Sitting in discomfort
I’ve got some time off this week - a staycation, if you will - and I’m looking forward to spending a few days by myself, including going on a big hike and swimming in the Hampstead Heath Ladies Pond for the first time. I’ve also decided to spend an hour doing something I haven’t tried for a little while - a yin yoga class.
Like many a middle-class white woman, I’ve a fondness for yoga and will do an online class once a week in my living room, usually whilst attempting to stop my one year old crawling onto my back or stealing my yoga blocks to build a tower. These classes tend to be what’s called dynamic yoga - basically, you move a lot. Yin yoga is different - it’s about getting into a pose and then staying there for a number of minutes, letting your muscles relax more and more over time.
Prior to actually taking a yin yoga class, I thought it sounded like a nice way to relax - have a lie down, stretch your muscles out, let your mind wander. The reality, however, is a little different. You set yourself up in a pose - let’s say lying on your back with your legs in a diamond shape, feet touching and knees apart. At first it feels great - you take some deep breaths, you feel your hips release some tension, your body sinks into a slower rhythm. But pretty soon you start to sense a little bit of strain in those muscles that are being stretched in this unfamiliar position. What you really want to do is move - give your legs a shake or even wiggle another part of your body in an effort to distract yourself. But the teacher just tells you to keep breathing, that there are a few more minutes to go, to try and stick with the pose if you can.
In these moments, you are truly brought up against yourself. Whilst you’re not in pain, you are in discomfort, and the desire to move is your mind trying to shift its awareness away from that uncomfortable feeling and towards something (anything) else. But, in a room with no phones and no noise, where ideally you need to stay still, there isn’t anything else - you have to sit in the discomfort and face it.
When we start to think about this idea of sitting in discomfort within the wider world, what I notice is how easy it is to avoid doing it. If you’re working on a difficult document or spreadsheet, you might find yourself flicking back to your email and firing off a few responses - it feels productive, but in reality, the difficult thing is still there waiting for you when you come back to it (and there’s compelling research that shows that multi-tasking, even for a few seconds, leads to decreases in productivity). When a child is crying, many people’s natural response is to ‘sssh’ them, tell them it’s alright, that there’s no need to cry - and whilst you can see where this instinct comes from, part of why we want to do this is we don’t like seeing a child in pain. It’s uncomfortable to sit with them and let them be sad - often because it brings up difficult feelings in ourselves. And now, in an age where social media is almost ubiquitous, it’s easier than ever to avoid sitting with uncomfortable feelings - if you’re feeling sad, nervous, anxious, frustrated or just bored, you might find yourself opening Facebook or X or Instagram and scrolling through mindlessly, subconsciously distracting yourself from the emotional state that you’re in.
I have come to think that the ability to sit in discomfort is a key leadership skill. As a baseline, it’s a skill everyone needs to some degree in the workplace. You’re going to face hard situations, and will sometimes be asked to do difficult (or even monotonous) tasks. Having the emotional capacity to face these things and be OK with feeling a bit bored or a bit scared or a bit frustrated whilst doing them is something most workers will need. As always with leadership, we can support our teams to do this by being aware of it as a necessary skill and modelling it ourselves - for some practical tips and techniques on how to structure our working time so we can get to the nub of important tasks, Cal Newport’s Deep Work is a good place to start. We also need to support our teams to understand that feeling frustrated or anxious when trying to do something that’s out of our comfort zone is a natural and appropriate response - for example, a new line manager feeling scared about a difficult conversation they need to have with a direct report. Sometimes, there can be a tendency for us to swoop in, to have the difficult conversation for them, or hold their hand through the meeting, or suggest that they kick the can down the road and tackle it at a later point - but in reality, we’re often taking these actions because they rid us of the uncomfortable emotions that these tasks bring up, not because it’s a genuinely useful way to approach it.
Some of those very same employees who are nervous about their first difficult line management conversation will become the leaders of tomorrow - and, in my opinion, leadership is an exercise in sitting in almost constant discomfort. I used to fall into the trap of thinking things would get easier just around the corner - once that production’s opened, I’ll have some more time to think, or if we just get a couple of positive responses from funders, I’ll feel more relaxed. But whilst of course there are ebbs and flows in terms of busyness and stress, that mythical place where work seems straightforward and everyone in your team is happy and there are no awkward things to deal with and you feel totally competent and confident and in control - that place doesn’t exist. There will always be something.
In her book Real Self Care, Dr Pooja Lakshmin debunks the myth that self-care is about juice cleanses, meditation retreats and (ahem) yin yoga classes. These are, ultimately, things that distract us from underlying problems rather than fix them - sure, do them for fun, but don’t expect them to make you feel better if, for example, you’re completely burnt out and in a workplace that’s not treating you well. Real self-care, she argues, is an ongoing process of creating a life that is in tune with our values and gives us a sense of meaning and purpose.
Dr Lakshmin suggests that the first step towards real self-care is having strong boundaries - and this is also the thing that will support us to manage and even lean into sitting in discomfort at work. To know that your job isn’t everything, that it’s a part of your identity, not all of it, that you have colleagues who will share the burden and friends and family that will have your back - these are things that give us the strength to look squarely at the awkward and difficult situations that are inevitable within a leadership career and attempt to tackle them, rather than squirm away from them and hope that they go away (spoiler: they won’t).
I’m looking forward to my yoga class next week, and to my swim in the Ladies pond, and to spending some time with friends and with my family. On the first day of my staycation, though, I’m going to be taking a train out of London and spending a few hours hiking up some hills by myself. I’m excited to breathe some different air, to take in a new view and, ultimately, have some space and time to clear my mind and reflect on how things are going. The yoga and swimming and socialising will all be great fun, but, in a world that has a million things that are trying to get your attention, the importance of being alone with your own brain - even if, sometimes, it brings you face to face with some uncomfortable truths - cannot be underestimated.