Get Uncomfortable and Feel Your Pain

No one likes pain. At least, I think no one likes pain. Physical or emotional, if we can avoid it, we choose to sidestep it. And I’m no different…until now.

A copy of Amanda Lang’s The Beauty of Discomfort fell on my desk about two months ago. I’m about a third through the book and so far it’s about overcoming discomfort, physical pain. But while reading it, I began to realize the very notion of pain is more a mental feeling than a physical experience. I’m not a marathon runner, I’ve just introduced cardio into my life over the past three weeks. I don’t frequently experience physical pain, and if and when I do, I simply do what needs to be done to heal it – ice pack, Polysporin, the basics. Lang discusses marathon runners challenging their physical bodies and pushing past pain by teaching their mind to accept and work with the pain. This latter part “teaching the mind to accept and work with the pain” should be a golden rule for personal growth.

Teaching the mind to accept and work with the pain

If we can learn to sit with our discomfort and endure it, we tend to learn from the pain and turn it into a productive experience. Understanding that it’s okay to feel pain, disappointment, heartache, can be one of the most freeing feelings.

I think most pain is due to discomfort. We are uncomfortable with something – a bruise that is starting to form, a promotion that was overlooked, a cancelled date with friends, a lost loved one – and we feel pain due to that discomfort.

I decided to test this approach to discomfort over the last two months.

Instead of fighting the pain or giving myself a grieving timeline, one of the best things I did was to allow myself to just be. Allowing the pain to sit with me, helped me to realize what it feels like, ask myself why I’m feeling it and actually have an experience with it rather than hiding it under a rug.

Sitting with the discomfort allowed me to grow past it. I didn’t deny it nor did I feed it. I simply allowed myself to feel what I felt. If I felt like crying, I cried. I didn’t hold it back because bottled up emotions would just transfer into some other physiological reaction or simply be a delayed reaction, which can tend to feel overwhelming and debilitating, making things seem worse than they actually are.

The verdict.

I feel so much stronger and feel more in tune (not ‘in control’ because I’m not controlling or fighting my emotions) with my feelings of happiness, sadness, joy, discomfort and pain. I used this exercise during a variety of situations: physical – when my body felt fatigued halfway through an intense combat class, when my mind reminisced over my last failed relationship, when I realized I still had to figure out how to achieve my professional goals in a timely manner, when I received a financial reality check on where I was versus where I wanted to be, when I felt a pang of loneliness picturing life living alone and when I felt scared planning a solo adventure.

Feeling pain made me stronger and better equipped to manage recurring thoughts of failure or hurt or fatigue. When something triggers a feeling of discomfort now, I pause and realize how I feel, then I tell myself it’s okay to feel pain and I’ll ask myself if this is a feeling I want to fix or push through or something I’ve already accepted. This whole thought process prevents the mind from going into overdrive when it experiences pain or discomfort. Instead it’s able to calmly work through it.

Too often we avoid situations that could help us grow because we feel “discomfort.” Such situations can involve simple things like giving a presentation, attending an event alone, etc. We avoid these because we think we’ll be uncomfortable but as Lang shows, it is only through putting ourselves through the discomfort in our lives, do we step outside of our comfort zone and grow! And if we’re not growing, we’re not evolving, and therefore pretty much dead.

I, personally, enjoy putting myself into new situations because it teaches me something new and something about myself – I learn if I’m good at something or if I suck at it. Either way, I’ve learned more about myself. Discomfort is a temporary feeling that teaches us important lessons, it’s time we/I experience a little more of it.

Bad ass motivators from Lang’s The Beauty of Discomfort

Your experience of pain is influenced by your current state of mind, your prior experiences, and your current expectations. [Note to self: reframe the experience and push through the pain]

Everyone experiences pain – sometimes the same amount of pain. Some are just better able to tolerate it. [Note to self: another reason to never compare yourself to others]

Reframe how you perceive pain as a positive, not a negative. Accept pain as apart of the process. [Note to self: make pain your friend. It’s make you stronger]

Believing you can control your feelings of discomfort heightens your ability to cope. Reframe the experience. [Note to self: Breathe, reframe, move through]

Our frame of mind dramatically influences how we respond to our circumstances. A positive frame of mind makes a negative event easier to bear, and ups our level of satisfaction. [Note to self: positive vibes only]

Pain is a work in progress. [Note to self: there is no expert level, every day’s pain will feel different and you must constantly reframe so that you can grow]

Pausing to understand my pain made me realize the importance of my frame of mind. It was up to me to reframe a negative experience and view it as a lesson. When the mind tends to wander, it wanders downward. So, a generous helping of gratitude is necessary to reframe any negative experience. I had to be thankful for the experience and spend time focusing on what I had learned from it. Gratitude seems to be a saving grace whenever the mind heads south. It’s a hard practice but with practice, it gets easier.

The beauty of discomfort is that it teaches us about ourselves and shows us how to cope positively and productively when things don’t go our way.

First written by me on madderandshade on June 10, 2017: https://madderandshade.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/get-uncomfortable-painful-pain-free/

Reposted to this final madder and shade site in 2018