The One Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

-Emily Dickinson

The leader got up and left the room. One moment he seemed fine. The next moment he gathered his things and walked out without saying a word. This incident took place a few minutes into my second meeting with a group of rising leaders. We had just begun talking about the relationship between self awareness and effective leadership. Apparently that was too much for him. I learned from others afterwards that the mere mention of self awareness triggered his response to flee the room. He could see where the group was heading and didn’t want any part of it.

Stay in the room. That’s all I ask of you. You’ll feel uncomfortable at times during your journey toward Selfship. When that happens, stay in the room. You’ll be glad if you do, and so will everyone else in your life.

Why stay in the room? Because the very thing that sent that leader heading for the door is the very thing that will make or break your growth as a person and as a leader—discomfort.

That's the One Truth.

I don’t make many guarantees, but this one I’ll stand by for the rest of my life: healthy discomfort leads to healthy growth. Always. Your capacity for growth depends on your willingness to work with your discomfort rather than letting your discomfort work with you. Let your discomfort rule you and you will leave the room and limit your capacity for growth. But if you learn to test your discomfort, you will grow. It’s up to you.

The Growth Paradox

I developed an autoimmune disease several years ago. According to my most recent blood work it’s in remission. One of the things my doctor believes helped me most was taking cold showers. I’d like to say that after taking cold showers for the past few years that I’ve grown used to them, or even like them. The truth is that I hate them. I negotiate with myself every day in an effort to avoid them. And every single time the cold water hits my skin I want to leap from the shower or turn up the water temperature. But I choose to step into the discomfort because I know it’s good for me.

I raise this example because discomfort in all of its forms triggers a reflex that makes us want to distance ourselves from it. This takes place in a fraction of a second at a neurological level. The instant we experience discomfort our autonomic nervous system employs fight, flight, or freeze as a form of protection.

In many cases our nervous system gets it right, like when we automatically swerve from the car entering our lane in order to avoid an accident. But in some cases, our nervous system misleads us. Even though I know the benefits of cold showers my nervous system labels them “bad” every single morning.

This is what I call The Growth Paradox: something that feels bad is actually good for us. Think about the soreness you experience the day after you exercise. Soreness takes place when you test your strength in a such a way that you create micro tears in the muscle fibers. The discomfort you experience in the form of soreness evidences the fact that you’re getting stronger.

Your journey toward Selfship will include discomfort. As with exercise, I’ll encourage you along the way to view your discomfort as a good thing. Please stay in the room.

Bottom of the U

I recently saw an interesting x-y-graph that illustrates the relationship between exercise and life expectancy. The horizontal x-axis represents activity level and while the y-axis represents morbidity. As you would expect, morbidity gradually decreases with increased activity. We all intuitively know that exercise plays an integral role in overall health. In fact, recent research indicates that a sedentary person that begins exercising three hours a week cuts their morbidity in half.

What surprised researchers was that at some point along the graph of activity morbidity starts to climb among people that exercise too much, and it skyrockets among endurance athletes. The resulting graph looks like a “U”. Those that exercise the least and the most share common life expectancies. It’s the Goldilocks Principle—too little and too much are both bad for you. Somewhere in the middle is “just right.”

You grow when you operate at the “Bottom of the U.” I want you to test your discomfort as we move forward. As the study illustrates, a sedentary lifestyle will erode your health. But I also don’t want you to overdo it. Soreness is a good thing, but pushing yourself too hard will impede your progress toward Selfship. I want you to test your discomfort and then I want you to rest. It’s what I call Test and Rest.

Test and Rest

You have three zones: comfort, discomfort, and recharge. You feel competent, confident, and anchored in your comfort zone. You will naturally default to this zone throughout the day. In contrast, you tested, limited, and maybe even disoriented in your discomfort zone. Your recharge zone offers you a place where you find rejuvenation. This is where you replenish your energy.

The process that awaits you will move you toward your discomfort zone. I want you to pause before your discomfort engulfs you and you feel the need to fight, flee, or freeze. Don’t run away from it and don’t plunge into it. I just want you to stay at the edge. Pay attention to your desire to fight, flee, or freeze but resist the temptation to give into it. When you feel like you’ve reached your limit, it’s time to rest.

There’s considerable evidence that running a series of sprints may be one of the healthiest things we can do, especially as we grow older. The explosive nature of a sprint helps strengthen muscle fibers that will otherwise atrophy—muscles we will need to retain balance and avoid injuries. Guess what you’re supposed to do between sets of sprints? You guessed it: rest. Lay on the grass, close your eyes, and pretend you’re getting ready to take a nap. For about two minutes. That seems to be the magic window. Then it’s time to do another sprint. In the same way, I don’t want you to over do it in your efforts to develop Selfship. Test yourself and then rest yourself.

Two Groups

When it comes to discomfort among the leaders I work with, I see two discrete groups. There are those that avoid discomfort at every turn, and there are those that can’t seem to get enough of it. Discomfort for them seems to serve as a form of discomfort. If you’re in the former group, I’m going to challenge you along the way to gradually increase your tolerance for discomfort. You need to test yourself in order to develop a healthy soreness. I’ll ask those in the latter group to resist their inclination to plunge into discomfort so that you avoid injury.

Untold growth awaits for those of you that develop the ability to Test and Rest. As you test and rest your way to Selfship, you’ll see evidence of incremental growth. It won’t show up overnight and it won’t show up on the scale in your bathroom. It will show up as an increased sense of wellbeing, presence, and effectiveness. In short, you’ll develop a greater sense of Selfship. But this growth requires that you engage in healthy discomfort along the way.

Let’s return to that group of rising leaders. The leader that left the group never came back. I helped the company work with him to get assistance for the deep wounds that our session appeared to have exposed in his life. The leaders that remained in the group experienced enormous growth in their personal and professional lives. Their growth was unmistakable to their families and their senior leaders, which is why every single one of them received promotion throughout the course of the year that we worked together. All because they stayed in the room. All because they learned to expand their capacity for healthy discomfort.

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