Avoiding Discomfort

  A Youtube video, of all things. 

  I keep telling myself, not entirely jokingly, that I should stop watching Youtube. I mean, for one, it runs away with my time and at least some of my attention span (or so it is rumored). 

  For two, I'm certain that there are better companies to be supporting with my attention and ad-revenue. And for three, the population of Artificially Intelligent videos is growing at an insane rate, leaving me no longer confident in my ability to fully weed them out. 

  Still, though. There are too many entertaining and informational videos on said content-sharing-site for me to have successfully, fully, completely dropped that habit (yet, at least). 

  And occasionally, while staring into the blue-light screen of easy dopamine, I do run across something I really need to be reminded of. (Unheard of, I know...)

  Twice now, in the past week or so, I've found videos that have been genuinely helpful to me in how I'm thinking about projects and anxiety - and not when I was looking for them either. 

  In fact, the first one I clicked on rather reluctantly. It had come up in my feed multiple times and I'd read the title while bypassing it. Something along the lines of 'Ambitious but Lazy,' which i found to be slightly off-putting (imagine someone banging you over the head with a sign that says "Do Better!" on it). For all I knew, that was the approach this creator would take. But, for all that, by the time I'd seen it come around  a couple of times, I was wary, but curious. 

  'Click!' It expanded on my screen and borrowed my attention span.

  I watched a few minutes of it and sat back to consider. Hmm. This is... better than I thought it would be. 

  The video was essentially addressing those of us who do or have struggled with dreaming great dreams, planning great plans, then thinking to ourselves, "Oh, that seems hard," and not going through with them. Avoiding, or substituting with busy work in other, seemingly more doable areas, and then guilting ourselves over having not achieved our dreams or accomplished projects which we... can't... seem... to get momentum on. 

  Now, as far as I'm concerned, while this doesn't apply to everything in my life (any longer?) it does ring true in one specific area. And because of that, this was speaking straight to me. 

  Right at the point where the Youtuber could have gotten out his "Do Better" sign and started whacking (at which point I would have ducked and exited) he took the conversation in a direction I hadn't heard talked about much before: 

Our Brains and Avoiding Discomfort

  This might seem obvious to a few of you, but I've never had anyone sit me down and say, "Well, I know that growing up, discomfort is a mixed bag. You try to avoid it socially, and in discipline, but you're also supposed to grow up and be able to withstand certain amounts of it with good grace. But just to let you know - you're brain will try to steer you away from it. Don't always pay attention to that, okay?" 

  Of course, I've known for some time that there's a connection between 'being an adult' and doing things that I don't always want to do. Like going to work early in the morning, or taking responsibility for difficult things. 

  But I hadn't made the leap to the idea that the things that I'm not 'told' to do, the goals, dreams, etc., aren't fueled entirely by motivation but more by whether I get up and do those things when I don't feel like it as well. That is, even when I'm second guessing myself, or when an easier option presently itself (like, I don't know scrolling on Youtube???) 

  Because the man making the video put it in terms of our brain's tendency to send off warning signals and provide alternative, easier distractions to avoid discomfort, not in terms of shame and blame, I was better able to swallow some of the advice. 

  He made it a point to say, "No, successful people aren't just 'more motivated' than the rest of us." And, "Failure, while uncomfortable, is not the opposite of success. Doing nothing is." 

  As cheesy as that last bit sounds, after watching the video, I did something. I resisted the excuses and delays, and wrote something on my book. (Which is honestly ironic, because now I need to send my computer hard-drive in to recover a lot of what has already been written, so this new stuff, jotted down in a notebook, is the only recent stuff I have at hand.)

  Do I feel like doing it again, today?

  No. That sounds unpleasant. Difficult. Risky. Less-than-entirely-fun.

  But... I didn't want to write this either. Not tonight, not now. I'd rather play games, because they're colorful and companionable, because they're distracting and their challenges are kind of easy compared to this. 

  But guess what? 

  I did write this. (Thank you Lord)

  And drat it all, now that I have written it, I have some accountability about whether I stick to this new path in my life or not. 

  Ah, phooey. Foiled again. 

  Thank you for enjoying this post from Mountain Chickadee! If this made you smile and you’d like to see more in the coming weeks, please consider subscribing to my Substack!