Move Pain ➡️ Move Forward

Hi 👋 

In a couple of previous newsletters, I touched on getting caught in comfort zones and how it becomes a habit for avoidance, and in turn, builds limitations. 

I had a great reply, asking have I heard of any ways to break past it? Great question!! … and I thought other people would benefit from reading this too. 

So, why not begin with some Tolkein: 

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, … All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Life presents us with a choice: avoidance or action. Do we desire our comfort zone or do we face discomfort?  

Today, as I face a daily challenge of growing beyond perceived limits of my neurodiversity, this choice often resurfaces. Also, as I write these personal letters, I face a different level of discomfort. Then there is this ongoing background noise, the doom and gloom of the world today. 

I try to remember that courage is found in the places we fear most. Orcs may exist in the world, but so do I. 

Earlier this year, I came across the work of Phil Stutz, a pioneering psychologist, whose practical teachings, his ‘tools’, have taken me further in my understanding of avoidance. I want to share one of them with you, his ‘Reversal of Desire’.  

Our choice is either to move forwards or stand still. We can either walk to Mordor, or wait for someone else will save the shire. 

To grow in courage and as a leader, we must build the daily habit of walking into the places where it feels easier to avoid. Generating forward momentum through action becomes a force that propels us forward towards our goals and potential.  

Walking forwards builds the momentum that takes us onwards. 

Why Do We Avoid?

Avoidance is fear and pain disguised as the desire of immediate gratification, and it comes at a cost. One that is paid for by our future selves. Down the line, that debt will be called in, likely recognised as a missed opportunity. You’ll look around at your world and understand that you were playing life small, to keep yourself safe, and that safety is an illusion. 

There are very many layers to it, humans are beautifully messy and complicated, and the pain we experience is real, even if perceived.  

For some people, avoidance is a self-limiting experience seeded from something as big as a childhood trauma, scarce resources, or generational conditioning.  

But everyone experiences it on an day-to-day scale, with similarly limiting effects. 

For us mission-driven folk, the role of leadership comes with making tough decisions and navigate conflicts, we are required to take the stage but feel like an imposter, and then there’s the small daily sacrifices that is given when living on purpose. These are all attractive to avoidance. 

The people who grow into their potential, are the ones who walk into discomfort intentionally, every day, knowing it to be a component of creation. Birthing anything new is achieved through a transformational experience, through pain.  

Frodo, seemingly small and limited, chose to walk through the forsaken land, facing all manners of darkness, to fulfill his path, and save the shire.  

To lose your old self, you’ll find yourself anew. 

… bring it on. 

The Reversal of Desire

To begin reversing the desire for comfort, we start off with feeling our goal, a higher power, or the big mission. Something that is bigger than us. 

Perhaps, it is a group of people who you are serving, or leading a team whose targets have risen, or to see a change in Government policy? … What’s yours?  

Because your purpose is the magnet that pulls you forwards, it is bigger than short term discomfort. As you build momentum, the compounding actions begin to push you from behind. You have the motion that propels you forwards. 

Once you are ready to face the challenge, close your eyes, breathe. 

Phil Stutz uses a visualisation technique before walking into a painful challenge, he breaks it down into these steps: 

My partner and I have propped each other up with this reframing. We use this to move forwards, to keep taking action when avoidance is a tempting option. From cleaning the house to difficult conversations.  

… writing this has reminded me to try it on my end of year accounts. Afterwards, I will take a walk along the coastline for some salt air.  

Did you know walking is also a practical means by which pain moves through the body?
The swing it creates has an actual clinical name, in Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing it is called pendulation, the rhythmic oscillation between contraction and expansion. The nervous system discharges any held stress through the swinging action, left and right, step and breath, contraction and release. Duality continues and I digress..  

I enjoyed answering this question as a newsletter, and I’d like to do more responses like this. If you feel up for it, what's sitting on your shoulders as you read this? Let me know and I'll write about it (happy to keep it anonymous, like this one). 

Talk soon, 

Rob 

PS. By the way, this isn’t about confusing avoidance with rest, which is really important. Even at the end of LOTR, Gandalf said “I have been a stone doomed to rolling” and it was time to be in the company of the “moss-gatherer”, Tom Barbadiel (I personally love that small piece of writing and just had to squeeze it in!).