Each week we have a little ritual with our girls just before we give out pocket money. We each talk about what we’re grateful for from the past week, and one place where we’ve either failed at something or got outside our comfort zone. (Hat tips to Hugh van Cuylenburg and his book The Resilience Project for the inspiration for this).

It reminded me of an experiment I did back when I trained in the Japanese martial art Aikido.

In Aikido we spend a lot of time in seiza. That’s how we sit (well, kneel) when we are watching techniques being demonstrated, and we also actually practice techniques from kneeling. Apparently back in the day in Japan you needed to be able to handle someone coming at you with a knife when you were innocently kneeling (in seiza) minding your own business.

Unfortunately, I’m not designed for kneeling. I’m all good standing. And I’m a machine when it comes to sitting – give me a chair or a couch and I can go all day. But kneeling, not so much. And so after 30 seconds or so when my knees start to hurt a bit and I start to get a bit uncomfortable, I switch to sitting cross-legged.

Until I decided to run this experiment. Rather than pulling out as soon as I started to get uncomfortable, I would wait until the pain got to 7 or 8 out of 10. And a strange thing happened. It took longer and longer for the pain to get to that level. Until it got to the point where it almost never did – I could sit in seiza as long as needed.

I think it’s the same as getting better at anything. To get comfortable with selling I had to have conversations that weren’t comfortable to start with. To get comfortable speaking in front of groups I had to be uncomfortable to start with. If you want to get stronger you won’t do it lifting weights that are comfortable. You have to be willing to be a bit uncomfortable.

I also think the idea of being willing to tolerate a discomfort level of 7 or 8 out of ten is not a bad way to think about it. To grow or improve in any domain of your life or your business, you’ve got to be willing to be a bit uncomfortable.