Being Uncomfortable

I, like many people, tend to live within a comfort zone.  I am also a creature of habit, and don't often like to stray too far away from the things I am familiar with.  However, I have learned (and am continuing to learn) that life cannot be fully appreciated and lived within the confines of our comfortable space.  Being a bit uncomfortable is often times how we grow and discover, how we learn and improve ourselves.

Sometimes being uncomfortable means facing something or someone you don't like or don't want to face.  Sometimes it means facing yourself to discover a new perspective or attitude.  Sometimes it means changing up your environment, like finding new uplifting friends or getting a different job.  Sometimes being uncomfortable can mean making a new path for yourself, even though you may not really know what you're doing.  I truly believe that if there is something in your life you don't like or don't agree with, you have the power to somehow change it.  You just have to face it, maybe get a little uncomfortable, and stick to what you believe is best for you.

Even when the discomfort stems from the actions of others, I believe we can have some bit of control.  We can control how we react.  We don't need to let their cards determine how we play our hand.  Sometimes people make us uncomfortable on purpose, just to start a fight.  Or just to make us look bad.  Or just to upset us.  How we react to that is our choice.  We cannot control the actions and words of others, but we should also not let the actions and words of others control us.

Sometimes, I think people get uncomfortable because we can't always determine the outcome of our own actions.  We want to stay in our comfortable box because we can usually tell what results our comfortable behavior will yield.  To wander away from that comfortable behavior and have the unknown lie ahead of us... well, I think it's daunting to many people (myself included).  But there comes a point in everyone's life (probably many points, actually) when we have to plan as best we can, close our eyes, hope for the best and jump into the discomfort of the unknown.  We may be surprised at how quickly we can become comfortable again, or how little discomfort we experienced in the first place.  And chances are pretty high that we will have learned something along the way.

It made me very uncomfortable to think that I was not "good enough" for someone, or that my attitude and actions caused so much of my own stress and unhappiness.  But upon looking at myself - really, deeply looking at myself - I found that there were indeed many things that I could improve and that improving these things, even just a little, gave me a new, more positive outlook and perspective.  I had thought that I was happy in many respects, but I realize now that I am happier today than I was for many years.  I had to take some big strides outside of that beloved comfort zone in order to come to that conclusion.  And I don't regret that.  Any time you can grow, learn, change, improve or discover, the end result usually far outweighs the inconvenience of being uncomfortable.