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Nelson Mandela once said, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” Do your choices reflect your hopes or your fears? Have you allowed discomfort to guide your choices? Discomfort often feels like uncertainty, nervousness, and sometimes fear. Most of us dislike discomfort and actively avoid it. Avoiding discomfort keeps us in our comfort zone. Avoiding discomfort keeps us stuck. While this may feel safe, this is a false sense of safety. When we are too comfortable, we are stagnant, not growing or moving forward. Life often provides us opportunities that call us out of our comfort zone. Each day we are faced with the choice between what is best and what is easiest. Sometimes, the acknowledgement of the difference between the choices we are making and who we truly can be, can bring on feelings of discomfort. It is often easier to continue behaviors and make the same choices instead of facing our fears and embracing discomfort. Change and growth require embracing discomfort. Embracing discomfort is not only hard and scary it requires vulnerability. In the words of Brené Brown, “You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort. You cannot have both.” She describes vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk, emotional exposure”. It is the feelings and sensations we have when we step out of our comfort zone. While we tend to mistake this vulnerability as weakness, this is, truly, the feeling of courage. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity” (Brené’ Brown). Many of us spend our lives avoiding vulnerability. Going out of our way to avoid situations that may lead us to experience discomfort. Over time we develop patterns of avoiding discomfort and vulnerability. These patterns may include striving for perfection, numbing out, or “dress rehearsing tragedy” aka going down the rabbit trail of all the ways that things can go wrong. Avoiding vulnerability leads to a false feeling of safety and control. Avoiding vulnerability and discomfort does us much more harm than good. We are wired for belonging and connection. Without vulnerability and discomfort there is no love, no belonging, no connection, no joy. We cannot place walls around us to keep the bad out, yet still let the good in. I challenge you to begin recognizing how you may be avoiding vulnerability. Start to become aware of the moments of discomfort, allow yourself to the opportunity sit with discomfort and learn from it. Begin to identify your patterns of avoiding discomfort. Ask yourself what avoiding discomfort is doing for you. What is it costing you? Is avoiding discomfort worth the it? Embracing discomfort and embracing vulnerability is one of the most courageous things you can do. I hope you give yourself permission to begin understanding your patterns of avoiding discomfort and vulnerability. I hope you begin choosing your hopes over your fears.