Embracing Discomfort

How Doing Less Helped Me Accomplish More

Photo by Caterina sanders on Unsplash

When I came to a realization, I wanted to run away screaming.  “Oh, shit, no.  Not that.  Anything but that.”

 A month before, I read Phil Stutz’s book The Tools.  The very first tool in the book is The Reversal of Desire, which requires us to desire stepping out of our comfort zone to move toward what we crave.  

I had a problem with this.  I had already tried all the things that scare most people.  I lived to push myself into uncomfortable situations, I had been a personal development junkie for at least a decade by then.  100-hour work weeks, working 30 hours straight, intense workouts, ice baths, talking to rich people, public speaking, coffee enemas, super long meditations, a 10-day fast, the list goes on.  I could not figure out what made me uncomfortable for a full month.

Then it hit me.  I had to do nothing.  Fuck. 

It was another month before I worked up the nerve to tell my employees that I was going to take a vacation.  They unanimously rejoiced.  Please get out of here, they pleaded, knowing I needed to rest.

If I was going to be lazy, I had to go all out.  I was incapable of half-assing my laziness.  For the first time in more than a decade, I bought a bag of weed.  I stayed at home and played the original Legend of Zelda game, stoned on my couch for four days and then switched to Mike Tyson’s PunchOut and some other classics I hadn’t thought about in years.

At first I didn’t notice much.  After a few days, I started sleeping deeper.  My overall mood, normally grumpy, took a shift for the positive.  My ever-present anxiety started to fade away like fog exposed to the sunshine.  I didn’t feel pulled to get up and be productive out of obligation, I actually started to crave being active for the first time in as long as I could remember.

After a week my experiment was over, and I went back to work.  In the months that came I continued to allow my employees to take responsibility for the business, making time for me to write my first novel (That novel was terrible and no one will ever read it, but you have to start somewhere).  I learned that rest allowed me to be a far more effective leader.  I would put fires out before they started rather than wait for emergencies to grind production to a halt.  

The experiment left me with the realization that I was either starting the fires or allowing them to burn because I gained my own personal sense of importance from rescuing others from the fire.  My need to prove I wasn’t lazy was holding the business and the employees in it back.  Guiding my employees to overcome obstacles on their own started to fulfill me more than being the rescuer who fixed the problems myself.    

I started to see what I truly desired in my life, the things I had been craving.  I started to show up for my wife and kids.  They no longer played background parts while the business hogged up center stage.  My mood improved when I made it home in the evenings.  We started working on projects around the house that had been faint whispers of dreams.  I taught my kids to ride their bikes, a feat I previously didn’t have the energy for.  I even started decreasing my alcohol consumption, eventually quitting altogether.

I owe it all to working less.  Showing up energized allowed me to accomplish more in two hours than I previously did in six.  My nervous system was able to relax, and I became less frazzled and worried.  

I owe integrating success as a businessman, husband, and father to slowing down and working less hard.  That was my uncomfortable edge then.  My Reversal of Desire continues to change since that time.  I continue to look for those things that require me to be uncomfortable – difficult conversations, asking others to do things for me, public speaking – and lean into that edge because I know the growth that lies when I lean into fear and discomfort.

This has been my story, so how does the Reversal of Desire apply in your life?  It is up to you to figure out what makes you uncomfortable and lean into it.  Acting despite gut churning fear just might be what you need to get you a step closer to the dreams in your head.

Until I see you again,

Be good or be good at it

Lee Aaron Smart

Professional Coach

leeasmart.com