Discover Your Discomfort
I made an interesting discovery the other day – discomfort.
I was approaching a task I do each year at this time and found myself dragging my feet. There was a lot of hard work involved, so my internal dialogue decided that I was being lazy by not digging right in and doing this necessary task.
Then a debate began in my head when I rebutted myself by saying, “I’m not lazy” and offering all the times I had been industrious as evidence. This back and forth chit-chat went on for awhile until I noticed it. That’s when I made the discovery.
There was a feeling in my body that was driving my mind games that I was totally unaware of, until I wasn’t.
I recognized the feeling as the same one I had about 20 years ago. Perhaps a story . . .
We had taken a cruise and my best friend and his wife had come along as well. One of the planned ports of call was the cruise line’s own private island where there were tons of outdoor water sports to take advantage of – jet skis, swimming, snorkeling, trampolines in the water, rafts, etc. I was like a kid on Christmas morning heading down the beach undecided as to which present to unwrap first. I wanted to do it all.
In my fervor, I felt this sensation in my stomach driving me forward to the point where I was unknowingly elbowing my way in line to start my adventure. How it became known that I was pushing up in line was that I was nudging my friend and his wife out of my way. They laughingly pointed it out and I was properly embarrassed. It became the story of the cruise. My friend would get a laugh every time when he saw me that week by saying to our group, “look out now.”
The label I gave that feeling was “excitement.”
So how could I label the same feeling two different ways – discomfort and excitement?
I have discovered there is a certain amount of discomfort associated with excitement. I just never parsed it out that way before. The real discovery for me was that I was excited to do this tedious project but had only tapped into the uncomfortable part of excitement.
The bigger message here is that discomfort is a signal – one that we often ignore. Our bodies are incredible sensing devices that we give second class citizenship to. The body always has the answer first. The head is the last to know. The body doesn’t debate; it just senses.
The mind can make a game of anything, and often does. This diversion in our head keeps us divorced from our body and we ignore the signals from our front line, while our pseudo-commander smokes cigars on the hill and talks endless strategy.
It pays dividends to pay attention to what your body is telling you. “Women’s intuition” is nothing more than women being more in tune with their bodies than men. More goes on in a woman’s body in a month’s time than happens to any man. Women have a sense of their body. Yet, both men and women could pay more attention.
The more attention you give to what’s going on in your sensate self delivers more high quality information to your mind. If you need this practice to appeal to your intellect, label it as “the smart thing to do.”
Discovering your discomfort can save you from endless, diversionary debates, and you may also find some excitement in the process.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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