Pain and discomfort are part of life. Regardless of how much we want to avoid them, these uncomfortable feelings are comfortably installed in us.
Whether it is embarrassment, despair, guilt, grief, regret, anxiety, anger, fear, or any other painful emotion, it is crucial to manage uncomfortable feelings. Fleeing what you feel will simply hold you back and keep you from living life as it is.
“True success is achieved by stretching oneself, learning to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
~ Ken Poirot
Table of Contents
Getting comfortable with discomfort:
Coping with discomfort is art. But the problem is that most of us have not learned to deal with these emotions effectively. Therefore, we have mastered the art of avoiding uncomfortable and painful feelings without realizing that these emotions can really help us live a better life.
We have found unhealthy methods to manage and avoid uncomfortable emotions through various toxic means such as sex, drugs, and alcohol which provide temporary respite at the expense of our well being.
However, it is easy to learn to deal with uncomfortable feelings. In fact, once you know how to manage your emotions, you can improve yourself and create a better life for yourself. If you want to be healthy, successful, and happy, you’d better start facing your emotions instead of avoiding them.
Face what you are afraid of:
It’s going to be difficult, but it’s definitely doable. Here are 4 simple but effective ways to start dealing with uncomfortable feelings.
- Watch your feelings
- Face your emotions
- Be your best friend
- Live life as it is
1. Watch your feelings:
The very first step in dealing with difficult emotions is to observe exactly how you feel without judging them. Sit quietly where you will not be disturbed or distracted and spend a few moments observing the feelings you are feeling. You may experience pain, discomfort, or anxiety.
Realize what makes you uncomfortable without getting involved or involved in your emotions. Also, be sure not to judge yourself for feeling a certain way, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes.
2. Face your emotions:
Once you know what feelings you are feeling, you must face them boldly. Running away from uncomfortable emotions will get you nowhere, no matter how fast and how long you run. We don’t want to feel discomfort or pain. It’s our natural instinct. You probably don’t want to get your hands on a hot stove knowing full well that you will burn yourself.
But when it comes to emotions, the same rules don’t apply. Emotions are like wounds, the more you avoid them, the more they become infected. Instead, you need to take care of them and heal them. Paying good attention to your uncomfortable feelings will help you deal with them and even heal emotional scars over time.
3. Be your best friend:
The problem with dealing with uncomfortable feelings is that we cannot really express what we are going through to our loved ones. It’s a very internal thing most of the time. This is why you have to be your best friend.
Face the pain you feel and be kind and support yourself. Give yourself the advice you would give your best friend if he faced the same thing. Give yourself the time you need and don’t rush into the process. Let it happen naturally.
Recommended: 12 Marvelous Abilities We Posses, but Often Neglect.
4. Live life as it is:
Once you start to face uncomfortable feelings, you will start to find happiness through good and bad experiences in life. Instead of focusing on a destination, you want to reach, try to find happiness in the process.
Find the beauty in what you are going through right now and realize how this process will make you a better and stronger person. Only by opening up to what life has to offer can you live life to the fullest and enjoy it.
Once you have the strength to face life as it is, you will find beauty in your daily experiences. You will see how everything that happens can improve your life. How to cope with painful and uncomfortable emotions can really help you live a better life.
Feeling bad to feel better:
Now that you know how to deal with your emotions, here are 16 uncomfortable feelings you need to stop avoiding to build a better life.
1. Being alone:
There is a subtle difference between loneliness and solitude. When you find peace and comfort in being away from society and in the company of yourself, solitude can be the most liberating experience.
You can really be yourself without playing any role for someone else. By being self-aware, you can rediscover and explore who you really are.
2. Confessing your mistakes:
We all make mistakes. We all screw up sometimes. We cannot always be right. We cannot be perfect all the time. We are not supposed to. This is how we learn.
Knowing when you are wrong and admitting your mistakes can be difficult, but it allows us to see our faults and allows us to improve. You are allowed to make mistakes as long as you do not repeat the same.
3. Not knowing what you want:
It’s good not to have a long-term plan. It is normal not to know exactly where you will be in a few years. The whole concept of planning for your future is just an illusion.
It may reassure you to think where you will be, but it is not the truth. None of us can fully guarantee that life will go exactly as we planned. So it’s best to take it one day at a time without getting attached to a destination.
4. Doing nothing:
Sometimes doing nothing can mean doing a lot. In this modern world, we are programmed to multitask, which can sometimes be helpful.
However, when you do absolutely nothing, you will discover how rewarding life can be. Put your smartphone down, drink coffee, sit on your sofa, relax, and breathe some fresh air.
5. Getting stressed without reason:
We all become anxious and worried for no apparent reason most of the time. These feelings often arise from our inability to understand a particular situation or our inability to cope with the uncertainty of a circumstance.
However, allowing yourself to feel anxious and tense at the moment can actually let these feelings go, despite your discomfort. Your therapist may disagree on it, but distracting you from your true feelings doesn’t work all the time.
Recommended: How to Discover Your Life Mission and Get Out of Your Comfort Zone!
6. Being able to receive criticism:
Being criticized by others hurts and it can even make us defensive. But it is important to take criticism without defending or avoiding it. Critical feedback can help you focus on the weaknesses you never imagined.
However, this may be easier said than done. So, whenever you are criticized, be aware of how you accept and react to the comments and what you want to do about it. Understand the criticism with an open mind and think if it can really add value to your life.
7. Being able to judge ourselves like we judge others:
The way we judge people is often a projection of how we judge ourselves. These judgments are the result of our experiences and our wounds. However, the way you judge someone reveals what hurts you the most and what you can’t cure.
What you think others should heal in themselves is often the thing you need to heal in yourself. This is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of dealing with uncomfortable feelings.
8. Accepting the coexistence of multiple truths:
Different variations of truths exist in the same reality. No, I’m not talking about multiple realities here. But the fact is what you believe to be the truth and what someone else may believe to be true, even if it may contradict your belief in the truth, can both coexist and be true at the same time.
It’s one of the biggest paradoxes in life. Accepting the existence of conflicting ideas and realizing that both can be true will allow you to open up to different perspectives.
9. Respecting your judgments:
We all face different situations in our own way. Sometimes we are proud of it, sometimes we are ashamed. But we all do what we think is the best course of action at the time to survive. Admittedly, our judgment could have been clouded at the time due to the weight of the situation, but we survived.
Didn’t we? So, instead of criticizing and punishing yourself for what you did to survive, recognize that you have gone through life’s challenges and endured. Once you have learned to honor your judgments, you can find out how to improve things.
10. Doubt means don’t:
If you are undecided about something more than you should be, then you must realize that it is in itself a decision. You know that the answer is a difficult “no” if you have to think too much about decision-making.
If something is supposed to happen, it will happen naturally. You don’t have to worry about making a simple decision.
11. Allowing ourselves to be angry:
We are often the most honest when we are angry. Although we can say the nastiest things, these are things that have been bottled up in us for too long, things that we believe, things that we feel, things that we are passionate about, things that we want to change in our lives.
By allowing yourself to feel angry, you will allow your deepest thoughts and emotions to manifest in a more constructive way. Anger only becomes destructive when we suppress it for a long period of time.
12. Feeling ashamed:
When we feel we have done something that we are not supposed to do, something that comes out of character, we are often ashamed. Being ashamed can help us get on the right track and correct our wrongs.
As long as you don’t engage too much in self-punishment, shame can help us become a better person and create the life we really want.
13. Doubting ourselves:
There are days when we are not all sure of ourselves and who we really are. This feeling can intensify when we are faced with challenges and difficulties, as we tend to have more doubts about ourselves and our abilities. While it may seem like you lack confidence and your self-esteem suffers, in reality, you are simply becoming a more mature person.
It is only by facing challenges that we experience the necessary self-improvement and grow as an individual. The person you were until now is changing before your eyes and evolving towards someone who is complete and better able to face life. It can be a very uncomfortable feeling for all of us, but necessary.
Recommended: 15 Symptoms that Determine if You Are Using Your Inner Power.
14. Enjoying the journey:
If you have to love someone, love them for what they are. Don’t like them because you want to be in touch with them. Then you will experience true unconditional love.
There are many things in life you can do just to enjoy it, to enjoy the process, not to reach the destination. Acquire control of the process. Then you will reach the destination sooner than you think.
15. Understanding that happiness depends on us:
We often tend to rely on our family and life partners for our happiness. Most of us have this innate belief that we are responsible for making us happy and taking care of us, just as we take care of them and make them happy. But the truth is that we are all responsible for our own happiness. In a relationship, we come together to share our happiness, not to make us happy. This is not how a relationship works.
Only you and you alone are responsible for your life and what you think about it. This can be very intimidating emotionally as it puts pressure on us directly. But it can also be extremely liberating because we realize that we have total control over how we feel without having to rely on someone else to make us feel better.
16. Breathing and living:
Breath is life. We feel, experience, and live through our breaths. Only when you take easy, deep breaths will you be able to know how you really feel inside without being distracted. There is a reason why meditation has become a global phenomenon today.
It allows you to connect with your true self. When we breathe fully and deeply, we can feel our deepest thoughts and uncomfortable feelings. This allows us to clean up the basement and deal with all that life has in store for us as a stronger, more mature person.
Step out of your comfort zone:
Be comfortable being uncomfortable. The best things in life are often lined up for you just outside your comfort zone. So step outside and face the feelings you usually avoid.
Decide that you want to feel uncomfortable. Choose to feel discomfort and take certain risks. Coping with your emotions and dealing with uncomfortable feelings will make you a better person and improve your life much more. Certain risks are worth taking.
