Building Comfort with Discomfort

In one of our facilitated leadership cohorts last month, we were discussing change management, including the distinctions between change (external) and transition (internal). Change can mean anything from an organizational restructuring, to a return to the office post-COVID, to moving into a supervisory role from being an individual contributor. It can be a move cross country or it can be learning a new thought process and trying on new behaviors. 

Our discussion led us to understand that while change is external, transition —the true embracing of the change—is internal.  Shifting from the change to transition is hard and messy at times as we are experiencing it.  William Bridges calls it the “Neutral Zone” in his classic book Transitions.  We like to call it the Messy Middle. It’s hard, unnerving, and often the height of discomfort.   

Yet that’s where the magic happens.  There is a tendency for us to rush through it because it’s uncomfortable and there is a stew of all sorts of emotions- anxiety, fear, uncertainty.   Humans like to feel competent, that we have agency, that we can affect our destiny.  And sometimes we wait for confidence to come, the fear to be completely gone, and THEN we will move forward.

Yeah—how often does that work?  

In his book Think Again, Adam Grant says “we don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging goals.”   If we wait until we are “ready” - quotes intended - we may never enter in.  What actually gets us “ready” and confident at times is the action itself.  It’s one small step, followed by another, then another.   It’s building the comfort with discomfort- acknowledging the suck of it, being objective of what is occurring and what you can learn, and being in the messy middle of it.  It’s through our purposeful, forward movement that we can own our own discomfort and truly build a more evolved, completed, and confident transition.