Make yourself uncomfortable.
It’s not a suggestion we hear every day. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of what we usually hear. Normally, when you visit someone’s home or you show up for an interview at a new company, you’re told to make yourself comfortable.
But maybe there is some real value in getting uncomfortable. A woman in my network group, Corinne, is planning to spend the whole month of August getting uncomfortable. The idea is that by operating outside her comfort zone as much as possible, she will become adaptable to change. Less fearful. She's right.
I got an excuse to operate outside my comfort zone this week. It's really sort of an experiment, and not one of my own devising.
For those of you who know me, you know I have a lot of running injuries...and work-related injuries...and others. I'm really kind of a mess. So I decided to visit a chiropractor this week to see if he might be able to fix all of my aches and pains, or, at the very least, one to two of them. In meeting with him, I found out something rather surprising: my communication system (aka my nervous system) was malfunctioning.
So I needed to activate the right side of my brain. He said, "You're going to have to wear an ear plug in your right ear.” I asked him when. He said, with what I swear was a satisfied smirk, “All day!”
I wasn’ t supposed to see him again until Friday. I thought, how am I going to go three days with one ear plugged up? How am I going to work, or hear what people are saying?
It certainly was uncomfortable, at first. I felt lopsided, disoriented. Or the way you do when you have a bad head cold and your ears plug up. Except it was just the right ear.
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But then I started to get used to it. I even forgot at times that I had the earplug in. Somehow, I had adapted.
A couple days after plugging up my right ear, I took the ear plug out. I just wanted to see what it felt like and whether or not the chiropractor was on to anything.
It was eerie and amazing. It felt like I had my own built-in surround sound. I could hear everything so clearly, and the sounds seemed to swirl around my head. With the ear plug out, it actually felt like my LEFT ear was plugged up and my right ear 100% clear. When I put the ear plug back in, there was a slight ringing in my right ear, as though I’d been listening to loud music.
I decided the chiropractor was on to something after all. After only two days with my right ear plugged up, I had not only adapted to hearing out of just one ear, but I could hear so much better out of both ears. It made me think about the many feelings and situations we understand to be uncomfortable, and how we spend a lot of time avoiding them. This little experiment helped me understand that if we can just get through a little discomfort, if we can put ourselves in that place, even, we might remind ourselves of how very adaptable we are.
I now know what it’s like to hear out of only one ear, and how amazing it is to have the use of both. But I had to get uncomfortable to really appreciate that, something I never would have elected to do on my own. I thought about Corinne again and how she's going to spend an entire month doing things that she wouldn't normally do. I think she'll surprise herself. It'll probably be uncomfortable, but it'll be worth it.
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