Embrace Discomfort for Your Health

colinchamp February 7, 2021 3 Comments

The news tells us of constant murders, car crashes, covid deaths, terrorism, you name it. Yet, statistics tell us something entirely different – the biggest threat is us. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity, alcoholism, and many other major threats to our health are at our hands.

So why the negative message this month? Mostly because this message is not negative at all, at least at its core. This means good news; we may not be able to control many components of our environment, but we have control over ourselves. Our greatest threats are under our control. We can positively impact them – we can minimize these finite games on the news, and play the infinite game. This is extremely good news, especially because controlling our heath is not only important for empowering ourselves, but it helps others.

Social media and the news may tell us something different, but famous Stoics have been describing this for millennia. And while we are on the topic of the Stoics, they often preached a message that would suggest we embrace discomfort instead of avoiding it or claim victim to it. When approaching our health, the Stoics may have been on point with these views. Juli and I were recently talking about the aspects of our lives where we are, by popular belief, pushing ourselves beyond expectations, but in reality are coasting. There were more than a few areas.

Oftentimes we turn to societal averages to measures ourselves. Yet, we all have varying levels of skills and aptitude and would certainly expect that we excel in some areas and lag behind in others. Yet, if we only view those areas where we excel, we may give ourselves the false impression that we are excelling overall. Such views allow us to coast while we convince ourselves otherwise.

For instance, running long distances or engaging in machine-based resistance training workouts are not easy, can be uncomfortable from the burn within fatiguing muscles from acid buildup (which acid depends on who you talk to), and the majority of society does not even engage in any impactful resistance training. If we are doing these activities, it is easy then to convince ourselves we are excelling. Yet, I would argue that for many people, this is coasting. For me it was. Pushing to next level training utilizing compound movements is a whole different level of discomfort. Dead-lifts, squats, and then Olympic lifts that require the movement of nearly every joint in the body leave you totally annihilated – oftentimes regardless of the weight used (even Aurelia is getting into kettlebells at only 14 months, as you can see from the picture above…). They are very uncomfortable, which is why I did not do them very often early in my lifetime. I was coasting in the gym. Nowadays, even though I am older, weaker, smaller, and have less time, workouts without lifts utilizing compound movements feel like a warmup and leave me missing something. I added them and, over time, realized I was coasting in the past. As a result, I am actually more mobile and less injury-prone than I was in my prime. I have come to embrace the discomfort. My reward is long-term benefits that those prone to instant gratification will barely notice (i.e. like me often in the past). Lesson learned – embrace discomfort.

We also see this in daily life, from school to our jobs. I have trained and worked with geniuses that seem driven, but I would still argue they are coasting. Their aptitude is at a different level, leaving them highly successful, but they rarely question things and dig deeper. They began at a level much higher than a large portion of society (lucky them). They remember all the studies and the details of the studies, but when it comes to questioning these details, the methods, or the results, they shut it down. They coast. They avoid the compound lifts and settle in the comfort zone of their mental machine workout. They avoid the discomfort of delving into free-weights and goblet squat jumps and instead sit on the leg extension machine. They feel some burn in their quads, providing them gratification and allowing them to feel like they are pushing themselves. In reality, they are avoiding discomfort and selling themselves short, and it’s noticeable to those of us that work with them. It’s obvious they are falling short of their capabilities along with their real goals. Embrace discomfort, even if it’s in your thoughts and views.

The most rewarding road traveled is not the easy one.

I see this often with our health. I see it with our tendency to rely on dietary and other guidelines, instead of digging deep, taking our health into our own hands, and realizing they need blown up. I see it with our consumption habits, with our underwhelming workouts, and most important of all, I see that they are all linked. And of course, I was/am part of this. But at the end of the day, when I began to embrace physical and mental discomfort, I became liberated. I realized that if I was willing to push myself to physical discomfort in the gym and mental discomfort in my work by challenging sacred cows, the rewards are plenty. I realized I wasn’t chained to food by eating a million small meals a day and always feeling hungry, I realized I didn’t have to chug away on the treadmill or through long jogs that made my knees feel like someone was rubbing sandpaper in my joints, I realized something as simple as shutting off the convenience of watching television at night allowed me to sleep better. I realized all of these things because I pushed myself and embraced discomfort.

This is likely why so many people have embraced intermittent fasting, heavy lifting, cross-fit and other intense activities that test our minds and bodies over a finite period instead of a constant grind. These individuals took uncomfortable steps but, in the end, saw the benefits of embracing discomfort.

I challenge you all to dig deeper, to avoid coasting, and to welcome and embrace discomfort. I also promise you will get used to it and learn to enjoy it. Then reap the benefits.

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