Why Fear of Discomfort Might Be Ruining Your Life

By Leo Babauta Think about the major problems in your life — 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...
Source: Zen Habits - Category: Life Coaches Authors: Tags: Habits Source Type: blogs