Training in the ‘Discomfort Zone’!

There is an uncomfortable truth about real training and practice (in anything): it’s hard, very hard. Each session is challenging. It has to be because you’re striving to improve, to develop beyond your current level. So you are always in the ‘discomfort zone’. This is a place most people avoid if they can. But the ‘discomfort zone’ is also the ‘learning zone’, it’s where you improve. It’s that special place where the brave are rewarded with progress!

Progress happens because you keep making sorties beyond the boundary of your current competence until the boundary itself eventually shifts. This experience is usually physically and mentally gruelling; and it’s also psychologically tough. Why? Because you necessarily experience failure and you make mistakes. And the natural reaction to that is disappointment and often misguided dissatisfaction with the training regime itself. But ‘experiential learning’, or ‘learning by doing’, is all about failing and making mistakes in a safe environment – and learning from the experience.

So those who understand the process of ‘learning by doing’ don’t get disappointed or dissatisfied, they get inspired – because they know they are improving.

Those who don’t understand the process, or who don’t want to tolerate the discomfort, will retreat to their comfort zones and stop improving. It will only be a matter of time before they stop training altogether or move to an environment where the comfort zone is tolerated. Those who dwell there are like minded souls and they are content.

But they are not really training!