The Joy Of Self-Inflicted Discomfort

I’d forgotten about the video.

I’m not sure if she was aware of the Ice Bucket Challenge back in the summer of 2014, but there she was with a purple plastic bucket of cold water in her hands and on the count of three she dumped it over her head. 

“How did it feel?” asked her amused Dad.

“Good!” she excitedly replied as she ran off to go play with her friends.

Six year olds live life on a different level, don’t they? A precious age when we’re open to possibility and wonder and not yet worried about how we look while doing so.

Making ourselves intentionally uncomfortable goes against the grain of what we tend to strive for in life. So much of the lives we work to create is geared towards make life more convenient, more comfortable. 

Sometimes life throws a bucket of cold water on the life we are building, the unexpected frigidity upending the comfort we have long sought and worked for. 

But how often are we willing to intentionally throw a bucket of cold water on the parts of our lives which have become quite comfortable but no longer ideal? 

Most of my significant person growth spurts have come from moments when I’ve dumped buckets of cold water over my own head, in the form of making new uncomfortable decisions to address segments of my life where my comfort was no longer serving me. Embracing sobriety, committing to wellness in diet and exercise, even a later in life career change…each decision uncomfortable and contrary to the life I had created for myself. Each of these decisions would change the trajectory of my life. Each started with a willingness to intentionally suffer through the initial pains inherent with any meaningful change understanding that while stagnation is always a much more comfortable path, such comfortable stagnation will never get me where I was intended to go.

It is rather ironic that willingly accepting intentional discomfort creates its own level of comfort.

The pain is temporary.

The results can change a life.

It starts with being willing to do so.

Photo by Martin Robles on Unsplash