Choose Your Discomfort Wisely: Why Growth Lives on the Other Side of Comfort

Have you ever noticed how we're always chasing comfort? We want the easier choice, quick fixes, immediate satisfaction. But here's the irony: while we're chasing comfort, we're often stuck in discomfort. The discomfort of feeling sluggish, stuck, or unhappy with our choices and their results.

What if I challenged you to start choosing discomfort instead? What if leaning into hard things, whether it's a challenging workout, cooking when you feel like ordering out, or resisting the urge to indulge, was the key to the freedom you're seeking?

Consider this: What's more uncomfortable - the hard work of change or the regret of staying the same?

Deep down, you already know the answer. The trick is understanding why we chase comfort, how it keeps us stuck, and how embracing the right kind of discomfort can help you grow, transform, and create the life you truly want.

Why We're Wired to Avoid What We Need

Most people on wellness journeys are chasing something deeper than pounds lost or inches gone. We're craving lives where we feel vibrant, strong, in control, and not consumed with thoughts about food or weight every day.

But often when pursuing change, we try building that future life using tools from our past. We rely on old beliefs and patterns. Sure, we might try new diets or exercise programs, but underlying beliefs and habits lurk beneath the surface.

We rely on outdated approaches because they feel safe. This is actually a way of avoiding the discomfort of truly examining and changing the thoughts and habits that hold us back.

Meaningful change requires not just new actions, but willingness to face the discomfort of questioning beliefs we've carried for years.

Think back to meaningful changes in your life - learning new skills, starting jobs, becoming parents. They all came with discomfort because growth requires it. It's not optional. Yet we're wired to avoid it because our brains prioritize safety and familiarity. Discomfort feels like threat, even when it's exactly what we need.

The Hidden Cost of Comfort-Seeking

Avoiding discomfort isn't free. When you avoid the discomfort of setting boundaries, you pay in resentment. When you avoid the discomfort of saying no to junk food, you pay in guilt and poor health. When you avoid the discomfort of working out, you pay in lost strength and energy.

Research from books like "Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb reveals that we actually thrive when exposed to appropriate stressors, uncertainty, and challenges. The opposite - being protected from all difficulty - leads to stagnation or deterioration. As complex humans, we can weaken when deprived of growth-inducing stressors.

Our modern world creates fragility through excessive comfort and convenience. We're depriving our systems of beneficial stress while replacing it with chronic stressors and convenience dependencies.

As "The Comfort Crisis" notes: "We are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, under-challenged, safety-netted lives. And it's limiting the degree to which we experience our 'one wild and precious life.'"

Science shows that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, depression, anxiety, and fundamental issues like lack of meaning and purpose.

The question isn't "Can I avoid discomfort?" It's "Which discomfort am I willing to choose?"

My Journey From False Comfort to Growth

My path to poor health was rooted in chronic stress. I turned to food for what seemed like comfort - false comfort. Netflix and convenience foods became escapes. I avoided harder workouts because I felt too stressed or tired.

Instead of addressing thoughts and emotions, I stuffed them down and numbed myself with shopping, eating, or distracting entertainment. This left me overweight, unhappy, stressed out, and increasingly fragile physically, emotionally, and mentally.

The turning point came when I realized something crucial: I was already uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in my body, with my energy levels, with how I felt about myself. But I was so focused on avoiding the discomfort of change that I couldn't see the discomfort I was already living in.

I had been choosing the discomfort of stagnation over the discomfort of growth.

Two Types of Discomfort

Unproductive Discomfort: This comes from staying stuck. It's low-grade dissatisfaction when you're not living in alignment with values or goals. It's frustration from knowing you're capable of more but not taking action. This discomfort compounds over time without creating growth.

Productive Discomfort: This leads to growth. It's soreness after workouts, vulnerability in tough conversations, or challenge of resisting cravings. This discomfort feels hard momentarily but builds your future self.

The key is recognizing which type you're experiencing and consciously choosing the one that serves your growth.

Why We Avoid What Helps Us

Sometimes discomfort feels unbearable, often due to old beliefs and fears we haven't examined. These fears are normal but they're stories your brain tells to protect you from perceived risks.

Fear can't predict the future; it only reflects limits of your current mindset. Staying safe often means staying stuck, and safety isn't the same as fulfillment.

The irony is that clinging to old beliefs can create the very outcomes we're trying to avoid. Fear of failure keeps us from trying and guarantees stagnation. Fear of judgment isolates us in perfectionism bubbles. Fear of the unknown locks us out of discovering our capabilities.

The solution isn't eliminating fear but feeling it and acting anyway, knowing fear is part of growth, not a barrier to it.

Three Tools for Embracing Productive Discomfort

1. Reframe Discomfort as Success

Instead of seeing discomfort as wrong, see it as very right. You're growing. When you're halfway through a tough workout wanting to quit, remind yourself: "This is where the magic happens. This discomfort is making me stronger."

2. Start Small and Build Confidence

You don't need to overhaul everything overnight. Start with manageable challenges. Maybe skip dessert one night weekly or take a 10-minute walk after dinner. Success builds confidence, making bigger challenges feel less intimidating.

3. Decide in Advance

In the moment, we'll always choose easier, more comfortable options because of how brains are wired. When you decide ahead of time what you'll eat, when you'll exercise, meditate, or meal plan, you're choosing with your thinking brain activated.

Don't let yourself make easier decisions in the moment. Honor the stronger version who already made that choice and stick to it, knowing you'll never make the harder choice if you leave it to present-moment you.

Choosing Your Discomfort Daily

In Weight Loss: The discomfort of skipping drive-thru after long days is real. So is the discomfort of feeling sluggish and out of control. Which will you choose?

Exercise: Starting workout routines feels daunting. So does feeling weak or breathless when you want to play with kids or hike with friends. Which discomfort will you choose?

Sleep: Saying no to one more episode feels like missing out. So does being too tired the next day to make healthy choices, feeling sluggish and craving quick energy all day. Which discomfort will you choose?

Your Path Forward

Growth is a choice, and so is stagnation. Every day, you're either moving closer to who you want to be or further away. The discomfort of change isn't easy, but it's worth it. It's the discomfort that leads to strength, resilience, and freedom.

Think about one small, uncomfortable action you can take today. Maybe it's planning meals for the week, going for a walk when you'd rather sit on the couch, or being honest about what you want and what's holding you back.

You're capable of so much more than you realize. Discomfort isn't your enemy. It's your path to the body you love living in and the life you want to create.

Choose your discomfort wisely.

Ready to transform your relationship with discomfort and embrace growth? Listen to the full episode of Wellness Mastery with Jen Hoyer for more strategies on choosing productive discomfort over comfortable stagnation.

Listen to Episode 14: Choose Your Discomfort Wisely