Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

I have always talked to my teams about being comfortable in the uncomfortable. Nothing in sports is comfortable, when you really think about it. Lifting weights, conditioning, endless repetition of skill work and drills, getting up early, sacrificing personal time and activity for the team. It’s all uncomfortable.

Even the lowest-level athlete must learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. Watch any five-year-old T-ball game. The outfielders are wilting in the sun, fighting back tears and full meltdowns to just go to the mini-van and get their snack treats. Yet they stay out there. Maybe because Dad told them they had to. Or maybe, just maybe, they WANT to stay out there to play the game, in spite of the uncomfortable conditions.

Being comfortable with the uncomfortable sets athletes apart. It sets soldiers apart. It sets first responders apart. Pick any profession that sacrifices comfort for performance, and you have someone who knows what it is like to be comfortable in the uncomfortable.

Fast rewind. One year ago, I was riding my motorcycle when a teenage mother with her baby, not paying attention to the road, T-boned me at a highway intersection, severing my left leg just below the knee. Suddenly, the normal became difficult. Comfortable became uncomfortable. I have spent a year healing, adapting, and overcoming to get back to my life. I refuse to be “handicapped.” I refuse to have limitations. But is normal more difficult? Absolutely. Is comfortable now, compared to a year ago, more uncomfortable? 100%.

What I have learned is that being comfortable is a state of mind and not a state of being. I live with a degree of difficulty I never knew before. I have to do things I have never had to do just to walk like I did before. Okay, so what?! The most important thing is that I can walk. I can work out, hike, bike, shoot hoops, and eventually I will jog and run again. It is a little more difficult, and maybe a little more uncomfortable than it was a year ago, but it is still possible. Being thankful for the things you can do changes a whole lot of perspective on how you do them.

My new normal is uncomfortable by my old standards. Yet my new normal is getting more and more comfortable within my new circumstances. I am learning that the nerve pain and pressure sores are just part of life now. Accept them and move on, instead of focusing on them and being held back. I am learning that I can be comfortable in being uncomfortable in new ways. My standards haven’t lowered since my accident. In fact, if anything, they have raised. I plan to run a 5K next year. How? I don’t know. I just know that I WILL. It will hurt, it will be hard, it will be uncomfortable. But I will do it.

One of the most beneficial things in my journey has been documenting my difficulties and my triumphs since the accident. I can remember thinking I would never walk again, and I can remember the rush of emotions the day I took my first steps and said to myself, “If this is as good as it gets, I am happy.” But then I wasn’t happy peaking with that accomplishment. I wanted to walk farther. I wanted to walk faster. And so I did. I just spent three weeks hiking five-to-ten-mile trails in the mountains of Montana and Wyoming. How? Because I am more comfortable being uncomfortable than I have ever been, and I have a record of progress to look back on that reminds me how far I have come.

That kind of record is the same thing the Ballogy platform gives athletes. It shows them the days when the struggle was the story, and it shows them the victories of today’s abilities right alongside it. It is fuel to keep working, keep growing, and keep getting better. It is fuel to be comfortable in the next uncomfortable thing.

Champions are comfortable being uncomfortable. It is a state of mind. It is also a habit you build, one uncomfortable rep at a time. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.