If you
cannot tolerate discomfort, you cannot get better at things that are difficult.
You cannot achieve your won goals. You cannot grow.
Gifted children, who experience success early, often exhibit less
confidence, possibly because they’re aware that they didn’t exert much effort
to achieve results. What they haven’t
learned is how to try hard at things, fail, then pick themselves up and try
again – essential skills not just in school but in life. In other words, they
are less likely to be comfortable with discomfort, which may help explain why
prodigies rarely go on to become creative geniuses.
The prodigy, long accustomed to approval and gold stars, must get
comfortable with discomfort: uncertainty, wrong turns, the possibility of
failure, and the certainty of the occasional disappointment.
People spend 47% of their time thinking about something other than
the present moment.
If you interpret your discomfort as threatening – or obsess about it
instead of focusing on your goal – you will suddenly be living in a world of
pain.
Our frame of mind dramatically influences how we respond to our
circumstances.
Reframing discomfort can be as simple as casting it in the best
possible light.
The right degree of stress will build resilience.
Gratitude and forgiveness are...the twin pillars of happiness.
Happiness... Is an individual choice. We choose to cultivate an
attitude that promotes it, or we don't.
"What's next?" is a question that inevitably follows
change -- and for most of us, it's one of the scariest questions of all. We
shrink from the unknown and the ambiguous. We prefer the certain, the
well-trodden, the understood.
Anxiety really is the enemy of progress and basically shuts the gate
on learning. The problem isn't discomfort with challenge and change, but how we
respond to and manage -- or don't manage it. If the response is to freak out,
discomfort becomes a real obstacle to growth and development.
How do we resist the gravitational pull of comfort? One way is
simply to think about comfort as a trap, not a cushion -- as something that may
harm you in the long run.
Change hasn't been accomplished... until you prove that you can
maintain it.
Making the unconscious conscious isn't easy because we are fearful
of uncertainty -- our brains dislike ambiguity intensely -- we cling to the
status quo.... The secret is to be aware of that weakness, observe where it
affects us, and then stop.
