Being Uncomfortable

The concept of training is familiar to every athlete. There are countless ways in which to train; a plethora of strategies and schools of thought on how to go about it. However, they all have at least one common element: in order to improve, the trainee must commit to making himself uncomfortable in every session, day after day after day. In fact, my dad once said he thought of that point where you get uncomfortable as the starting point of the workout, and the pushing you do after that is the deciding element for the gains you make. Every workout, the athlete willingly takes on a load (be it weight, time, distance, etc.) that is progressively more difficult. The goal is that bearing a certain load become much easier and the athlete become more proficient at bearing it. Another common element of training is one that is pretty obvious but still important: timing. You have to train–choose to take on the load–with a fair amount of foresight; you have to start training long before the time comes to perform.

It works. Athletes do amazing things; sure, sometimes they perform at levels so much higher than they have ever trained, but no 'great' will ever tell you they got where they are without dedication to their training.

One day I started thinking things like this: Why do I not train myself in every aspect of daily life in which I want to perform at a higher level? If I really want it to be easier to bear a load, then why wouldn't I take on the load willingly long before it becomes necessary? And most especially, why would I expect the load to be easy once it comes if I didn't train for it? In other words, how naive do I have to be in order to be surprised when life isn't easy?

So here is my idea: Since hard things in life make us uncomfortable–and I often wonder if that is what bothers us about them–then becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable is something for which we can train. Everyday, pick harmless things to do that will make you uncomfortable and force yourself to take them on. Take an ice-cold shower simply because. Run up every flight of stairs you find. Sit with and talk to the most awkward person in the room and really dive into the conversation. Sleep on the floor with the lights on. Spend a night in the woods with nothing but what you happen to have on your person. Whatever makes you uncomfortable for no good reason, make yourself do it.

Of course, I don't know if this actually works because I'm too comfortable with how things are to really commit to it, but I am convinced that if I were to do this everyday for the rest of my life, I would be positively unflappable in just a few short years. Our modern lives find us obsessed with comfort–what if we learned to revel in discomfort?