The Upside of the Discomfort Zone
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
-- Aristotle
In a time when it seems like there is little to be happy about, I have noticed an interesting trend emerging in recent weeks and days. Several of the people in my inner circle appear to be as happy and healthy as they have ever been. After receiving yet more bad news about our jobs the other day, I had a moment of surprising insight; I was able to distinguish between feeling unhappy about the bad news, but content with the state of my life at the moment. Following the thread, I deduced that my negative emotions were mostly tied to financial insecurity, and that if I could have a guarantee that everything would be provided for in the end, that I would be at peace with shifting gears until Covid-19 was no longer an imminent threat. Letting go of this one worry, although not an insignificant one, would give me the freedom to pursue meaningful projects--ones that I have put off for a long time but have been steadily picking up and chipping away at.
There was a word used in the dissemination of the aforementioned bad news that I found particularly maddening. The word was ‘comfort’ and I suspect it was simply a poor choice, and not meant to be inflammatory. Nonetheless, it got me thinking that difficult choices are seldom made for the intended result of feeling comfort. Virtually nothing has been comfortable about the last sixth months, and I would include the tackling of shelved projects and secret dreams in that statement. Discomfort has been among the reasons that I have put exciting ideas on the back burner; in fact, I have heard myself say “out of my comfort zone” more than once in the past few weeks as I work on some of these goals. Could these two things be linked? Is the increased satisfaction with life inversely proportional to how comfortable we are?
I don’t think it is quite that simple, but I do suspect that what we choose to do when we are at such a crossroads hugely impacts our happiness quotient. My friends and colleagues that are pursuing something new, complete with significant personal and financial investment, appear healthier -- more energetic, and more youthful even. This decisiveness, this taking control of an otherwise stressful situation has had an invigorating effect. The pandemic has victimized people in different ways. In the case of the performing arts we are now aware of how vulnerable we are, especially when our income is tied up all in one place. When viewed from this one perspective we appear to have little control over our own destiny. Yet investigating alternative income streams and career paths have offered hope, and reminded us that we do still have the element of choice; a reminder that our career trajectories were not mapped out with indelible ink at the age of 18.
My reading as of late has brought me to a dense book titled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (11 consonants -- I counted!) The opening chapter lays the foundation for the rest of the book by examining the idea of happiness, and what truly creates this state for humans. While I hesitate to reduce a concept that has largely eluded mankind for centuries into a few brief sentences, Csikszentmihalyi illuminates two ideas here that make a strong contribution to the conversation. The first is that happiness is something we work to develop in our lives through taking command of our inner experience of life. He claims that happiness “does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person.” We do need to claim responsibility for our own happiness, but it won’t happen through more success or the acquiring of more things, as the world often leads us to believe.
We associate the feeling of happiness with what the author calls optimal experience, or a state of flow. There are a few qualities associated with this feeling of being in flow state -- the sense of time expanding, complete engagement or immersion in the task or moment, and an element of challenge or risk. And so we return to the role of perceived comfort in our lives as we look at this second idea. Csikszentmihalyi states “the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. . . the best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” When I feel I am treading into territory where I lack experience, or feel out of my depth, I get uncomfortable. Ironically, writing this blog post is the perfect example! I don’t believe I have the knowledge or qualifications to tackle such an immense and important subject, yet I also know that in pursuing it my understanding of it will deepen. A sense of satisfaction and accomplishment will come with staying in the struggle and giving it my best in the moment. If we string enough of these moments together as we move through life, we most certainly grow; effectively, we are choosing to make the most of what we are given.
If times of stress and anxiety lead us to focusing on what we don’t have, flipping the narrative can be invaluable. A friend and mentor once told me that “gratitude and anxiety cannot coexist.” I have found it helpful to make a list of things I am worried about, make a list of things I am grateful for, and then make a list of things I can do right now to affect change. Of course at times I still feel stuck, and struggle to move forward in the midst of the discomfort. But it is heartening to know that optimal experience requires a reasonable amount of challenge. They say that the only guarantees in life are death and taxes, but I would argue that at some point we all encounter discomfort. Whether we choose to experience it as a victim, or see it as an opportunity for growth is largely up to us.