How to reach beyond the easy and pleasant
Three essential steps to venture into uncomfortable places
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Research suggests that embracing discomfort is essential for mastering new skills and expanding your horizon. That’s all well and good, you might say. But how can I bring myself to leave the safe places behind and advance in unfamiliar and even scary territory?
Here are three suggestions from psychologists to approach scary tasks with more ease:
#1: Know why you want to do it
In his book Reach Andy Molinsky, Professor of Organizational Behavior and International Management at Brandeis University, describes conviction as an essential resource for reaching beyond the easy and pleasant.
Conviction is a deep belief in the purpose of what you’re doing — that this purpose is legitimate and valid and worth enduring strain or stress to achieve. Without unlocking your own personal source of conviction it’s unlikely you will be truly motivated to make behavior change work.
A sense of purpose can come from many sources, Molinsky explains. Some people are motivated by the wish to get ahead in their own life. For example, you might enroll in a scary public speaking class because you want to boost your low self-esteem or become a broadcaster. Others are inspired to step outside their comfort zone to help others. For example, you might engage in fundraising for a cause you strongly support, although you regard asking strangers for money as a challenging and odious task.
Steven Hayes, professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno, also stresses the importance of values. “There is no yearning more important to human beings than to freely pick and pursue our life direction. A clear sense of self-directed meaning provides us with an essentially inexhaustible supply of motivation,” he writes in his book A Liberated Mind.
Hayes describes several tools which help to figure out what your most important values are. One that I find particularly intriguing is called: Writing your Story. “Imagine that the next year is going to be a key year in defining who you are in your life,” Hayes explains. “If you were to become more fully you during this year, while at the same time still supporting those you care about, what would your process of ‘becoming more fully you’ look like over this next year? Where do you wish to grow? What kind of person are you yearning to be? If you were writing the chapter of the next year of your life, what would the theme be?” And then you write for about 10 minutes about the next year and what you hope to become.
#2: Make it your own
A second important step is what Molinsky calls customization. Don’t just copy what others are doing; make intimidating projects your own. Customization is “the ability to adjust and tweak the way you perform the task to make it more comfortable and natural for you,” Molinsky explains. “It’s like adapting a recipe to fit your needs or altering a pair of pants to fit your waist. We often make these slight but meaningful adjustments to personalize things in our lives, and there’s no difference with behavior flexing. You can customize the way you perform the behavior, so it fits just right — or, at least, feels comfortable enough to give it a go.”
An example: Let’s say helping underprivileged people is an important value for you and an area in which you want to engage more. But you also find this daunting. You have little experience with disadvantaged people and are afraid you might find it difficult to connect on a personal level. You can make the venture more approachable by picking a cause that aligns with your talents and interests. Is gardening your preferred pastime? Why not sign up as a mentor in a communal garden program that teaches kids from disadvantaged families how to grow vegetables? Are you a retired lawyer? You could volunteer in a non-profit organization that helps refugees to tackle the maze of immigration laws. You might feel awkward at first, but chances are your enthusiasm and knowledge will take you along.
#3: Don’t step into your own traps
Finally, be aware of all the tricks we as humans play on ourselves. You might have good intentions to tackle a difficult task but then find ways not to do it.
Let’s say you are a shy person and want to challenge yourself to socialize more. One trap is avoidance, as Molinsky explains. It doesn’t have to be full-on avoidance, as in not going to any networking event or meet-up group at all. There is also a stealth form, in which you do the task only half-heartedly: You join the book club but then sit around silently, hoping nobody will address you. Or you keep procrastinating, telling yourself that you will sign up for the tennis class as soon as the work schedule slows down – which of course, it never will.
Another trap is distorted or exaggerated thinking. “We take the legitimate fears we have and pump them up to a level that feels practically intolerable,” Molinsky writes. “We focus on our limitations and liabilities when in reality even challenging situations have shades of gray. We might genuinely struggle with certain elements of a situation but find other parts exciting or interesting or possible.”
So how do we keep spinning-out-of-control thoughts in check? Stepping away from the situation can help us get a more detached vantage point so that we can honestly explore how we feel about a situation. You can go for a long walk, Molinsky suggests, or practice self-reflection by journaling about a stressful situation.
Hayes calls the process of putting the mind on a leash defusion and describes various helpful tools to achieve it. One I find particularly helpful is giving your mind a name and listening to it politely. You can pick any name you like, he explains: “Even Mr. Mind or Ms. Mind will do. Now say hello to your mind using its new name, as if you’re being introduced to it at a dinner party.”
This strategy may sound a little odd, but if your mind has a name, Hayes writes, it is different from you, it is ‘someone else’. “When you listen to someone else, you can choose to agree with what they say or not, and if you don’t want to cause conflict, it’s best not to try to argue the person into agreement with you. That is the posture you want to take with your internal voice.” So acknowledge that Mr. or Ms. Mind are talking to you, but don’t engage with them – and if they tell you, you can’t do something scary, do it anyway.
In Short:
Benefits of embracing discomfort:
Add spice to your life: Having done something challenging is exhilarating.
Discover new passions: You might like the things you dread!
Make progress: Discomfort is a sign that you are learning.
How to succeed in leaving the comfort zone:
Explore your values: Know why you want to take on challenging projects.
Customize: Make frightening tasks your own.
Avoid traps: Watch out for the sneaky ways your mind lures you into avoidance.
Books & other resources
> Andy Molinsky: Reach. A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence.
Avery, New York 2017.
In his well-structured and insightful book, Molinsky focuses mainly on work-related challenges, but his explanations and suggestions are helpful for personal projects, too.
> www.andymolinsky.com
On his website, Molinsky shares resources like a list of essential questions, various quizzes, and a podcast.
>Steven C. Hayes: A Liberated Mind. How to Pivot Towards What matters. Avery, New York 2019.
Interweaving the story of his personal struggles with insights from decades-long research, Hayes explains how you can gain more psychological flexibility using the strategies of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which he originated. Psychological flexibility, he explains, is “the ability to feel and think with openness and to move your life in directions that are important to you.” It “allows us to turn towards our discomfort in a non-judgmental and compassionate way at the places in ourselves and our lives where we hurt.”
>www.stevenchayes.com/my-act-toolkit/
On his website, Steven Hayes offers a helpful toolkit that includes various strategies for defusion and exploring values as well as for the other elements of ACT, namely acceptance, presence, self, and committed action.
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