Ep #127: Change Your Life by Embracing Discomfort

So I have spent a lot of my life chasing comfort or rather avoiding discomfort. So I’ve been trying to do everything in my power to make myself feel good or happy or just better, and to avoid feeling embarrassed or ashamed or frustrated or defeated or afraid, all of those uncomfortable emotions that we don’t like to feel. And I’m not alone. Most of us do the same thing because we think that when we feel those uncomfortable emotions that something is wrong.

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Hey rebels, how are you doing? How’s 2020 treating you? I’m still excited about saying 2020. I don’t know, there’s something just so cool about it. And to me this year feels so full of promise and possibility and excitement. And of course, that’s because I’m thinking about all the cool shit I have planned for myself and for The Not Your Average Runner business this year, and also because I think I picked the absolute best word to guide my actions this year.

Do you pick a word? I’m always fascinated to hear what other people pick and why they picked it. And the why I think is always the most interesting. Andy picks a word every year and then he has a jar where he writes little notes to himself about how he’s living into that word. It’s super cool. And then at the end of the year, he goes through and he reads, he pulls out all the notes and he reads them to see like, hey, this is what I did this year. This is how I lived into this new version of myself.

And of course, he made his jar this year and I used the cricut to make him a label for it, which turned out really well. And so this year Andy’s word is endurance because he has a lot on his plate with school and work and us getting married and of course, running a lot of races. And, oh, did I not mention that we’re getting married? Yep, this July in the Finger Lakes, we are so freaking excited. It’s going to be a very small family-only ceremony right on Cayuga Lake, which is super pretty. It’s one of my favorite places. And you guys, I legit have to pinch myself pretty much every day because I never expected that at 52, I would be marrying the love of my life. He is just such an awesome person.

Three years ago, we didn’t even know each other. This time three years ago, January, 2017, I wasn’t quite divorced yet. I was still navigating that process. I was thinking about dating but I wasn’t dating, and now here we are three years later, just a completely different life. And that is the power of the thought work that I teach here on The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. It is totally life changing.

But I’m definitely getting off track, so let’s circle back to the word of the year, which I promise is very related to this week’s topic. So in the past, I have picked a word every year, and then after a few weeks, I just forget about it. It’s like I usually pick something very inspirational and then it’s just, I don’t know, I just lose interest. But this year, I made a huge vision board in my office. It’s a big three foot by five-foot whiteboard, and I used the cricut, of course, to put the two goals that I have for 2020 on the board.

And now I can add new stuff with magnets or I can move stuff around. I can write on it with markers, and it’s like a game changer. So first of all, it’s huge and I took my word and I put it front and center in the middle of the vision board. So every time I walk into my office, which I do like 20 times a day, I see my word, I see my goals, I see my vision for the year. And it really helps me recommit every time I see it because I’m like, “Oh, that’s why I’m doing this. That’s what I want for myself.” So I know you’re wondering what my word is. It’s awesome. It’s so awesome. So I’m going to tell you.

My word is discomfort. And I know that that actually does not sound very exciting or inspiring or fun at all. I know. It sounds like something most people would want to run away from instead of embrace, but here is why I chose it. So I have spent a lot of my life chasing comfort or rather avoiding discomfort. So I’ve been trying to do everything in my power to make myself feel good or happy or just better and to avoid feeling embarrassed or ashamed or frustrated or defeated or afraid, all of those uncomfortable emotions that we don’t like to feel.

And I’m not alone. Most of us do the same thing because we think that when we feel those uncomfortable emotions, that something is wrong. And we believe that the goal of life is to just be happy all the time. So we are always looking for quick ways to feel happy. And you know what? We find them. Wine, coffee, cupcakes, Netflix, online shopping, reading, even running.

And those things do give us a quick hit of pleasure. They’re pretty reliable. We feel good when we do them, but that’s pretty much just for the short term. So what I have found is when I try to avoid feelings like shame or frustration or fear, when I worked really hard to avoid them, I stay stuck where I am. And that’s because distracting from those feelings momentarily by doing something that makes me feel better like eating a cupcake, doesn’t make the feeling go away. It distracts me from it, so I’m not feeling it in the moment, but it’s still there because feelings are created by our thinking. So if I’m feeling anxiety or fear or sadness, it’s because I’m thinking something that creates that emotion. So eating a cupcake or watching Netflix or reading a good book will distract me from those thoughts temporarily. So it seems like the feeling goes away.

But if I don’t address the thinking behind it, that feeling will always come back. And I mean it will always, always come back. So these distracting activities are called buffers, because they serve as a buffer between you and your mind. And for years, I thought that creating a distraction was exactly what I needed to do to change my emotions or to change my actions, to change my behaviors. And I thought, “Okay, if I could just distract myself from feeling shitty, then I won’t feel shitty anymore and I’ll start doing the things that I want to do.” In fact, if you’ve ever belonged to Weight Watchers, you know that they teach exactly that. They teach you how to distract yourself when you want to overeat. There’s no like, “Hey, let’s figure out why you want that ice cream right now and deal with your thoughts about it.” It’s all just, “Get up and go for a walk and you’ll forget about the food.”

Until an hour later when the thoughts come back and you want it all over again. They don’t solve the root cause. So a buffer is a Band-Aid on something that is causing problems in your life and we all know that that doesn’t work. So buffering is any activity that you do to stop feeling an uncomfortable emotion, or to give yourself a hit of pleasure. A hit of dopamine. And so we often don’t even realize we’re doing it. Mindlessly scrolling Instagram, biting your nails, drinking wine, online shopping, exercising, watching TV or cleaning your house, any of those things can be a buffer if you are using it to avoid your thoughts and feelings. And again, most of the time, it works in the short term. In that moment where you’re feeling uncomfortable because you have an emotion that you don’t like, the buffer works because it distracts you from it and you end up not feeling it.

You get a relief from whatever the emotion is. And your brain is like, “Okay, make a note.” When we drink wine, we can stop feeling our feelings for a while. You’re not wallowing in shame or disappointment or whatever it is, and I know you can relate to this. We can all relate to this. And we call these activities coping mechanisms. This is just how I get through life. When things get hard, I have wine or coffee or chocolate or I go for a run and then I don’t feel as stressed or anxious. And that is true. When you use a distracting activity, when you use a buffer, you get to distance yourself from the feeling. So we distract from the difficult feelings or the situations that we believe are causing those feelings, we mistakenly believe, with something that gives us a little hit of pleasure like something that tastes yummy.

You have something sweet and your brain is like, “Ooh, that’s good.” And it releases a hit of dopamine and it feels good in your body and so you remember that and you are like, “Okay, next time I’m in this stressful situation, I know what helped is eating chocolate because I got to feel a little bit better.” Or we go shopping for new shoes or we scan Instagram for cat videos. So with that short term pleasure, that little hit of dopamine that your brain releases, it feels good and you learn, “Hey, I feel good when I do this thing,” and then anytime your brain feels something negative, you’re like, “Oh, a little bit of time on Amazon Prime will fix this.” You go online, hit the buy now button on those new running shoes, and then your brain is like, “Ah, that felt so good. I’m so glad I’m not stressed out right now.”

And so you get that brief relief from whatever it is you’re avoiding, but then the dopamine fades away and your thoughts are still there and you either have to deal with them creating whatever that emotion is, or you have to keep buffering to avoid them. And this is why people have such a hard time breaking some of these habits. It’s because the habit is keeping you from feeling an emotion that you don’t want to feel. And if the option is, feel the emotion or keep up with the habit, even if the habit is creating a result you don’t want, if you’re unwilling to feel the emotion you’re hiding from, you’re going to keep doing that habit. So you go online, Amazon Prime, you buy these new running shoes, but they don’t fix anything. They’re just shoes. Well, unless you’re barefoot and you’re walking on glass, in which case 100% shoes will fix that problem.

But otherwise, not really. They can’t fix your emotions because your emotions are created by your thoughts. And the problem here is not that your emotions need to be fixed. The problem is not that you’re feeling disappointment or sadness or shame. That is not the problem. The problem is that you think feeling those emotions is a problem. You make those emotions a problem for you. And you guys, they’re just emotions. They’re just feelings. That’s all they are. You feel these things because you’re thinking something like, “I wish I was a faster runner,” and then you feel frustrated. Or, “I miss my mom,” and then you feel sad. Or, “I can’t seem to get ahead financially no matter what I do,” and you feel discouraged and overwhelmed.

None of those are facts. They’re just thoughts that you have and they create emotions for you that you don’t like. And then when you don’t like those emotions, you’re like, “Oh my God, something’s wrong. I’m feeling sad or frustrated or overwhelmed. I can’t deal with that. I got to do something to get out of that pain, out of that discomfort.” So you believe your choices when you feel an uncomfortable emotion are to either fix the circumstance, get faster as a runner or get a shit ton of money so that you can get ahead financially. You think, “Okay, if the circumstances were different, then I wouldn’t feel this way.” Or, “If I could just distract myself from the emotion, then I wouldn’t have to feel it.” And sometimes it’s a little bit of both. So everything we do in our lives is because we want to feel a certain way.

Okay, we get married because we want to feel loved and secure. We buy new clothes because we want to feel attractive and confident. We run because we want to feel bad-ass, but we have it all backwards. The actions that we take don’t make us feel anything. It is our thoughts that drive our feelings and then our feelings drive our actions. So we’ve got it all twisted around and we’re always chasing a feeling because we think if we fix the circumstance or if we behave differently, then we’ll have the feeling that we want. And again, that’s not how it works. Like when you feel angry because somebody yelled at you and then you think, “Oh God, I need wine,” what’s really going on is this.

The circumstance here, the facts are a person said words to you at a louder volume than usual, and you have a thought. Maybe it’s, “How dare he yell at me?” Or, “He’s disrespecting me,” and then you feel angry. And you don’t like feeling angry. Anger is an uncomfortable emotion for a lot of people, including me. So when you feel angry and you don’t want to feel angry, you have a glass of wine or maybe you go for a really aggressive run, or you eat some Cheetos so that you can stop feeling angry. And then in the case of the run, that’s all good. That’s all fine and good if you had a training run on your calendar, but maybe the wine or the Cheetos, you’re like, “Look what you made me do. You disrespected me and you made me overeat.” And then you’re even more angry. So that’s actually not how it works.

Somebody yelling at you, somebody saying words at a louder volume than usual, that’s not what makes you feel angry. You make you feel angry and then you don’t want to feel it and so then you end up buffering. And I know there are some of you that are like, “Oh, when I feel stressed out or when I feel angry or upset, I just go for a run. That’s how I handle it.” I want you to know that running in that case is buffering. You’re not addressing anything. Yes, running is a far more productive activity as far as your health and your body and it’s way more productive than say, online shopping or eating cupcakes, but just because your buffer is something that most people would call a healthy behavior doesn’t mean that it fixes anything other than distracting from your anger or stress or whatever it is in the moment.

The running doesn’t change your emotion. The only way to change your emotions are to think differently because as soon as you stop running and all those endorphins diffuse out of your body, the thoughts that were causing the feelings in the first place will come right back if you haven’t dealt with them. And here’s the thing too. If you’re dependent on a particular activity like running for example, to manage your feelings all the time, what happens when you can’t do it? What happens if you get injured and you have to take a few months off? I’ve known people that break their leg, they’re like, “I’m not running for six months.” And the only way you know how to manage your feelings is to go for a run. You are screwed.

Or maybe your work schedule gets super crazy for a couple of weeks and you have to take time away from running. And if you have not learned how to manage your thinking and feelings without just distracting from them with buffers, you’re going to be in trouble. So just bringing it back around to the beginning, this is exactly why I chose the word discomfort for 2020 because if you can get really good at allowing yourself to just feel frustrated and not necessarily act on it, just be like, “Oh, look at that. I feel frustrated right now because I’m thinking I wish I was a faster runner.” If you can get really good at allowing yourself to feel all of the uncomfortable emotions and just notice, oh, this is what I’m thinking and this is the emotion I’m creating with it, if you can allow that without trying to run away, without making it mean that something is wrong, without saying like, “If I feel this, if I let myself feel this, it’ll break me,” you will start to understand what is causing them.

If you can stop buffering away from them, you will be aware of the thinking, you will become aware of the thinking that is creating them. And I know you all think that situations cause emotions. Even though you know it intellectually in the moment, you’re like, “No, but seriously that guy is an asshole and he makes me mad every single time.” You think that other people are assholes, your job is stressful, you have too much to do. No. First of all, none of those are actual circumstances. They’re all just thoughts that you have about the circumstance in your life. You have a job and then you believe that it’s stressful. You have things on your to-do list and then you say, “I have too much to do.” You have a co-worker or a brother or a friend or something, and then you think, “Oh, he’s an asshole or she’s an asshole.”

So be really clear about your circumstances and then your opinions about it and notice where your opinions about your circumstances are creating emotions that you don’t like. And then where are you trying to run away from those emotions because you don’t like them. So when you buffer away from your thinking so that you can get a moment’s relief from being annoyed or sad or whatever it is, worried, you don’t acknowledge that you are creating the feeling of annoyance or sadness or worry. Not your spouse, not your kids, not the traffic jam you’re sitting in. It is you. You’ve got to take responsibility for that. It’s both terrible news and amazing news at the same time.

It’s terrible news because it means that buffering isn’t a solution and maybe it’s been working for you for a while, but I don’t think it really works for you. If you have any kind of result in your life that is not what you want, look to where you are avoiding your emotions and where you are buffering that is blocking you from getting that result. So that’s the bad news. But the good news is it means the solution to not feeling like shit all the time, lies within you and that you don’t need a different job, you don’t need a different boss, you don’t need to be a faster runner to feel better.

So if you are willing to just let yourself experience emotions that you don’t really like, instead of distracting from them, if you’re willing to do that, you’ll learn that A, they won’t kill you. They’re just feelings. They’re literally just vibrations in your body. They have never killed anybody. And then B, you’ll start to see what the thoughts are that you’re thinking. If you’re not distracting from everything, you can actually sit down and say, “Oh, what thoughts am I thinking that are creating these emotions?” And then you can decide if you want to think differently.

This is the secret to the universe. You hold all the power. No matter what happens in your life, if you can develop the skill of allowing yourself to experience your emotions and accept them and just say, “Oh, look, I’m noticing right now that I’m thinking this thought and it’s creating an emotion for me.” So whatever happens in your life, if you can develop that skill, you will no longer have to run away from your emotions metaphorically or physically, and then you can work to shift them to where you want them to be. But also remember, the goal of life is not to feel happy 100% of the time. That does not actually sound like fun.

You need contrast to enjoy happiness. We need darkness to appreciate the lightness. Otherwise, it just becomes status quo. Also, you would get a sunburn. But feeling happy 100% of the time is not the goal of life because when we feel happy, we don’t really show up with determination where we’re just like, “Oh, life is great. I’m so content.” We’re not really interested in moving forward because we feel happy. We’re just seeking pleasure. So I want you to learn to experience and allow the emotions that you’ve been avoiding. And I promise they will not destroy you. You will still be alive. They may hurt. They may be really, really uncomfortable, but you will not die. You will still be alive and then you will know that you can feel any feeling and survive. That is so good to know. It feels amazing to know that and it’s going to serve you well because whatever situation happens in your life, you’re like, “I got this. Might not be easy, might not feel great, but I can do it.”

So one last thing before we close. I am not suggesting that you should never drink coffee or wine again or never shop online. What I would love for you to do is to be aware of why you are doing the activity. If you’re like, “You know what? I love this kind of chocolate and it just tastes really good and I’m just going to have some,” that’s different than, “I had such a shitty day. I need chocolate.” So become aware of the why, and when you hear yourself saying, “I need to do this activity because my life is so stressful,” maybe it’s time to take a breath and really look at your thinking because chocolate doesn’t make your life easier. I promise it doesn’t. It may seem like it, but it doesn’t.

Your job is still going to be exactly the same whether or not you eat the chocolate, your co-workers are going to be the same. Where you have the option in your life is to decide to stop thinking that your job is stressful or your husband is an asshole, and realize you are thinking those things with your thoughts and creating the stress and whatever those uncomfortable emotions are, simply with your thinking. It is not the person; it is not the circumstances of your life that you need to change and the emotions are not the problem. It is literally your thinking, okay?

All right, if you have been listening to this episode and you’re like, “What the fuck is she talking about?” I urge you to listen to episode 33 of this podcast that will teach you the circumstance, thought, feeling, action, result model that I use when I work with my clients. I talk about it a lot on this podcast and it will give you some guidance on how to shift your thinking so that you can feel differently and how to become aware of your thinking, all right? So go listen to episode 33 of the podcast and that is it for this week my rebellious friends. We have covered a lot. I will see you in the next episode. I hope you have an amazing week, mwah.

Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.