Swallowing the Painful Opportunity
I have a friend who injured himself playing sport a while ago. But when the doctors treated him, they found something odd…
For some reason, he hadn’t been using the muscles in his left butt cheek. The muscles had withered and shrunk through lack of use.
It wasn’t something he noticed. Nobody ever plans to neglect their left butt cheek. But – every time he walked, ran, stood, or lifted – his back and leg muscles would compensate for his butt, and take the strain.
The strain made those muscles stronger.
But it also made him MUCH more susceptible to sports injuries.
Since then, he’s been performing left-butt-cheek strengthening exercises prescribed by his doctors.
Odd story – I know…
But the same thing happens in life too. We develop skills while avoiding our weaknesses – but sooner or later, those underdeveloped weaknesses come back to bite us in painful ways.
The Irony of Expertise
You’re certainly an expert at a few things in life, and your career.
But there are probably a few blind spots or weaknesses around your expertise that hold you back.
And this is because we typically develop expertise while avoiding painful, scary or distasteful activity in other areas of our life.
These are the ironies of our expertise.
I’m not sure who coined the phrase. Michelle Loch? Oscar Trimboli? Matt Church? Someone earlier? But I first realised the ironies of my expertise after a facilitation session run by Lynne Cazaly.
For me, one irony of my expertise was that I’d become a leading expert in digital marketing – but couldn’t advise myself on how to market “Brent Hodgson” as a product or brand, to raise my income above a ceiling I’d reached.
For most of my career, I haven’t had to “work to get work”. Consulting firms, business partners, etc have all approached me, offering me opportunities. And this has been great!
But it meant that when it came time to market myself – I struggled!
Plus, being good at marketing meant I could sell products online, without ever picking up the phone to talk to people.
So, the idea of doing even simple sales calls put me into a cold sweat, and the phone would get very, very heavy – as if I was picking up a 20kg bag of cement!
Stay Or Go?
There’s a lot you can achieve by continuing to do things that work for you.
But sooner or later, you’ll achieve it all…
Then you’ll find yourself looking over the fence into “the scary space” or “the painful space” or whatever it is for you. And you’ll notice that the path to everything else you want to achieve winds through this place.
Or at least, this is what it was like for me.
For me, the path to almost everything I wanted to achieve (professionally, financially, egocentrically, etc) required me to start doing things I’d avoided for a long time – like picking up the phone and make sales calls, and market myself properly.
And I really didn’t want to do it. And I sucked at it. I hate it. It caused me stress. It was painful. And… I don’t wanna!
But the idea of wasting more time, staying where I was …
Stay comfortably stuck? Or swallow the painful opportunity?
Stress, Distress, Eustress
Stress can be important and valuable, as a tool for growth.
Stress can also be negative. Negative stress releases the hormone cortisol. And cortisol affects our memory, rational thinking skills, resilience, and happiness.
But these are two different types of stress.
Negative stress is DISTRESS.
It’s when we are in a heightened, less rational state of stress.
This is the type of stress we need to avoid.
The positive stress – EUSTRESS – is a valuable tool for growth.
The characteristics of eustress (to contrast them with Distress), are:
Eustress is necessary stress on the path to positive outcomes;
Eustress expands our sphere of comfortable action;
And (importantly) eustress is effective doses of stress!
It’s tempting to want to “increase the dosage” of eustress – and impatiently push ourselves to grow faster.
But this causes us to set our ambitions too high, take on too much, and expect too much of ourselves. This creates a situation where distressful overwhelm, disappointment and unmet expectations are likely.
So, controlling the dose of eustress can be a valuable tool.
This way, you can build painful skills and habits like you might build a muscle… By increasing the load or pressure over time.
Self Compassion
Dr. Kristin Neff has a brilliant TEDx talk on Self Compassion – which is hugely valuable as a tool for navigating painful growth.
One important element of Self Compassion is the concept of “common humanity” – that we all experience similar pain.
It’s easy to imagine the role models who have tread the path we’re on ahead of us as “success stories”.
But it’s unlikely that they achieved those things easily.
In fact, it’s likely that they still struggle with the kinds of things that you struggle with too.
This was a big surprise (to me) when I spoke with the best salespeople I knew… That things like dealing with rejection are still not easy for them. They just got better at them.
This is the common humanity of doing difficult things. And nobody speaks about it. But everyone shares similar growing pains along the way.
Identity and Habit
Brian Tracey has a great book on doing difficult things called “Eat That Frog”.
It begins:
“Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.”
Philosophies like “Eat That Frog” are great for doing routine tasks you avoid, or making sure that important tasks are completed.
(It’s an action that sets the tone for the day, with a “buzz” of accomplishment that follows you.)
But there are three places where philosophies like “Eat That Frog” fall down:
They fall down when we try to chomp down too many frogs at once, and fall into the distress trap;
They don’t get you over the hump when the task is particularly painful, scary, or distasteful!
And they don’t always help with habit-formation – when you know you can simply delay or avoid a task “for one more day”.
So, sometimes you need a “bigger push” than the promise of a good feeling afterwards to get started.
One thing that you can do is begin to develop an identity as someone who does the hard things.
(This makes the taste of eating that frog a lot more palatable.)
This is where the “100 Reasons Why” comes in.
I was first encouraged by Dr Peter Holsman to try the “100 Reasons Why” process as a sort of self-hypnosis. [Note: it works wonderfully with the Moleskine Habit!]
The theory behind “100 Reasons Why” is simple…
The typical person thinks more negative or self-sabotaging thoughts than positive ones. Particularly early in building a habit or skill – where the outcome is uncertain. “100 Reasons Why” is all about rebalancing these thoughts. It tips the scales in favour of the positive evidence that you’ll succeed.
Take a piece of paper (or your Moleskine), and write at the top of the page “100 Reasons Why I _____”
(e.g. “100 Reasons Why I Am Someone Who Does The Hard Things As Part Of My Identity”)
Then, write the numbers 1-100 down the margin of the page – and begin telling yourself:
What evidence is there from the past that you are that kind of person;
Why you will achieve that outcome;
What motivates you to do this;
etc
Being One With Pain
There probably will still be painful times. But one way you can reduce the pain is to simply accept it.
Studies suggest acceptance of pain (instead of avoidance) reduces our perception of pain.
Wrestling with your situation (again, using the Moleskine habit) is one way to do this.
As does self compassion, and knowing that others who have walked the path ahead of you have struggled.
The Reason We Do This…
Getting comfortable with a higher level of discomfort and eustress is a positive step.
It promotes resourcefulness; promotes creativity; builds courage, confidence, character, and resilience; builds wisdom; and improves your destiny.