Why Fear of Discomfort Might Be Ruining Your Life

By Leo Babauta

Think about the major problems in your life â€" from anxiety to lack of regular exercise to a bad diet to procrastination and more.

Pretty much every one of these problems is caused by a fear of discomfort.

Discomfort isn’t intense pain, but just the feeling you get when you’re out of your comfort zone. Eating vegetables for many people, for example, brings discomfort. So does sitting in meditation, or sitting with a hard task in front of you, or saying No to people, or exercising. (Of course, different people are uncomfortable with different things, but you get the idea.)

And most people don’t like discomfort. They run from it. It’s not fun, so why do it?

The problem is that when you run from discomfort all the time, you are restricted to a small zone of comfort, and so you miss out on most of life. On most of the best things in life, in fact. And you become unhealthy, because if eating healthy food and exercising is uncomfortable, then you go to comfort foods and not moving much. Being unhealthy, unfortunately, is also uncomfortable, so then you seek distractions from this (and the fact that you have debt and too much clutter, etc.) in food and entertainment and shopping (as if spending will solve our problems!) and this in turn makes things worse.

Amazingly, the simple act of being OK with discomfort can solve all these problems.

This is a discovery I made a few years back, when I was trying to change my life.

I started by trying to quit smoking, but I hated the feeling of having an urge to smoke and not actually smoking. It was uncomfortable to resist that strong urge. My mind resisted, tried to make up all kinds of rationalizations for smoking. My mind tried to run from this discomfort, tried to seek distractions.

I learned to sit and watch the discomfort. And when I did, incredibly, it wasn’t too bad. My world didn’t end, nor did my mind implode. I was just uncomfortable for a bit, and then life moved on.

Then I watched this same process happen with running. I didn’t want to run because it was too hard. My mind made up rationalizations, etc. I found ways to avoid the running. Then I gave in to the discomfort, and it wasn’t hard. I ran, and learned to love it.

I repeated this process for changing my diet (many times, actually, because my diet gradually got healthier over time), for getting out of debt and not spending so much, for beating procrastination, for meditation, and so on.

Becoming OK with discomfort was one of the single biggest discoveries of my newly changed life.

How to Become Good at Discomfort

If you can learn to become good at discomfort, your life will have almost no limits. There’s no better skill to learn.

Here are some tips I’ve learned:

1. Try it in small doses. Sit for 30 seconds in discomfort. If you’re averse to vegetables, try one green veggie. Put it in your mouth, leave it there for 30 seconds. You probably won’t like it much, but that’s OK. You don’t have to have a mouthgasm with every bite. I’ve learned to love veggies.
2. Immerse yourself in discomfort. Are you sad, or angry, or stressed, or frustrated? Instead of avoiding those emotions, immerse yourself in them. Dive into them, accept them, be in them. Same with procrastination â€" sit with the task you’re running from, and don’t switch to something else. Just be there with that uncomfortable feeling. How does it feel? Are you in deep pain? Are you OK?
3. Seek discomfort. Challenge yourself daily. Find uncomfortable things and do them. Introduce yourself to strangers. Hug a friend. Confess your feelings. Confront someone (with a smile). Say No to people. Go for a run. Try a new healthy dish.
4. Watch yourself run from things. What have you been avoiding because of discomfort? What feelings have you been rejecting? What problems do you have that stem from discomfort? What have you allowed your mind to rationalize? Become aware of this process, and see if you can stop avoiding things, one by one.
5. Learn that discomfort is your friend. It’s not an enemy to fear. It’s actually a good thing â€" when you’re uncomfortable, you are trying something new, you’re learning, you’re expanding, you’re becoming more than you were before. Discomfort is a sign that you’re growing.

Discomfort is the reason I decided to undergo my Year of Living Without â€" I’m facing the things that make me uncomfortable (and so far, finding that it’s not hard at all).

While others stay in their comfort zone, I explore the unknown. And I treasure the experience.

The Habits of Happiness

‘Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.’ ~Dalai Lama

By Leo Babauta

I’m not one who believes you can be happy all the time, but I have learned you can be happy much of the time.

And that’s not something that depends on how your day is going or how others treat you â€" it depends on what you do on a regular basis.

I remember being unhappy most days, at one point in my life. It wasn’t because I hated the people in my life â€" I had a lovely wife, great kids, other wonderful family members and friends. It was because I was unhappy with myself, and that caused growing debt problems, unhappiness with my job, health problems and more. I felt like I couldn’t change any of that.

Then one day I sat down and made a list.

I make a lot of lists â€" it’s one of my favorite habits â€" but this list seemed to have a magical power. It was a list of the things I was grateful for. Amazingly, there were a lot of things on the list, from things about my wife, kids, relatives, and friends, to things about my job, about nature around me, about my life.

This list was magical because I went from feeling a bit depressed about everything, and hopeless and helpless, to much happier. My mindset shifted from the things I didn’t like or didn’t have, to the things I was really happy I had. And I was in control.

Since then I’ve experimented with a number of habits and have found a couple things to be true:

1. A handful of activities can actually make you happy.
2. If you incorporate them into your life on a regular basis (make them into habits), you’ll be happier regularly.

And those might seem to be small realizations, but actually they’re huge.

The Habits That Make You Happy

So what habits make you happy? Try doing these on a daily basis, and see if you get the same results:

1. List 3 Good Things. Eva & I started a daily evening ritual, at about 7pm each day, where we take a moment to tell each other three good things about our day. We didn’t invent this, but it serves as at least one time in your day when you focus on what you’re grateful for. This can create a mental habit of gratitude that you can use other times in your day, when you’re focused on the things you don’t like or have â€" when you feel this, think about something you do have, that you love. Find a way to be grateful, and you’re happier.
2. Help Someone. When we focus on ourselves, and the woeful state of our lives, we are self-centered. This shrinks the world to one little place with one little unhappy person. But what if we can expand that worldview, and expand our heart to include at least one other person? Maybe even a few others? Then we see that others are suffering too, even if that just means they’re stressed out. Then we can reach out, and do something to reduce their stress, put a smile on their face, make their lives easier. Help at least one person each day, and you’ll find your entire perspective shifted.
3. Meditate. I’ve called this the Fundamental Habit, because it affects everything else. Meditate for just 2 minutes a day, and you’ll create a habit that will allow you to notice your thoughts throughout the rest of the day, that will help you to be more present (unhappiness comes from not being present), that will help you notice the source of anxiety and distraction. That’s a lot that can be accomplished in 2 minutes! Sit every morning when you wake, and just notice your body, and then your breath. Notice when your mind wanders, and gently return to your breath. You become the watcher of your mind, and you’ll learn some useful things, I promise.
4. Exercise. Everyone knows you should exercise, so I’m not going to belabor this point. But it really does make you happier, both in the moment of exercise (I’m exerting myself, I’m alive!) and throughout the rest of the day. Exercise lightly, if you’re not in the habit yet, and just for a few minutes a day to start out. Who doesn’t have a few minutes a day? If you don’t, you need to loosen up your schedule a bit.

There are a number of other habits that also help: mindful eating, drinking tea, doing yoga, socializing with others. But these incorporate meditation (they’re more active forms of meditation), and exercise and helping others and gratitude (if you’re doing it right). So I wanted to list the most basic habits, and then you can expand to other areas.

How do you form these habits? One at a time, starting as small as possible, with some social accountability.

Set these habits in motion. You’ll notice yourself becoming more present, more grateful, more other-focused. The shift that results is nothing short of a miracle.