Comfortable with Uncomfortable | Hacker News Reader

Comfortable with Uncomfortable

podcast.coreygarvey.com

75 pointscoreygarvey13 comments

I'm an American currently living in the UK. I've created a blog and podcast about moving to a new place or career. Here's an essay I wrote about my thoughts on being comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Hey, I'd say that being "uncomfortable" wearing a shirt and tie is relative. If I wore that as a uniform to school every day as a kid, it might make me uncomfortable to switch to more casual clothes. And that's precisely where I might start to learn.

I wish you talked more about specific experiences as an American living in the UK and related those to the ideas you presented.

What's uncomfortable about living in the UK? What did you find different? What did you have a hard time adjusting to? What was easier than you thought?

These are the questions I left the article with.

Any shot you recently listened to an episode on a podcast called The Portal? https://art19.com/shows/the-portal/episodes/7d086129-e19d-4e...

They touch on how being comfortable with being uncomfortable for long periods of time is in some ways the essence of being a successful contrarian (rather than doing things differently for the sake of it).

Hey I haven't, although I'm definitely a fan of Eric's and his perspective on being contrarian. Will check it out, thanks.

Enjoyed the article. This theme has been on my mind, since I was recently discussing the “blub paradox” with friends. I think that the general idea of the blub paradox (not just limited to programming languages) is rooted in the avoidance of discomfort, which thereby cuts off opportunities for gaining new and deeper perspectives.

In the mindfulness community being comfortable with the uncomfortable is called equanimity.

Being as comfortable with the strange as with the familiar, if we want to get pedantic with the semantics.

Personally, the common uncomfortable experience I encounter is related to unfamiliar domains I have to deal with. As a client-facing software engineer, numerous times I was quite nervous when I have to talk to clients. The fear of not being able to speak clearly, or explain a technical concept well to a stakeholder can seem rather embarrassing. One of the ways to deal with that was to delve in deep into those new domains and train me to be equipped with those communication skills. One such domain for me will be sales. Here's my blog post that I've learnt about sales in my attempt to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Hope you readers find it useful! (:

https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-03-24-how-to-improve-...

This is great, thanks for sharing. Acknowledging that you're uncomfortable in those domains feels like the best first step to me. I struggle with this all the time. I've worked on a number of software projects myself and have fallen into the common trap of avoiding user feedback because it brings up domains and ideas that I'm not very confident in. I need to be more at home being wrong and admitting that what I've built could be better. Sometimes that demands learning an entirely new space or technology, which should be welcomed information but too often is ignored because it's uncomfortable.

The site seems to be down.

It was down for me a couple of minutes ago. Up now though.

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