Growth comes from discomfort !!

There is a wonderful story that I heard about lobsters. Do you know how lobsters grow? A lobster is a very soft tissue animal, and it forms a hard shell for its protection. But the hardshell does not grow. As the lobster grows, the shell gets tighter and tighter. What happens is the lobster gets to the point where it is uncomfortable in its shell because the shell is too small and it is stuck in that constricting shell. It climbs under a rock or someplace safe and sheds the shell and start growing a new one and finally comes out of the rock. Later, when it grows more, its again gets uncomfortable, goes to a safe place and sheds the shell and grows a new shell. The stimulus for the lobster to grow new shell is its discomfort. Lobster waits until it is uncomfortable, and then it decides to grow, and it repeats it multiple times as it grows bigger and bigger.

Growth and comfort do not coexist. Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort. Therefore we have to make ourselves uncomfortable to grow. T. Harv Eker said “Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills!”. Too many of us are so afraid of being uncomfortable that we don’t grow as much as we could. When I was asked to leave my well-paying job with awesome international travel opportunities, I took a massive risk to do something that would potentially make me very uncomfortable. It was my willingness to being uncomfortable that led to my growth. My willingness to grow has continuously opened up a lot of doors for me in life. I have made growth as the number one priority in my life.

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Few people enjoy the feeling of being uncomfortable. The challenge is to get past that initial feeling of wanting to return to the norm, so you can grow and benefit from that discomfort. Are you willing to put yourselves in an uncomfortable position? Most of us find ourselves in an uncomfortable position all the time by accident. We all know that we don’t learn anything when things go right, and we only learn things when they go wrong. Things go wrong for all of us all the time, and we all say we would never want to go through that pain again. However, we all agree that its a growth opportunity.  What if you willingly put yourself in those positions. Imagine the speed of growth that could be achieved when you direct yourself into discomfort. Realise that times of stress are signals for growth.

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