Seek out discomfort

• What if instead of tolerating discomfort (e.g. feeling awkward or uncomfortable), people actively sought it out? 
• We suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation...

from Tweet by Ethan Mollick, who says:

Great paper for teaching & learning. Tell students: “Your goal is to feel awkward and uncomfortable.” Giving an explicit goal of aiming to feel uncomfortable in order to grow makes folks persist in classes, write better, seek out more info & learn more from political opponents.

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In The Pocket Pema Chodron, in Chapter 3, "The path of the bodhisattva-warrior"....'

Wherever we are, we can train as a warrior. The practices of meditation, loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are our tools.  With the help of these practices, we can uncover the soft spot of bodhichitta, the tenderness of the awakened heart. We will find that tenderness in sorrow and in gratitude. We will find it behind the hardness of rage in in the shakiness of fear. It is available in loneliness as well as in kindness.  

Many of us prefer practices that will not cause discomfort, yet at the same time we want to be healed.  But bodhichitta  training doesn't work that way. A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortalbe and safe.  But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it's also what makes us afraid.

Bodhichitta training offers no promise of happy endings. Rather, this "I" who wants to find security - who wants something to hold on to -- can finally learn to grow up. The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day? 

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Jim Collins, in Good to Great, also says we must "confront the most brutal facts of our reality."