Being Uncomfortable

 

Standing on the football field, feeling my rapid breath as I finish a series of shuttle runs, I found myself thinking about the fine line between pushing ourselves too much or too little. The middle way sounds most reasonable, but sometimes we think the middle way should be comfortable. Often, it is not. The middle way takes compromise. The middle way isn't caught in binary ideas. It tends to have more complexity. The middle way requires awareness, some opening, often surrendering, and a lot of compassion.

What feels true to my experience is that if I didn't allow myself to be uncomfortable, I would never get stronger. I would never take chances. I would never learn. I would never create. I would never feel full. I would never reach past myself to understand and to love. 

As 2023 gets underway, you may already be finding that the aspirations, the intentions, the deep longings you made conscious to start the year are now facing the reality of being more difficult to act on. That seed you planted to be kinder to yourself, to have more joy, ease, connection, self-care, etc., may feel harder to water than you expected. It's in that spot in the garden where the hose just doesn't reach. And that's ok. It's ok because if it is something you really want for yourself, it means it requires some learning and some effort to find a way, and those tend to be uncomfortable.

It's so easy to make what's uncomfortable "wrong." As if something we want "shouldn't" feel that way. But what if we allow ourselves to feel discomfort, not judge it, or get stuck in it, but instead flow with it? What we can find is that we move past that initial unpleasantness, but not by trying to. It just happens by letting ourselves feel what's difficult and be in it without adding more onto it. Suddenly, we are doing the thing that felt out of reach -- the thing that we wanted to do or grow. We learn we can be uncomfortable as we help ourselves manifest what we want. 

My invitation this week is to practice feeling the challenge that comes around the things you want and not insist that it be easier when it's not. To not give up, not let discouragement push it away, not make its initial discomfort "wrong." I can let myself be out of breath. I can let myself mess up, fail completely, dust myself off, and start anew. It takes humility which I'll talk about more in the next A Mindful Pause. 

Here are two more thoughts. 1) If you are content with what is and it is not uncomfortable, then the invitation is simply to savor that contentment because that is such a nice place to land - to be content for a while. We can water that seed as well. 2) If you find yourself constantly in a place of discomfort, that's no fun. It's a good to ask if you are taking in all of what you have already created, received, accomplished, made possible and honored it? Have you paused enough to feel full from the goodness? Only you can give that to yourself and we must. No one wants to be in a constant state of being uncomfortable. I know I have gone through times of saying, I'm tired of being on the edge so often. I'd like to play it safe and that playing safe is to let myself enjoy what's here, not thinking I need to be more.

I am happy to be sharing with you again in this new year. Thank you for reading and trying on what speaks to you. I'll be back with the next A Mindful Pause in two weeks.

🙏
Jean