Living in the Zone of Yuck

I keep hearing people say, ‘get comfortable being uncomfortable.’ Covid has been miserable for many of us, and uncomfortable for all of us. The cards have been thrown into the air and we’ve ended up living in an unnatural mess. Humans are social creatures, it is natural to hug, and yet we’ve been told to socially distance. (If ever there was an oxymoron!) We have been told not to touch our face, and yet in times of stress we touch our face as a coping mechanism. We have been told to wear a mask, which limits the visual cues we normally pick up when speaking with others, often without even thinking. Of course we need to adapt our behaviors to keep ourselves and others safe, but some of these life-saving behaviors go against our natural inclinations.

Covid will surely prove a catalyst for other changes in our lives, from the way we work, to the way we dine, to the way we arrange our homes. Long after the vaccine has been rolled out we will be feeling the effects of change, and change is uncomfortable, but it’s easier when that change is within our control. I’ve been looking for little things I can can control, and offering others the same.

Yesterday I was giving a software presentation to a group of people at work. These are busy people, and although the software had been available for some time they hadn’t used it until this point. The issue wasn’t training, or even awareness, it was traction. At the end of the short reminder demonstration I asked them to do two things before the end of the day: to install the software and use a single feature. If using that feature was a little uncomfortable, then I asked them to do the same thing the following day, and so on, until it became comfortable. As soon as they found comfort, I asked them to stretch themselves, just a little bit, and to choose a a small level of discomfort once more by finding another beneficial feature, and to use that until that too became comfortable. The level of discomfort was completely within their control, and by working this way, by using momentum and giving themselves these little micro victories, they could not only make their work easier they could enjoy a sense of control over proceedings all while building their discomfort muscle.

It takes mental effort to put yourself in a place of discomfort, at least at first. I recall a running coach talking me through something called, anaerobic threshold training, sometimes called a tempo run, which is a technique used to build endurance. The pace you choose varies from person to person, and those with a lot of running history to fall back on and a heart rate monitor could figure things out. I had neither, so I asked the coach what I should do. This is how she summed it up:

“You know that feeling you get when you run at a pace that is unpleasant? You’re not throwing up; you can live with it if you really had to, but given a choice you wouldn’t choose to – you’re kind of at the ‘point of yuck’ – that’s your anaerobic threshold. That’s what you’re looking for. Just hold that pace.”

Ever since that cold 6 am training run in Chicago I have been referring to this uncomfortable place as the Zone of Yuck.

I didn’t enjoy that tempo run, nor the next one, nor the one after, but I kept doing it. The more I did it, the better my endurance became, and the less unpleasant I found it. I got to a point where I stopped having an emotional response to it, and it simply became something I did. You could say I got comfortable being uncomfortable. There have even been moments, after spending so much time in the Zone of Yuck, that I actually attained, albeit briefly, a State of Yum.