Intentional Discomfort leads to Inner Growth

Hi, this is George Kao, and in this short video, I want to talk with you about how we can consciously grow and mature to become better people, to become people that we're really happy to be without, you know, getting stuck in the same addictions, the same unhelpful loops time and again. And the technique is very simple. It's the will, the conscious willingness to experience a little bit of discomfort and therefore realize that you have just grown yourself a little bit. The analogy I'll bring in to explain this is imagine someone who is learning how to lift weights, someone who is learning how to bench press lifting weights. I'm not a weightlifter, so I don't know if the analogy I'm going to share with you is exactly accurate, but I'll just go with it. So let's say the person starts with lifting 50 pounds of weight. You know, at 50 pounds, maybe it's a little bit difficult for that person, just a little bit discomfort, but it's doable. Definitely doable. And so maybe he'll start the first three weeks with lifting 50 pounds and then a little bit of discomfort. And then at week three, he's realized, oh, you know, it's pretty easy now to lift 50 pounds. There's really not much discomfort anymore at all. So now we can go to £65. £65 is now a little bit of discomfort. But he's willing, and here's the key. He's willing to experience a little bit of discomfort now at 65 pounds and then therefore grow his muscles. Okay? Same thing with your addictions. Same thing with your habits, your emotional growth, your mental growth, even your relationship growth or your growth at work. Your willingness to experience a little bit of discomfort, but with the intention of growing toward a little bit. Discomfort with purpose will make you a better and better person. So I'll use a personal example that I'm dealing with right now. In fact, one of the addictions I've had for a long time, it kind of goes off and on, but right now I'm dealing with it now. Is my addiction to playing video games. A certain video game, it's easy for me to play it, especially when I'm doing some hard work and the work is tough. And I just say, oh, it's so much easier just to play a video game right now, or when I am bored or when I'm tired, it's so easy to go play that video game. And so what I'm doing now is practicing the feeling of discomfort of not playing the video game when I want to play it and therefore seeing myself grow to being stronger and being able to say no to that video game and instead say yes to doing something productive. And what I the way I started was by tracking the experience of feeling discomfort twice a day. I literally am tracking it using, I use an app on my mobile phone called Strides. But you can simply use, you know, a piece of paper or on your calendar. If you have a paper calendar, you just mark it market, you know, put a star two times that day. If you practiced feeling the discomfort of when you got tempted to do something you don't want to do and you say no, I'm going to say no to that temptation. And instead I'm going to say yes to something that's good in exchange for that temptation. That's something bad. Does that make sense? So you might want to start with just two times a day or maybe even once a day. And I would also recommend that you don't give yourself too difficult of situation. So, for example, I'm not going to practice when I'm exhausted. I didn't get enough sleep the previous night. I'm exhausted, I'm hungry, and I'm working on something that's really difficult. And I just had a relationship challenge. And then I'm going to practice that discomfort. No, that's like someone starting with lifting £200 at once. That's, you know, it's going to make you, it's going to make you fail miserably and you're going to become cynical at it. So start with a situation that's a little bit easier, but it does give you a sense of discomfort just a little bit. But you know, you can do it if you just set your mind to it and say no, I'm going to prevent that addiction right now. And I'm going to say yes to something positive and uplifting and healthy for me, for example. So I hope this is helpful. Start with tracking it for twice a day, discomfort plus growth. And then you can graduate to tracking it three times a day. I've already been tracking it for about a month, twice a day. And I just in the past couple days graduated to tracking it three times a day. And then eventually I'm going to track it four times a day, five times a day, et cetera. Probably by tracking it seven times a day, I will have gotten pretty good at saying no to that addiction. So I look forward to seeing if this is helpful for you. Conscious discomfort, a little bit of discomfort with a purpose towards growth and instead replacing it with something productive. It's not doing something bad replacing with doing something productive. The conscious experience of discomfort will allow you to see that you're becoming a better and better and stronger and stronger person over time to be able to in other words, you are growing your willpower muscle so you become a true a truly powerful person to fulfill and live your purpose. So I hope this is helpful and as always, I'm open to your comments and I look forward to any updates you want to share with me on how this is helping you be well.