Everyone Should Put Themselves Through a Little Discomfort

In yesterday's post, I talked in plain terms about why so many people who work out instinctively avoid training legs. Today I want to dig into one part of that: everyone knows leg day matters, so why do we always find a reason to skip it?

The pain of leg day is a big part of it, and you can't ignore it. It's physical pain. For two days after a leg workout your thighs feel like they've been filled with lead, and every time you climb stairs or have to push, a sharp ache tugs at your senses.

But let's stop and think. Is the physical soreness after leg day really the only reason we skip it? It's probably not that simple. Training any other body part hurts too. The degree is different, but we're putting up with pain either way.

Objectively, most people can handle the pain of leg day. The problem is that being able to handle it and being willing to take it on by choice are two different things. There's a mental hurdle in between. Leg day doesn't give you the obvious positive feedback that chest or back day does to offset the pain, so your brain makes the decision for you before you even start: forget it, next time.

There are lots of moments like this in our lives.

Take the simplest example: getting up. Every time your alarm goes off, no matter what, do you hit snooze and lie there another ten minutes? Those ten minutes won't make you any more awake, but you just have to have them.

Or whenever you want to do something, like tidy your room, go out for a workout or call your parents, do you put it off without thinking? Later. Or next time?

These moments are all the leg days of everyday life. There are situations we're good at, and situations we instinctively run from.

But in most of the moments where we're ready to give up or dodge before we've even decided, the thing isn't actually beyond us. Try it. Get up the moment your alarm goes off. When you think about tidying your room, go tidy it. When you think about calling your parents, call them right away. You'll find none of it is a big deal. There's no real difficulty or pain at all.

In other words, the problem we face is never the pain itself. It's how we expect and imagine the pain, and that's often scarier than the pain itself.

Most people can get up the moment their alarm goes off. But in the instant you decide whether to get up, the dodging has already quietly happened.

So I think we should practice on purpose, because tolerating discomfort is a skill in its own right. The point of practicing is to face what you're afraid of, to break out of your comfort zone, and to dissolve the fear.

Say you dread getting up right away. Pick a few days a week, however many you like, and on those days sit straight up in bed the second your alarm goes off.

That's not some earth-shattering move, right? After just a few tries, you'll find that the discomfort is tiny and completely manageable, and practicing simply means choosing not to go around it.

We always assume that overcoming a problem takes a Big Idea, and that ordinary methods won't do the job. Reality is usually the opposite. The ways we solve big problems often start with one tiny action. Take getting up. Just keep repeating "sit up when the alarm goes off," and the problem quietly disappears without you noticing.

So the moment you want to do something, just take the first step. When you want to write, open a new document and type a single character. When you want to run, put on your running shoes.

When you've been through all of it and look back, you'll see that the pain and discomfort you thought you'd face were never as scary as you imagined, and the fear fades because of it.

Your willpower and self-discipline get trained, one tiny action at a time.

Practicing saying no to your urges, again and again, means stepping out of your comfort zone over and over, until your comfort zone can't trap you anymore.

In fact, two thousand years ago a group of people were already practicing this on purpose. They called it "voluntary discomfort."

Every now and then, walk toward the thing you'd rather avoid. Not to suffer, but to show yourself that

those things can't hold you back at all.