Hi everyone, I’m Saralyn Hodgkin. And this is the podcast to practice your leadership. Dwelling in discomfort. Hard, uncomfortable, somebody give me a Tylenol, like, just some dwelling and discomfort is not something I’d like to sign up for.
Yet it’s required when you’re trying to do your own work on yourself – that inner work that helps you lead out loud in alignment with who you want to be. And that allows you to stand in your agency. It’s hard work to work on yourself so that you can stand up like that. And part of that, that inner work is dwelling in discomfort. What does it mean to take a seat and sit in ideas, stories, narratives, experiences that are really uncomfortable? I don’t want to explore that. Again, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to talk about this stuff. And yet I know that if I don’t, there’s a part of me, that’s not honouring the me. There’s a part of me that’s not learning and growing, there’s a part of me that is just amplifying blind spots, which then trigger me, trigger others, that don’t allow me to walk in alignment with who I am and how I want to be. So, dwelling in discomfort means taking a seat with things that you’re at odds with experiences that don’t feel good, in order to find a horizon line and a viewpoint and a perspective, in order to grapple with yuckiness, and ugliness, and rawness, and sometimes stuff that just makes you want to… because there is learning there. And man in our society, you know, being Canadian, in a society in which I live, love, and lead, I find that, you know, it’s norm to go get that bandaid, that Tylenol. If it’s, if an experience isn’t crafted to be comfortable, then that experience is bad. I remember one of my sons coming to me saying, Well, I don’t want to do X, Y or Z. I don’t even remember what it was. I don’t, I don’t like it. I said you don’t have to like it. You just have to do it. Oh, really? Yeah. Really. Cause sometimes we need to stand in, sit in, be in areas of discomfort because learning and growth and perspective and empathy. Grow there, chime in there. And so to make friends with discomfort in a way that is situated in learning and growing, and that kind of perspective gaining is essential in our leadership growth, to be able to ask ourselves questions and even explore the discomfort and letting things go or seeing what arises from noticing patterns that don’t serve us or serve others. Fighting structures that have defined us that, that just are so nasty. There is such wisdom to sit and to listen, to sense, to have a different horizon line in which to see that when you step into the invitation to dwell in discomfort, the practices there are ones that allow the grit to be a teacher.
And so what is your intentional practice to find moments and ways to not just see but to dwell in the discomfort?
Thanks all. I’m Saralyn. You can find me at holonleadership.org. I walk alongside you as you practice your leadership.
