The Mindful Athlete by George Mumford

Author:George Mumford [Mumford, George; Jackson,Phil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941529072
Publisher: Parallax Press

ROMANCING THE DISCOMFORT ZONE

We all know what error correction is. Let’s say you’re a golfer who’s always slicing. If you apply deliberate practice to that move, work on error correction consciously and intentionally, the mistakes you make will eventually tell you what you need to work on—and how. The process is like a missile that self-corrects. But we have to know the fundamentals of what we’re doing—and then we have to repeat them over and over again, each time moving incrementally out of our comfort zones.

It’s helpful to have a coach or somebody who knows how to get you outside of that comfort zone so you are always pushing the envelope and evolving. This is a principle in sports and in life: if you get too comfortable in life, you don’t grow. That’s the virtue, as I mentioned earlier, of having your ass on fire. For those who have to hit rock bottom to be motivated to change, this is the gift of desperation. You’ll do anything to change. You’re used to living outside your comfort zone, so in some ways you have a certain built-in resilience.

The thing is, if you’re comfortable, and you just want to stay that way, that’s fine. But if you want to pursue excellence and high performance, then you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. For some elite athletes it’s not even a question of will; they love to get out of their comfort zones and thrive on pressure. That was one of Michael Jordan’s defining characteristics: how much joy he could find in being in a challenging, pressure-filled situation.

Love it or not, to learn, you’ve got to take risks and stretch yourself. You’ve got to romance the unknown and concentrate on pushing the envelope so that you can attain new skill sets and more readily access flow even under the most trying circumstances.

I’ve worked with many people individually and in groups who have come to me for help, but who bail out when the going gets too tough. I understand why they leave: because they never get comfortable with being uncomfortable. In fact, many individuals want to change, but they’re often unconsciously attached to their suffering or to the old self they think they want to change. They have identified with that suffering or that old self for so long that they’re afraid they won’t know who they are without it—even if that suffering or that old self has no real place in the context of their current life anymore. That’s something of an existential issue, which I’ll cover in the following chapter.

History is full of examples of people who, with incredible mental control, were able to step way, way out of their comfort zones because they had to, and who still came out strong. Until recently, Alice Herz-Sommer was the world’s oldest pianist and Holocaust survivor. The award-winning documentary The Lady in Number 6 tells the story of her life. Alice suffered nightmarish indignities during the war—experiences few human beings have suffered

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