Brian Johnson explains how elite performers stay in the sweet spot between comfort and discomfort. He uses George Mumford's work to argue for small, incremental stretches of your abilities rather than big leaps that cause burnout. Compound growth comes from repeated, patient expansion.
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You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to another micro class. This one is on romancing or bromancing, if you prefer your discomfort zone. This is inspired by the Mindful Athlete, George Mumford's great book. Thank you, George. So romancing your discomfort zone. This is a big idea. George tells us that elite athletes have a great relationship between their comfort zone and their discomfort zone. Now what they do is they learn to play right here in between their comfort zone and their discomfort zone. A couple things to pay attention to here. Now, we're all pretty aware of the fact that we've got to get out of our comfort zone if we want to achieve anything. Great. But too often, those of us who haven't quite figured it out yet try to go up here. We try to go even past our discomfort zone. We're tough guys or gals, and we're going to change our life drastically and immediately check us out. Bam. And what does that lead to? That leads it to burnout and other such unpleasant things. The elite performers realize they don't need to make these huge quantum leaps in their life every other day. What they need to do is show up right here, stretch outside their comfort zone, but not so far that they're in uncomfortableness too much. Their discomfort zone. They play in what scientists call eustress. Healthy, adaptive stress, not in distress. Another way to look at it, we'll bring a prop in. Ooh, we have a rubber band now. I'm stretching that rubber band. That rubber band gets tension as I stretch it. But if I kept on stretching it and stretching it and stretching it, which I've done outside of the screen. But I'm not going to continue doing that because if I do it, it's going to snap in my face. That's not fun. That's what we do too often when we stretch too far past our in through our and past our discomfort zone. Think of it like that rubber band. You want to stretch it, but you don't want to snap. Give yourself a nice exit out of your comfort zone, but don't go nuts. Here's what's exciting when you embrace that. He calls that the middle path. Right? Middle path. You're not in your comfort zone. You're not in your discomfort zone. You're right in the sweet spot in between. That takes a level of maturity and patience. As the Buddha says, little by little, one becomes good as a water pot is filled with water. Don't try to fill up your water Pot with a fire hydrant hose blowing it all around the room. I talk about that a lot in my work. Here's what happens when you do this, when you embrace incremental growth. Let's say this is your current edge of your comfort zone. And you go right here, right? Bam. Nice. Well, now, once you've gotten there, you have a new comfort zone edge and you go right beyond it. And boom, you've got another comfort zone established. Then you go up again outside of your comfort zone incrementally. You're not snapping, you're stretching here. And then what happens? Well, you guessed it. Your comfort zone expands. You keep on doing that incrementally growing. And all of a sudden, sooner than you may think, but maybe not as fast as you'd like, but faster than you think it would happen. You're way up here and your next stretch is here. And you look back at the version of you that was right here and you say, wow, I can handle that easily. My comfort zone is way up here. And that's way inside my comfort zone. Now that's what we see when we're willing to embrace incremental gains compounded over time equals geometric growth. That's we're all about in this work. Diligently, patiently, persistently expanding our comfort zones and continuing to grow. That is a quick look at how to romance your discomfort zone. Play and use stress rather than distress. Stretch rather than snap. How can you do that a little bit more? Are you playing in your comfort zone a little bit too much or are you playing beyond your discomfort zone too much? Think about that. Optimize it. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more soon. See ya. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me. Two basic things. One, our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And two, our Optimal Living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. Ten bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there, philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas for from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my optimal living classes. 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