(00:00):
Hey guys, this is Cori from Redefining Strength. Welcome to the Fitness Hacks Podcast. This is the show where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m not going to ever fill this episode with sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a review or leave a five star rating, or even better share it with somebody you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone. So let’s jump right in. Discomfort is where growth lives. This thought occurred to me at about 3:00 AM and it was right before we were going into our first day of the act as If retreat, and I wanted to start the weekend off with a great message and set the tone for everything.

(00:43):
And this thought occurred to me, discomfort is where growth lives. And with that, I was like, well, this weekend we’re going to make everybody really uncomfortable. And I kind of chuckled to myself because, yes, I know the actual word is uncomfortable, discomfort. It’s not uncomfortable. But then as I thought about this phrasing of it, we’re going to make ourselves uncomfortable. I liked it more and more because so often what happens is we hear uncomfortable and we get uncomfortable. We push back against wanting to make the change. But the second I phrased it as uncomfortable, all of a sudden it was kind of like, huh, okay, maybe I’m going to do this. There was a lower barrier to entry. There wasn’t that wall that went up. And we really need to find ways to help ourselves overcome that hurdle, overcome the resistance against the hard, the resistance against the change if we want to make a change and see the results we want.

(01:38):
Because being uncomfortable living in that discomfort is where we’re going to see that growth really happen because we’re pushing our comfort zone. We’re pushing yourself to have to overcome something. So I started thinking more and more about this, and especially with the holidays coming up and some of the challenges we’re going to have, but really at any time of year, we’re going to need to make a change. And so we’re going to have to embrace being a little uncomfortable, and we need to be almost grateful for it. The more we can be grateful for the challenges, the more we’re going to embrace making changes, the more we’re going to see that strength and confidence built, because we don’t just naturally have these things. These are something that are created through what we overcome. Yet so often, we do want to run from these struggles. We want to run from these challenges.

(02:23):
We don’t want to go back to being a beginner, to feeling foolish, to feeling bad at something. But it’s only when we actually are faced with obstacles that we learn something new, that we move forward towards our goals. We really don’t succeed when times are easy. We succeed because of the failures and the struggles that teach us different things. And I mean, if you really think about what failures are, they’re not moving forward. They’re just learning with frustration. Those are the things that ultimately catapult us into the new goals that we want. So I just wanted to have you have this perspective when you’re going into something new and you’re looking for that growth, instead of pushing back, push into the discomfort, even tell yourself, I’m going to be discomfort. Just so even mentally, your attitude slightly shifts around what you’re about to do, and you maybe have a little bit of amusement with it because that is where growth is going to happen.

(03:15):
You’re not going to get good at something by turning back every time you hit that hard, because that is what we often want to do. We hit the same hard, we go back, we try and find another way around it. Oh, this diet didn’t work for me because of X, Y, and Z thing. Let me find another way around instead of saying, Hey, why didn’t this really work? Okay, yes, maybe I tried a low carb diet, so I’m blaming it on the fact that I like carbs and I’m going low carb. But let’s take a deeper look at this. Is it really just the carbs? Is it the restriction? Is it that I tried to do too much? The more we can sort of see it as a why funnel, asking ourselves why getting more specific with really diagnosing the problem, really digging into it, even the emotional component that might be there, how different tools or tactics are tied to previous experiences.

(03:58):
And I bring that up because when we think about tracking, often that is something we are very comfortable with tracking. We don’t like to do it. We see it as hard. We see it as restrictive. If we ask ourselves why, we often learn, okay, well, I’ve always done tracking when I’ve had to cut out. And then because I’ve had to cut out things, I felt restricted and I felt miserable, and I felt hungry and I felt deprived, and then the results didn’t snowball the way I felt they should, and I didn’t see my effort being worth the outcome that I was getting. And so there’s all these other things that are actually tied to that tactic, that tool of tracking that if we don’t break down with the why and the why funnel sometimes is really narrowing it down to what it really is is uncomfortable in and of itself.

(04:38):
We’re never going to move forward. We so often run from what is uncomfortable. We run from the discomfort, and that really is what we need to embrace more of if we want to see results. So I would challenge you as you’re going to push into a new goal, to be grateful for this discomfort, to be grateful for your mistakes, to be grateful for your flaws, because that is what’s going to teach you the most. We always hear that change results happen outside our comfort zone, yet so often we aren’t willing to push it. And I do also say this, recognizing that there’s only so much discomfort we can really embrace at one time, and if we do too much, we’re going to rebel against it. That is Newton’s the third law. Every force has an equal and opposite reaction to it. And so the more we push into something, the more we’re going to get that push back.

(05:26):
So we need to recognize that and recognize that sometimes we have to sort of slowly push the edges of the comfort zone versus just busting through them and out of them. But there is going to be a little bit of uncomfortableness, uncomfortableness with it, but we want to try and see what we can do to really make it as easy as possible to make those changes. So I just urge you, instead of running from it, instead of pushing back, find a way to allow that attitude to embrace it, because that is where we’re going to see the best results happen. Stop running for the hard, be grateful for it. So again, discomfort is where growth lives. Find ways to make yourself comfortable and think of it in that term so that you lower that barrier against it just a little bit every time you have to push into it. Thanks for listening to the Fitness Hack Podcast. Again, this is the place where I share all my free workout and nutrition tips. I’m never going to run sponsorships or ask you to buy anything. All I ask in return is if you’re enjoying the podcast to leave a rating, review or share it with someone you think it might help. This will only take a few minutes and it would mean the world to me and possibly change the life of someone you know.

*Please Note: this transcript is auto-generated and there may be some errors in the transcript