may sound, joyful.

I didn’t love it once I stopped and felt some sort of accomplishment. I loved it while in it, experiencing “discomfort.” The love, the cold, and the pain were happening in the same moment.

So which one is true?

“I don’t like discomfort,” which is what my mind insisted on during the walk down to the water. Or “I love this,” which is what I actually experienced once I was in it.

Another example of this that I’ve experienced for myself, and I know is common for many, is the discomfort of expanding our circles.

We want to expand our network, build new relationships, and have a wider reach in our impact. As part of that, it means connecting with others, broadening our circles, stepping into new environments, sharing our work, and inviting others to work with us.

I often hear people say, I want to be seen but it also feels scary. I don’t like social settings where I don’t know anyone. I’m not good in those situations and then they have a variety of reasons why this is the case. My personality, I’m an introvert, I have had bad experiences, I struggle with confidence, I don’t like uncertainty, etc.

When I started to see that my “dislike” and my “discomfort” were actually coming from where my mind was in the moment, not the actual situation, it shifted my relationship to these activities.

I started to recognize that when I would feel self-conscious, I was paying too much attention to myself, tracking myself in the room, focusing on my feelings of awkwardness, or giving attention to the momentary thinking that can appear like, “I hate this,” etc.

Yet when I let that be background noise and stopped evaluating how I was doing, how I felt, or how it was going, I stepped into more ease and enjoyment. I would meet new people, have interesting conversations, and get inspired by the sharing.

I used to treat it like medicine for growing my business, something that tasted bad going down but was supposedly good for me, a necessary evil to swallow and get through. I would get more present instead, and as a result, I could have a bit of self-consciousness, a bit of nervousness, but also start to get into it.

I’d enjoy meeting others, learning about them. I’d get excited about the content being shared rather than focusing on my uncomfortable thoughts.

I would naturally share myself and, yes, even invite people to connect afterward. I would allow authentic connection to guide me versus my mind.

Both of these moments have the same pattern. Thought goes first, usually a grim one, and that starts to feel like the truth. Then experience arrives, and when we drop into the moment, out of the mind, we have an experience, we have sensation.

End of story, until we label it.

What if discomfort, before thought gets to it, isn’t actually a problem at all? What if it’s sensation, end of story.

Cold is cold. Self-consciousness is self-consciousness.

None of that, on its own, has ever been the thing that hurt. The hurt arrives with the story laid on top. This shouldn’t be happening. I need this to stop. I can’t do this. Those thoughts move so fast, and feel so convincing, that we mistake them for the water, for the event, for the moment itself.

We think we’re experiencing what’s really happening, but we’re experiencing our minds’ interpretation of it.

When we’re in the unknown, in uncertainty, in places that stretch us, our minds can get full of all sorts of ideas or warnings that danger is ahead.

When getting in the sea, when entering the event, the mind’s forecast, predictions of what it would be, even the thought, “I don’t want to,” wasn’t a guarantee of my actual experience.

The sensations were just sensations. When I didn’t label them or didn’t buy into them, even when my mind feels certain, I notice that I move through it all with more ease. Enjoyment, aliveness, connection, and satisfaction are more present and felt.

The mind doesn’t always step aside once you’re in motion. In the water, my hands would start to hurt, and right there, mid-swim, the thought would have another go. This is bad. This hurts. Get out. I could feel myself almost listening. But I kept moving.

Same thing at the event. There were moments I wanted to leave. I would look at the clock and wonder how much longer I would have to stay. I could have left, and no one would have missed me. Wrapped in a thought that sounds entirely reasonable. I’m tired. This is boring. That’s enough for today.

If I had stopped either time, it wouldn’t have been the cold or the event. It would have been a thought about the cold and not knowing anyone, believed in that moment as if it were simply true.

Coming back to the question, maybe it was never true that humans hate discomfort or avoid it. Maybe we just dislike the interpretation happening in the moment and call that discomfort instead.

Take the story out, and what’s left in the cold water or at that event isn’t suffering. It’s just aliveness, intense sometimes, workable every time.

I’m not saying go looking for discomfort. That’s just another strategy, another thing to add to the to-do list. I’m saying maybe stop assuming you already know how you’ll feel about something before you’re actually in it.

I’m saying that you might discover you love the feeling of aliveness, of sensation, of connection.