Be Uncomfortable

Men are made beyond the walls.

The comfort zone is where dreams and aspirations go to die.

Nothing grows in your comfort zone.

This has been playing in my head for the longest, and I have spoken about this in bits and pieces in previous newsletters, but I believed the message will sink in even more if it had a letter dedicated to it.

To be successful, there's one art, one habit that needs to be learned. It's an art that everyone who ever made something of themselves had to learn. It's not something you are born with, but something you are taught. It is the art of being uncomfortable. You must learn to love and chase after discomfort if you want to grow, because nothing, absolutely nothing grows in the comfort zone.

In our book of the month at the Readers Community I belong in, the author of Dare to Lead stressed something called desired difficulty. Bréne stated that to be effective, learning needs to be difficult. It doesn't mean that you can't learn anything unless it's difficult, no. It means you can't learn anything significant without stressing your muscles. In her words, "to be effective, learning needs to be effortful."

And you know what sounds like zero effort? Comfort. If you constantly live in comfort, without stretching yourself, you will never learn anything tangible enough to affect your life and become what you want to become. This is why I'm stressing in this newsletter that you must learn the art of being uncomfortable.

And it's simple. Push yourself to do extra. Don't stop when the work gets hard, because it is from the point that it gets hard and you feel the discomfort that you start to grow. Darren Hardy in The Compound Effect uses the term Acceleration. He says that it's that little extra that you put into your work, right after you think you have reached your limit, that's the part that grows you. The part that makes you uncomfortable.

Let's use this analogy. If you work out, how many push-ups can you comfortably do? 10? 20? Whatever the number is, that's not the part that grows you. If you want to grow your muscles, it's the extra 5 or 10 that you do, just after your comfort limit, that's the part that grows you. That's the part that accelerates your increment.

Nothing grows in its comfort zone!

You have been playing too much in your comfort zone because it's uncomfortable to get out of that zone, but you and I know that it is when you push out of the comfort zone that you can grow. So you need to pick. You either choose comfort or growth. You can't have both. Which is why I say that if you want success, if you want growth, you must get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

It is uncomfortable to force yourself to work when you don't feel like it, but this is what successful people do, every day. They embrace the discomfort and work even when it is hard and they would rather be playing around.

A lot of us have built a wall around our comfort zone, but the truth is that, it is what you do after you hit your wall is what determines your life. Men are made beyond the walls of comfort. Men are made beyond the walls of their feelings. Men are made right in discomfort.

I know it's hard. I know it's hard to put in the consistency day after day, but all that's required is to do a little extra. Do a little extra reading, do a little extra push-up, do a little extra waking up earlier. It's the little extras, past your comfort zone, that builds you a life of success and accomplishment.

Now that you know that the price you pay for a life of success is discomfort, deliberately pursue discomfort. Get out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself. Stop coasting on 15 minutes of reading daily. Stop sitting on 20 push-ups a day. You've been doing that for 3 years. Stop doing the same things. Add extra minutes. Add extra hours. Add extra skills. Be extraordinary. You don't have to do extraordinary things to be an extraordinary person. You just need to add a little more to the ordinary things you have been doing all your life.

Break past your walls. Haunt for discomfort. The comfort zone is where dreams and aspirations go to die. Get out of there and deliberately put yourself in positions of discomfort. That's how you will grow. With deliberate and painstaking effort, people learn, and leaders are made.

Whatever you do today, add some more minutes. Push past your limit and embrace discomfort.

To your growth,

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨