Quotes About Discomfort

lean into the discomfort that comes with straddling compassion and boundaries

Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn't come with guarantees—these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy. In fact, addiction research shows us that an intensely positive experience is as likely to cause relapse as an intensely painful experience.

An intolerance for uncertainty is an important contributing factor to all types of anxiety. Those of us who are generally uncomfortable with uncertainty are more likely to experience anxiety in specific situations as well as to have trait anxiety and anxiety disorders. Our anxiety often leads to one of two coping mechanisms: worry or avoidance. Unfortunately, neither of these coping strategies is very effective.

Building the grounded confidence to rumble with vulnerability and discomfort rather than armoring up, running away, shutting down, or tapping out, completely prepares you for living into your values, building trust, and learning to rise.

social work wasn't about fixing. It was and is all about contextualizing and "leaning in." Social work is all about leaning into the discomfort of ambiguity and uncertainty, and holding open an empathic space so people can find their own way.

When I interviewed the participants whom I'd describe as living a Wholehearted life about the same topic, they consistently talked about trying to feel the feelings, staying mindful about numbing behaviors, and trying to lean into the discomfort of hard emotions.

Tanto si tenemos catorce como cincuenta y cuatro años, nuestra armadura y nuestras máscaras estarán hechas a medida para la vulnerabilidad, el malestar y el dolor personal que intentamos minimizar.

If you ask me, stopping to think, engaging in careful deliberation, and revising old thinking are rare and courageous actions. And they require dealing with a healthy dose of confusion. And that's uncomfortable.

In the midst of uncertainty and fear, leaders have an ethical responsibility to hold their people in discomfort—to acknowledge the tumult but not fan it, to share information and not inflate or fake it.

Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort. Hope is forged when our goals, pathways, and agency are tested and when change is actually possible.

Numbing or taking the edge off doesn't have the same consequences as addiction, but they are nonetheless severe and life-altering for one reason: We cannot selectively numb emotion. If we numb the dark, we numb the light. If we take the edge off pain and discomfort, we are, by default, taking the edge off joy, love, belonging, and the other emotions that give meaning to our lives.

Comfortable learning environments rarely lead to deep learning.

Sometimes the most uncomfortable learning is the most powerful.

believe that feedback thrives in cultures where the goal is not "getting comfortable with hard conversations" but normalizing discomfort. If leaders expect real learning, critical thinking, and change, then discomfort should be normalized: "We believe growth and learning are uncomfortable so it's going to happen here—you're going to feel that way. We want you to know that it's normal and it's an expectation here.

An intolerance for uncertainty is an important contributing factor to all types of anxiety. Those of us who are generally uncomfortable with uncertainty are more likely to experience anxiety in specific situations as well as to have trait anxiety and anxiety disorders.

The same way you feel a muscle "burn" when it's being strengthened, the brain needs to feel some discomfort when it's learning. Your mind might hurt for a while—but that's a good thing.

Typically we see such hardship as an obstacle to what we think we should be—healthy, good-looking, free of discomfort. We consider suffering as annoying at best, meaningless at worst. We strive to get rid of our pains in whatever way we can. A part of us prefers the illusion that our losses are not real, that they come only as temporary interruptions. We thereby expend much energy in denial. "They should not prevent us from holding on to the real thing," we say to ourselves.

Yes, that's the bore of comfort, said Lord Warburton. We only know when we're uncomfortable.

Better a good venereal disease than a moribund peace and quiet.

I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.

No yoga. I can barely sit down.

Growth is uncomfortable; you have to embrace the discomfort if you want to expand.

Getting stuck in a plane for four hours on the tarmac on the hottest day of summer in Italy - it was like being trapped in a boiling tin can.

I'm a bad traveller because I suffer from travel sickness.