Comfortably Uncomfortable

How do you respond to being uncomfortable? Some of us have a large tolerance for discomfort as a learned behavior for survival. Growing up in dysfunctional families or environments that are oppressive or living through traumas can cause a person to live in survival mode and not really realize life can be any other way. When you start a path of healing or attempt to develop yourself or make changes because you can no longer tolerate the intolerable it requires you to open up to other possibilities. When you open up to other possibilities it requires you to go out of your comfort zone expand your beliefs, thoughts, understandings,habits,choices,the way you think the world works,the way you relate to people,the people you choose to relate to........ When you learn that you gain faster more effective results by finding an internal focal point rather than an external focal point you take responsibility to another meaning. Some of us learned to survive by being over responsible for those in our lives who where not being responsible,we learned that if we didn't make things ok, things would fall apart. We didn't realize that sometimes the best thing for everyone is for things to fall apart. When we continually try and save things that are better off not saved we deny ourselves the experience of investing in things that are a better option for us without all the struggle. We learn to be hypersensitive to protecting "our world" because we learned that people can be unsafe and unreliable. When we continue to operate from survival mode we may misinterpret events,situations,and people because we are trying to survive not realizing that to thrive can feel uncomfortable at times. We believe that if something feels uncomfortable we need to stop it, avoid it, try and control it, protect against it....... The truth is there are subtle differences that can be identified in the complexity of uncomfortable. If we are in survival mode and hypersensitive we may miss the subtle notes of discernment. There is an art to discerning subtleties and it takes time and practice and awareness and willingness to make mistakes in the process of perfecting the art of navigating in uncomfortableness. Not all uncomfortableness is going to produce negative or unhappy experiences, not all uncomfortableness need be tolerated either. Be gentle on yourself when expanding and opening to possibilities. Yes, there are those who can take advantage of the vulnerability, they would anyway, it doesn't reflect anything about you. Remember, you are working on you, your internal focus point as a way to manage the outside points rather than trying to manage the outside to feel ok on the inside(which you have learned doesn't work). Being comfortable with uncomfortable is an art to be cultured and nurtured and expanded not coerced into production within a box for mass production. We can Thrive instead of Survive.