Discomfort Is the Prerequisite: The Hidden First Step to a Life Worth Living

In the coming months, I’ll be releasing a short, punchy book titled The Seven: Small Revolutions for a Life Worth Living. But before I ask anyone to embrace those seven revolutions, I need to offer a truth that most of us resist:

You can’t feel your way back to your life if you’re not willing to get uncomfortable.

Why Most Self-Help Advice Doesn’t Stick

We live in a time of self-help saturation. Lists, hacks, guides, AI-generated tips for living your best life. It’s a booming enterprise. And it’s especially loud in the lives of high-functioning women and men, who are told daily to strive for a life that is optimized, graceful, resilient, and ever-expanding. 

But beneath the flood of advice, there’s a simple, inconvenient truth:

Nothing new can reach you if you’re stuck in a loop designed to protect you from discomfort.

Discomfort: The Missing Ingredient in Most Growth Journeys

Discomfort is the cost of entry to aliveness. Not suffering. Not chaos. Just discomfort. The awkward, misaligned, in-between sensations that signal something real is happening.

Many of us claim to want transformation, but in practice, what we often want is to feel better without changing much.That’s not a moral flaw. That’s a survival instinct.

But if we never challenge our relationship with discomfort, every good idea, every wise suggestion, every revolutionary shift will remain just that, an idea.

We’ll read the best self-help books, follow the right influencers, maybe even hire a coach. But if we haven’t made peace with discomfort, nothing sticks. We’ll stay efficient. Impressive. And quietly detached from our own experience.

Why We Avoid the Very Thing That Helps Us Feel

Take my move to Vietnam. It wasn’t a dramatic escape. It was a deliberate decision to embrace a discomfort I hadn’t met yet. I wasn’t running from pain. I was running toward uncertainty. Frankly, I already felt misaligned with the life I was living. The discomfort was there. I just finally chose a version of it that felt worth it.

That’s the real decision point: Do you want the discomfort you know, or the discomfort that might lead to something better?

You Don’t Need a Plan. You Need a Disruption.

This is why the best personal growth doesn’t start with clarity or strategy. It starts with the willingness to sit in ambiguity.

To go left when you usually go right. To say yes when your default is always no. To stop optimizing and start interrupting.

Discomfort doesn’t feel good. But it’s not the enemy. It’s the signal.

Three Questions to Shift Your Loop

So before you dive into new routines or look for your next breakthrough, try this:

• Name one thing that feels misaligned in your day-to-day life.

• Now, instead of fixing it, sit with it. What’s the discomfort there trying to teach you?

• What’s one small choice you’ve been avoiding because it feels unfamiliar, not unsafe?

You don’t need a new self. You need a new relationship with discomfort.

And once you have that? The seven small revolutions aren’t just ideas. They become actions.

Choosing a Different Kind of Discomfort

If this resonates, stay tuned for the release of The Seven, for anyone who’s tired of performing their way through life and ready to feel again.

(And yes, if you’re searching for the best self-help books for women or men or just practical tools that actually stick, this one’s got both feet on the ground.)