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LittleMight

are you too comfortable? 😬

Published over 1 year ago • 3 min read

C’mon, admit it.

You’ve been sucked into buying something because it promises a great result in “12 easy steps”.

The daily march to self-growth requires simple, iterative actions.

If it were easy, everyone on the planet would be a self-actualized, productive, and empathetic human being. We’d be living John Lennon’s idealistic Imagine!

Self-growth is damned hard

The fact you’re even reading this email tells me you’re interested in improving your life, so high-fives all around! Go you!

If you’re avoiding discomfort at all costs, you can read all the self-growth advice you want, but you’ll never experience growth. It’s like Derek Sivers said in Tools of Titans:

If information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

How do I know this?

The secret to the life I have now is this: "I chose discomfort."

What does this mean? It means I moved beyond doing comfortable things so I could expand my horizons. This meant meeting new people, learning new business skills, and gaining more confidence.

You would be horrified if you saw the first time I ever spoke on camera. I was a mess (my own brother told me as much).

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Imagine you saw an adult crawling along the floor. "He never learned to walk because it was too uncomfortable." It would be very weird, right?

Everything we do now was, at one point, new. When we're young, our parents push us past our limits to develop and learn new skills.

Now that we're older, we need a peer group to push us beyond our limits so we continue to grow!

When we find ourselves making excuses or procrastinating, we also need to improve our ability to ignore our brains.

Our brain runs on ancient hardware that isn't used to dealing with the same problems it was built for. No longer are we faced with the problem of running through the jungle to avoid a saber-tooth tiger.

The #1 job of our brain is to keep us safe. When we want to try something new and change our life, our brain tries to resist. It thinks this unknown thing could be dangerous. Why risk it?

This is our lizard brain sending us signals.

That's why you come up with reasons and excuses not to do things. We've all been there; we either procrastinate or make excuses.

Thankfully, we humans now have the ability to reason and to think rationally. This gives us the ability to shush our lizard brains with a little practice.

Optimal Discomfort

There are two ways in which we experience discomfort:

  1. When something is new to us
  2. When something is distressing to us

Our brain often interprets both things the same and sends out an alert. This is not good for our growth!

It's important to distinguish when you are making decisions based on 1. vs. 2.

To maximize your performance, you must get into an "optimal" anxiety state. This happens just a bit outside your comfort zone.

This is where you're motivated to succeed but not too far outside your comfort zone. Stretch your discomfort too far, and your performance will dive, you will lose confidence, and your lizard brain will balk.

For example, if you've never recorded yourself on video before:

🤳 Optimal anxiety; recording an IG story
😳 Too far: A live interview with CNBC

The more comfortable you get with exploring new things, the more aware you will be of how much you are capable of. From there, your comfort zone will be ever-expansive!

One way I practice discomfort daily is by hopping into a freezer-turned-ice tub. You could start with a cold shower. Maybe you don’t want to do something that crazy. No problem.

Instead, make a list of activities that make you feel uncomfortable. Choose one that you’re ready to tackle, and build a plan.

Let’s stick with the cold shower example:

  • At the end of your next shower, turn the temperature down until it feels “chilly” but not really uncomfortable. Stay in it for 30 seconds.
  • Next time, turn the gauge all the way to cold and stay in it for 15 seconds.
  • Continue ending your showers with an increased duration of cold water exposure. Two minutes is a great time to work toward!
  • Once you’ve crushed optimal discomfort in one area, it’s time to tackle the next.

Mastering discomfort over and over increases confidence.

Each time you do something uncomfortable you're building up your chip stack so you can take bigger and bigger bets.

The more you practice, the stronger you become. You will see discomfort as a fun challenge, thus telling your lizard brain to “take a seat” because your true self is in control now.

More on this leveling up idea here:


If you have a discomfort challenge you’re ready to take on, reply to this email and tell me about it! I’d be thrilled to send a quick word of encouragement back to you.

Thanks again for reading my newsletter. If you think it can help another person, will you send it to them? Just forward this email or share on Twitter! If you do, please tag me @cathrynlavery.

Onward to discomfort,

Cathryn

P.S. Let me know what you’re choosing discomfort for in favor of personal growth. For me, it’s around my diet, I’ll share more if you let me know what you’re doing 😁

LittleMight

Cathryn Lavery

💰 Sold over $45 million DTC 👉🏻 Topics: Business, Personal growth, Money & Life Tips ⚡️ Bootstrapped founder of @bestselfco (acquired 2022)

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