Seek Out Discomfort

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant

Chapter 1: Creatures of Discomfort

Watch the replay here:

Main points:

• We are starting with Skills of Character, which means they can be developed.
• When you are seeking discomfort, you must know the reason that you're seeking it to actually stand a chance at this kind of growth. That's why we set a Lantern, or a goal with soul. It must connect with your Vision to be worthy of your effort and discomfort in a world that caters to our comfort.
• Quantify your efforts (or failures, as the book calls them) to know that you're actually seeking the discomfort rather than just thinking about it.

Transcript:

Steve Haase  0:02  
All right. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining me, we are going to do the very first super bound, non boring leadership book club. And, you know, shouldn't be that tall of an order. But I suppose it is easy enough for a book study group to get kind of boring. So I'm gonna do my best to keep it interesting. Keep it fun. To me, the thing that is most fun is learning important things and not just learning them, but actually integrating them, committing to them, and having a place where we can practice them and make these new skills, these new ideas part of our lives. And so that is, what we're gonna do on the book club today. The first book we're starting with is Adam grants hidden potential, it's a good one, I think the thing that really had me most excited about it was how aligned with the coaching work that we do at superband is, is very aligned with it. And what really got me excited was all the different areas of life and research studies and just the wealth of examples, that, that the author brings in on these topics that are really important to living life at a higher level, at being fulfilled in your life. And yeah, just living, living the life, the universe is dreaming for you, which is what we're all about, right tapping into that higher wisdom that exists all around us. And figuring out how to how to live from there, how to have that be your guiding principle, and your guiding vision for where you want to go, and how you want to do it. So welcome. Thank you for joining either live or on the replay here. We're also broadcasting live to Instagram so low to the ground. We're going to begin with section one is all about skills of character, which is just a really cool way of laying things out. And Chapter One is about seeking discomfort, see, what was it called the faculty creatures of discomfort. we're creatures of comfort, right, we seek comfort, once we find something we like once we find our groove, that becomes our default. But in order to actually grow, we have to do the opposite. And this is something that if you've been in the coaching world, if you've been in the personal development world, seek discomfort is not a new idea. One of my friends went on to do promotion and marketing for a group called yes theory and their T shirts just say seek discomfort like that is their main motto. And they do it like all their videos, you can't even believe the stuff they do the challenges they set out for themselves in the name of seeking discomfort. And they really not just to seek discomfort, but actually to expand the experience and joy of life. Right, because I don't know if you've ever had someone in your life where you feel like their walls just close in on them. That's a result of not wanting to be uncomfortable. And it's sad, you feel how as as the walls get closer and closer, the the possibilities for their life become fewer and fewer. And we don't want that. Or you don't want that for ourselves. And so that is the reason to seek the discomfort is to actually grow in the ways that are meaningful to us. And so the reason that I love that it's framed as a skill of character, is because it frames it as something that you can actually develop. If it were a character trait, well, then maybe you haven't maybe don't. But if it's a character skill, right, just that one word, then it points to the fact that you can build it. You think of any skill that you've built over time for me, music is one of them. Coaching is one of them. Parenting I think I'd become a better parent. It requires practice, dedication, and interest curiosity enthusiasm, but if you have close things then you can achieve it right so this is a skill of character to seek discomfort. I'm gonna go ahead and and write it out here and rather than just stealing from yes theory I'm gonna write um seek out discomfort. I'm gonna add an extra word. But I don't know if they're just, if you're seeking it out. You're moving towards it, you're not just thinking about it. We seek out its comfort. Well, rounded space. That's uncomfortable. I hate it when that happens. All right. That's not what we're talking about here, though. We're talking about higher level things towards a specific end. And so my my first question here, one of the ideas he brings up is that it's the right kind of discomfort in order to absorb the right information. And those are the three things absorb the right kind of discomfort, right information, right imperfections, those are the three chunks in the skills of character, we're gonna start with seeking out the right kind of discomfort. Now, one of the big myths that Adam Grant busts in, in this first chapter here is the one of the learning styles. And I found that fascinating, because like many others, I often preach the gospel of learning styles. I'm like, here's a, here's an audio version for those who are audio learners. And here's a picture for those who are visual learners. And I'm sure there's some truth to it, that the ability to take in information in different ways lends itself to different people. But I think the core point that sometimes you just need to do the hard thing, and that by doing that you will grow in those particular ways, is a really good one. And in the in light of seeking discomfort. You know, the example he gives is of Steve Martin, who found it really difficult to write, I can't relate at all, I think it's so easy for me, right? It's horrible, right? If you if you've ever sat down to write like, there's a, you're my brain starts to sweat, you know, I just want to run away and do anything other than write like writing is so challenging at times. But it was only after he took on the discipline of writing out his jokes, because then they could just be a sentence long, right? You cut out all the fluff, you cut out all of everybody else's material. And you just have your material that you've written down into one sentence, one paragraph, one joke, that his career began to flourish. And he threw himself into it by saying, hey, I want a writing job. You know, I will write jokes on this show. And that was how he kind of committed himself to that practice of writing. And the rest is history. Right? He became an incredible, not just an incredible comedian, but an incredible figure in entertainment. And had he just stuck with how he learns. We might not have seen that. And so I want you to consider for a moment, we'll have our first kind of pause for reflection here. What is your favorite learning style? Let's take a moment to think about that.

For me, I think audio like I listen to a lot of audiobooks, podcasts. I'm a very audio driven person. And so then the follow on question from that is, what are some other learning styles that can enhance your progress with whatever it is that's important to you? And so I think I already gave that away, and that would be written actually do the writing. One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. And so actually stepping out and doing the teaching, sometimes even before you feel ready. To me, that was another huge takeaway from this chapter is not worrying about the whole readiness factor. Right that if if you feel unready that that's a good sign that now's the time to do it. You know, the graphic where it said, if you start today, your progress was like this. And if you start when you're ready, your progress starts over here. And so you only have like that much as opposed to the person who started today. They have that much. It all goes to the topic of seeking discomfort. And I think the the powerful thing here is why like, what is it that you want to grow in and why does that matter to you? Right, when I bring this back to the work that we do with Superman, the question is what lantern is it that you want to like But how do you want your life to, to grow to, to have an impact on the world. And that is your purpose for seeking out the discomfort. Because we're never going to do this, if there's not a reason, right, we have to have a very strong purpose, end in mind, or even just an idea of the impact that we want to have, in order to do something that's rather unnatural, right? And it says, creatures of discomfort, we're creatures of comfort. So to seek it out, means that we need a purpose that is going to have us going into that. So I'm just gonna write that down. And then we'll have a chat about that for a moment here.

I want you to consider what is the lantern that you want to light? What milestone what achievement, that is serves as a microcosm of your vision. And that can illuminate the path before you and inspire others, even as a pleasant secondary consequence, secondary result? What last one do you want to like? Go ahead and share that in the chat here. I would love to know what important thing are you working towards? For me, it's the launch of our new book. That's going to be happening in July, we want to have 1000 Preorder copies sold before before we launch. You know, if you're Adam Grant, that's just your that's you just sneeze you sneeze out 1000 orders. But for us, that's going to be that's going to be a real achievement, that'll be a really meaningful lantern for us. All right, we have that Amelia says I got following the adventure. Sorry, that was about seven minutes ago. Seeking out discomfort Yeah, she calls it following the adventure. I love that. I love that. Because you know, if something's gonna be an adventure, by definition, it's not necessarily going to be easy. Hopefully, it's not harrowing, or so hard that it breaks you. But the idea of an adventure is that there will be some struggle, there will be a bit of noble suffering, so to speak. Right? It's, it's, it's challenged for the purpose of something greater. Thank you for that. So when you have your lantern in mind, when you know what it is that you want to grow in and that you want to create, then this idea of seeking out discomfort in order to release your potential. It becomes more animated, right, there's more. There's more energy there, there's more juice. One of the examples that grant shares in the book that I really love is of the people who are learning a new language. And he says, I seek to make 200 mistakes in my language a day. How would you? How would you count that? Like, do you have a little running tally mark on your hand or on your phone? I would imagine that's something you would just sort of estimate but if you're living in a culture where you're speaking, a language that is completely new to you, I think it's a pretty safe bet that you're gonna make those 200 Unless you just clamming up and not saying anything, right. And so then the kind of daily metric the daily benchmark of 200 mistakes would be something that would get you out of your comfort zone out of your shell opening your mouth and making those mistakes. And I think the thing that's powerful about here, the power powerful about this as you gamify your mistakes gamify your discomfort is it turns it from something I think could be avoided or even just tolerated into something that you're actually seeking out something that you're moving towards. And Amelia shares her lantern is more speaking opportunities, sharing her unique perspective on home life she's got a good one, check her out. A pleasant solution.com Is that right? Is that is that the website people can go to can go to Amelia is amazing. Go check her out. So the lantern is more speaking opportunities, where she can share her unique perspective on home life. So then, I think the following question there is, what is the adventure? What is the discomfort or even you know in the length in the framework of the the length lists, what are the failures that you can pursue? In towards making progress on that laughter. So, Amelia, I'm curious to hear, wanting to gain more speaking opportunities. And I think with a lantern, you know, we want to have, it's something that you know that you've lit. So rather than more speaking opportunities, maybe it's your first 10 speaking opportunities. Or your next 10? Because I've, I've heard you speak in the past, and you're brilliant. So So what are the what are the failures that you can bring into your world that over time will lead to a certain percentage of successes, a certain percentage of speaking opportunities that will have you eventually light that lantern of whatever it is, maybe it's your next 10, your next 50, your next 100? Whatever you want that lantern to be something that you find motivating meaningful? And that you can then kind of hitch this process of, what did you say following the adventure, right, it's your process of following the adventure of seeking out your discomfort. And even to some degree quantifying the failures. And I think this is this is something that most people will shy away from, and I even want to think about the language here. So it's going to quantify

I don't think failure is the right word for it. It's just so final and judgmental on something that is, it's it's not something that is noble, that is tender, almost, it's courageous. So it's like quantifying the attempt. quantifying the effort. We talked about cultivating the garden of of our business, or of packaging the gift of what we what we offer. So I think that last point, there is efforts. Yeah, I think quantifying the efforts, right, if you're working out, if you're training on something, you're you're doing efforts, if you're learning a piece of music, you're you're you're running it through, you're performing it, let's do efforts, quantifying the efforts. Because they won't all fail. But the idea, but a lot of them will. And I think that is the power of saying, you know, aim for a certain number of failures. Because you're just then you see them as paths to your success. So if you like that, if you'd like to quantify the failures, then go for it, I'm gonna go with quantify the efforts. Because then it's almost it's results agnostic, right, like I don't really care about the results, I'm going to just do the efforts, I'm going to get into the process, I'm going to fall in love with the process. And that is what is going to yield progress towards my lantern. So Amelia shared, her uncomfortable efforts will be pitching or outreach for the next five opportunities with one of them being in person. Yeah, pitching and outreach. That's always a big one. If you own a business, your ability to grow that business is determined by how willing you are to pitch to connect, we call it cultivating possibility, creating connection and cultivating possibility. You can call it pitching, you can call it outreaching. It's all the same thing in a certain way. With this, coming back to the idea of the lantern, it's powerful to bring your own self into it, bring your own soul into it. And so the idea of, of pitching or even outreach is it can be a little cold. And so what we find is that the more we can bring the soul of our business into the standard business activities like pitching or outreach, the more the more magical the whole thing starts to feel and the less you know, like a sell out you can feel as as you're doing these these efforts. So we'd like to talk about cultivating opportunities or creating connection in order to create those efforts. Okay, those efforts towards the, towards the lantern. All right. Well with that I'm going to end the recording and we can have a little chat