While teaching a wonderful group of women assertiveness skills, I showed them a Ted Talk by Kelly McGonigal entitled, “How to Make Stress Your Friend”. McGonigal is a health coach and discusses how seeing stress as part of life and embracing it versus fearing it is often the difference between illness and health. The whole talk is wonderful, and I strongly encourage you to spend the twenty minutes it takes to watch it. However, it is this line in her talk that really, really hit me: “Chasing meaning is better for your health than avoiding discomfort.”
It’s easy to attempt to avoid discomfort.
So many people that I meet and work with are avoiding discomfort. I used to be one of those people. It’s easy to attempt to avoid discomfort; stay afraid, don’t take risks, and blame others for any negative situations you are in. Easy! Yet, easy doesn’t mean happy and healthy. Happy and healthy come from chasing meaning and engagement in your life. It comes from facing your fears, asking for what you want, and taking full and complete ownership of your own thoughts and feelings. Not only is that not necessarily easy, it’s often stressful and scary.
So how do we chase meaning? First, we have to know what brings meaning to our own lives. For me, it’s helping women to achieve their goals and dreams, get assertive, and get really happy. Meaning for you might be doing math problems, cooking, or helping the elderly. There is no right or wrong answer, but meaning is different for all of us. It’s not too hard to find what brings us meaning; it’s what we love to read about, learn about, spend time doing, and think about whenever we can.
The hard part can often be finding the courage.
The hard part can often be finding the courage to go out and chase that meaning. It means telling others what we are passionate about. It means risking criticism and judgment. It could mean changing jobs or changing relationships. Finding meaning can’t happen while you’re home on your couch watching bad television. It will only come from you getting outside of your comfort zone and chasing your dream.
What’s the first step you need to take to chase meaning? Is it a call to an educational program? Is it asking someone for more information about what they do? Is it hitting “send” on an application? Is it writing something, speaking something, learning something, doing something? Whatever it is, when are you going to take that step? What will it take to get you to do that? And finally, what’s the alternative? Avoiding discomfort?
Love,
Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC