Embracing Conscious Discomfort

I could never jump off the high diving board.

i could do lots of stuff in the water. I was super comfortable with handstands and trying to sink the unsinkable kickboards. Sometimes they’d put out long floating mats to run along and spray kids with a hose, or pull a rope swing down from the rafters for fifteen minutes at a time.

Then there were the pools with high diving boards.

I would pump myself up in bed the night before. I’d be giving myself mental peptalks in the back of the variety club van on the way there. I would fantasize about doing an incredible dive of Olympic caliber, all who were present would be totally blown away at my natural ability to fling myself from a great height with grace and precision.

I don’t know if I ever jumped off even one of them.

I distinctly remember climbing the ladder. I distinctly remember an icy feeling climbing my legs. I distinctly remember standing on the ledge, frozen and terrified. I distinctly remember chattering behind me as those awaiting their turn grew impatient with my hesitation.

I remember turning tail. I remember changing my mind. I remember sheepishly retreating back the way by which I had arrived and utterances from adults that it wasn’t a big deal to come back down the ladder, even if that hadn’t been the plan.

It wasn’t for lack of wanting, you understand.

I loved the idea of jumping off that ledge. I wholeheartedly believed that I was going to make it happen each and every time, too, but I got to that same position and it was just too uncomfortable to go through with. I was too scared.

Why do something so potentially dangerous, after all? Why risk a reasonably good, working body by throwing myself from the roof of the Canada games pool?

I conceded to the alarm bells in my head warning me to fear the unknown, maybe without even consciously realizing the process of measuring the risk vs the reward.

I believe in the same way it is counterintuitive to human nature to put ourselves into new and uncomfortable, possibly dangerous situations. We have adapted to strive for safety by giving preference to the familiar. When things are known, they are fairly predictable in nature and in predictability we find comfort. This is true even if the familiar circumstances we remain stuck in aren’t ideal in and of themselves.

You may have heard it said that growth doesn’t happen where we are comfortable. In effect, to enact a real and meaningful understanding of ourselves we need to put in a conscious effort to step into discomfort and to stay there awhile.

But so often, like my locked legs on a high platform above a lukewarm public pool, we give in to the feeling of fear that prevents us from truly becoming.

I don’t believe the universe means for us to maintain an easy existence. I don’t believe I want to waste any more time enduring patterns of detrimental behaviour just because I’m fearful of what could possibly lose, or how the alternative to this might be certain failure.

Failure is to be given a life you never bother living.

If you’re anything like me, chances are good you’re not comfortable where you are anyway.