The Beauty of Discomfort: How What We Avoid Is What We Need by Amanda Lang

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. 

The Power of Why by Amanda Lang

All quotes from Amanda's book

Innovation is simpler than you think. 

70 percent of creativity is related to environment, which means that it's entirely possible for just about anyone to learn to think more innovatively. 

The reality is that before anyone can do anything innovative or original, there's got to be a sense of wonder or at least a spark of interest, and a whole bunch of questions. 

Curiosity requires the courage to risk being wrong -- which, in the end, doesn't require all that much courage if you don't view being wrong as catastrophic. 

Curiosity doesn't determine a particular path in life; it just makes it more likely that you'll choose the one that's right for you rather than doing what you think you ought to want to do, or what will win approval from others. 

Our natural instinct, particularly when a problem is serious, is to find a fix and try to implement it right away.  But the risk is that we never get to the questions that will deliver the real payoff: the big, essential insights that point to a new path forward. 

Even when risk is unavoidable, human beings tend to prioritize security and predictability. 

Don't conclude that the problem as it's first presented, or as you first perceive it, is indeed the actual problem. 

If you don't know what you're good at, it's hard to know how or where to begin trying to make yourself even better, or how to take advantage of new opportunities.  Self-knowledge clarifies ways to stretch and improve, by highlighting strengths that are being underutilized or could be used to achieve different ends (and revealing blind spots and weaknesses that may be derailing progress).  

Failure promotes success only if you actually take the time to analyze your mistakes. 

The less willing you are to make mistakes, the more likely you may be to make them because you've narrowed your mind and drastically reduced your openness to new opportunities. 

Easier is sticking with the status quo.  Getting to "more interesting" requires stretching past what's safe and predictable and venturing into the unknown, to learn something new. 

Try to see the world through your customers' eyes (even if you don't have any customers). 

Thinking about what other people need from you as a job you are trying to perform can help you figure out the little changes that will make a big difference. 

"What do others need from me?" is a question that, in the business world, drives successful innovation. 

Curiosity is the antidote to complacency, but only if you act on whatever it is you discover.