I’m currently living in a very uncomfortable place. I don’t mean my home. I mean mentally. If you’ve followed this blog, you know that I’m working on a professional shift that also involves changing quite a bit of how I view myself.
I’m pushing myself into uncomfortable places by starting to build a presence on Linked In and doing some cold outreach for writing opportunities.
Three zones, one goal
In coaching, there are three zones. The comfort zone, the discomfort zone and the impossible zone. I want to get my clients into the discomfort zone because that is where learning happens.
Stretch too far and the individual fails and becomes discouraged. The change feels impossible.
Stretch not enough and no real learning happens – though the client might believe they’ve improved something.
To really learn or improve you need to get into the discomfort zone. Last week I talked about inflection versus reflection.
Many people start to become comfortable thinking about change. You need to embrace discomfort to actually make the change happen.
My comfort zone
I’m an introvert. I’ve both earned that definition and used it as a shield.
It’s also not entirely true. In Todd Rose’s (no relation) “The End of Average,” he brings context into play. Someone can be introverted in general, but tend towards extroversion in some scenarios while being especially introverted in others.
When I first read this section of his book, I understood myself.
Put me in a bowling center delivering a clinic or speaking at the World Coaching Conference and you would almost certainly mistake me for an extrovert.
Put me in a party full of random stranger or lurking on Linked In, unsure of who to talk to and what you say? Now it takes a great deal of willpower and courage for me to jump in and speak up.
Embracing discomfort
This blog is also pretty uncomfortable. I’ve written two books (about bowling) over a hundred articles (about bowling) and I blogged for years (about bowling) but this is different.
This one is more personal, sharing more of my journey as both a coach and a writer, and my struggles along the way. I’m trying to impart some wisdom, discuss the steps and mindset hurdles that everyone faces, and often using myself as an example.
As my kids have both left the baby stage I find myself struggling a bit more as a father than when they were infants. That shit was a cake walk, if a bit of a sleepless one.
I can only get better by embracing the discomfort of facing that reality.
As a husband and partner, I think of how to be better. I think about the foundation we built when we were younger and what cracks we left there in our ignorance and bliss.
We’re working on fixing those to continue building this life together, and that is extremely uncomfortable.
Moving forward through discomfort
I often think back to one of my college classes where I learned about the product life cycle. (I know that was a random statement, sometimes there isn’t a good segue. Stick with me here!)
Put briefly, successful products will have a development period followed by a growth phase, then peak, and then start to fall.
Companies try to lengthen the growth phase by adding features. Or, they jump off the old curve and onto a new one. That period of changing curves is one of stress and upheaval.
It’s the discomfort zone in action.
It’s legacy media moving to streaming after being disrupted by Netflix.
It’s Coca-Cola changing their formula to New Coke in response to Pepsi (and then changing it back).
Personal life cycle shifts
As people, we’re faced with similar challenges. In sports, at work, and in relationships, we’ll have periods of relatively easy growth and success. Eventually, we find ourselves needing change.
- Relationships get stale unless you change the dynamic.
- Athletes plateau and need new training to unlock further improvement.
- Entrepreneurs stagnate and their numbers go flat.
Whether we’re forced into it or because we recognize it ourselves, we enter that discomfort zone. We need to change and grow before our curve falls off a cliff.
Discomfort leads to growth
As a coach, it’s what I strive to help my clients with.
As a human moving through that uncomfortable fog right now, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. I’d like to think this will make me even more sympathetic to my clients’ journeys.
I’m still looking for my groove but here I am. Uncomfortable. Trying.
The only place growth happens is in the discomfort zone. At least by that measure, I know that I’m growing.
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