" The more we learn to face and run through discomfort, the more we will be able to face genuine and extreme adversity."
this one, and I had no confidence. Zero. I found myself in a strange city in a commercial strip lined with brothels, feeling so much sadness for the girls. But I pressed forward, letting my anger push me through my discomfort, because I wanted to stop the pimps, just like Bryan Mills in Taken.
As a therapist, I know what anxiety is, and I was in it. Full-throttle anxious. What have I gotten myself into? I wondered. This was extreme discomfort. I’ d never felt that level of anxiety. For several nights leading up to the raid, I couldn’ t sleep. I found myself fixating on worst-case scenarios— catastrophizing, therapists call it, when someone exaggerates in their mind the potential negative outcomes of an impending situation. I reminded myself this was what I wanted— there was no backing down. In the end, we saved girls. A bar got shut down, traffickers got arrested, and underage girls received their freedom and crucial support.
This story is extreme, but the principle is the same for all of us. Because I had regularly practiced pushing through discomfort in many areas of my life, I had confidence that I could make it through anything and be all right.
The more we learn to face and run through discomfort, the more we will be able to face genuine and extreme adversity. Yes, I was in that situation by choice, but most of us will find ourselves in situations of stress or grief, facing circumstances that require us to push through hard and intense things we’ ve never seen coming.
And when the big ones do come— like the death of a parent or a spouse, the loss of a job, or a relationship breakup, arriving at our doorstep as an unexpected and uninvited guest— we will discover the strength we have built by dealing with discomfort rather than wishing it away with avoidance.
" The more we learn to face and run through discomfort, the more we will be able to face genuine and extreme adversity."
That’ s why when my father died unexpectedly nearly a decade ago. I made myself deal with it rather than push the sadness away. He was my friend and mentor. Dad worked in education like me, as a longtime head of school, and he helped me understand the importance and value of working with young people. My father taught me that we can help shape young adults into who they are called to become, and we receive the same from them in return. That has been my calling. But then he died in a car wreck, and my friend and mentor was gone.
Knowing the importance of mourning and remembering him as I processed his death,
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