Comfortable Discomfort
Growing up, I was a notorious procrastinator who often left assignments until the very end and viewed studying as a purely optional exercise. Somehow, I was able to achieve slightly above-average grades throughout high school, which were thankfully enough for a university to give me a chance.
Let me be clear about one thing before I continue: the only reason I was able to achieve these grades was solely due to my environment. I was surrounded by intelligent, hardworking students in an accelerated math and science program, and in order to avoid being known as the "dumbest kid" in the class, they motivated me to put in more effort than I cared to. I was perfectly happy staying up until 3 AM playing video games and sleeping through my morning classes, but knowing that every other student in my program was getting 80s and 90s on every assignment, quiz, and test forced me to care just enough about my work to avoid this sort of embarrassment. If it weren't for my competitive nature and the students that surrounded me, I would've been fine with mediocre grades and likely never pursued university. For that, I am thankful.
Once I started my journey as an undergraduate student, however, I slowly began to learn that the same habits weren't enough. I started failing certain classes, gained weight, began drinking and smoking regularly, and ultimately stopped caring about my life, let alone my studies. I suffered and was on a path to failure, but I refused to acknowledge my problems and continued to self-medicate in any way possible. The thought of becoming a college dropout made me uncomfortable, but instead of confronting this feeling and facing it with a rational solution, I cowered and retreated to unhealthy remedies—ones that gave me immediate comfort, a false sense of security.
This lifestyle caused me to fall behind in my studies. I became dependent on alcohol, cannabis, and psychedelics to experience any glimpse of happiness and to avoid any sort of discomfort, especially the fear of failure. I isolated myself and created this false illusion that everything would be fine. I refused to change, which subsequently led to several mental breakdowns and eventually finding myself hospitalized at a psychiatric facility.
This was the darkest time of my life. The details of the experiences that followed are not important, but let me say this: I am truly grateful that I experienced it. At first, I viewed my hospitalization as another failure, but once I started to see it as an opportunity, my life changed for the better. It gave me a chance to reflect on my lifestyle, my choices, my dreams, my goals, and most importantly, my problems.
Throughout this process, after reflecting on my mistakes, I realized that I was a genuine coward. I realized that in the past, I would run from my problems and any sign of discomfort. It took me a long time to understand that discomfort is healthy for growth. It is an emotion that grounds you, and if given the opportunity, it allows you to observe reality in its truest nature, serving as man's greatest motivator.
I'm a firm believer that happiness is an emotion perceived based on past experiences of opposing emotions. I truly believe that no human can experience an infinite, constant feeling of happiness throughout their lifetime and still deem they were truly happy by the end of it. How can you ever be happy if you've never once suffered? Sure, you may argue that in this hypothetical model, a man can experience a monotonic state of pleasure at every given point in their lifetime, but I would argue that this person is no longer human. But that is beside the point.
There are two main points I'm trying to make here. Firstly, discomfort is unavoidable. At every stage in your life, you will be forced to endure uncomfortable experiences. There is no way to run. Running simply delays the consequences that will inevitably follow and leads you to live a false reality. For example, instead of studying in my first year of university, I decided to play video games, drink beer, smoke weed, or... the list goes on. I chose to avoid the slight discomfort of studying and assumed I'd be able to cram all the content at the end of the semester. This foolproof strategy of maximizing dopamine didn't pan out as well as I hoped, obviously. Secondly, discomfort gives you an opportunity to compare your current reality with the hypothetical reality in the case that you fail. This gives you time to reflect on the source of this discomfort and map out possible actions based on potential consequences. This is especially important because it serves as motivation to overcome the discomfort, and more often than not, there are rewards for overcoming these challenges. For example, if I were rational about my study habits, I'd know that I wouldn't be able to cram all my course content and would likely fail my courses. Knowing this, I'd realize that I'm better off studying every day and saving the fun stuff for the weekends. That way, I pass all my courses and never have to work at McDonald's again!
While I make all this sound very easy, I assure you that it's not. I spent the majority of my life running, and for that, I suffered the consequences. It takes a special sort of mindset to be comfortable with discomfort. Clearly, the phrase sounds counterintuitive, but I truly believe it is another aspect of our lives we can train so it becomes second nature. If we can learn to shift our mindset when encountering discomfort and train this behavior repeatedly, then in the future, we are guaranteed to face uncomfortable situations rationally and react logically.
There is a quote I really like from Viktor E. Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" that is analogous to this article, or at least similar in terms of the core concept. I'll leave it up to you to decide.
"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice." ― Viktor E. Frankl