I relate to this a lot due to personal experiences in seeking discomfort for its own sake. I used to get anxious in social situations, to treat that I intentionally went into random social situations that would make me anxious. Over time, it does make you feel less anxious. But if you stop doing it, your anxiety creeps back.
I then realized that change has to be deeper on an identity and lifestyle level. "What is the kind of person you want to become, and what is the kind of lifestyle you want to live" - rather than doing one-off anxiety provoking tasks. In living up to your desired identity and lifestyle, if you face discomfort - THAT is a good discomfort to face.
> Doing that hobby you were always to nervous too try? probably a good source of discomfort to feel.
> Taking sky diving lessons from the sketchy guy who is not really certified? That is probably the bad type of discomfort and you should listen to it.
People who already know how to tell the difference between these two doesn't need the advice though. In order to try a new hobby you need to do a lot of work to understand what is sketchy and what is not, how to not get tricked etc, so much money is made tricking wannabe hobbyists in every domain. Selling them expensive shoes and gear etc, that they wont need and barely use.
Discomfort is not discrete but continuous. I don't think you grow by maximizing discomfort infinitely. You'll still need capacity to handle and learn from it.
Instead I read this as leaving your comfort zone to the level that you are ... eh ... comfortable with.
I specifically work (along with a therapist) on increasing my distress tolerance and tolerance with being uncomfortable. The idea is that this is a transferable capability - that the ability to endure distress and discomfort in certain areas of my life are generally applicable to other areas as well.
Maybe things that you do for personal growth cause you discomfort, while another person doing those same things for growth doesn't experience the same discomfort as you?
I am perhaps less comfortable than others as a baseline. I could seek discomfort by say, listening to people eat with their mouths open, to little avail
Maybe this is helpful in the USA, but I hardly see how knowing anything about this counts as "personal growth"? There are plenty of things you can know that actively make you a worse person by making you depressed and thus less engaged with things you can actively act upon.
"Poor models of reality are a Hallmark of depression."
Is that a fact? I recall from studies with pessimists and optimists, where they should self report some progress on learning something - and the reports of the pessimists were way more realistic, than those of the optimists. (But the latter probably enjoyed the whole thing)
Is there any particular correlation between pessimism and depression? I'm sure there would be something on the extreme edge but I don't see why there would be anything particularly powerful there in the median case.
Pessimism is more of an understanding that things will go wrong (which is often just factual correctness; any vague understanding of risk makes most people sound like pessimists). Depression is more of an "it is hopeless" take which is not logically sound - even if life is meaningless the sensible thing to do is leave a peaceful & cheerful existence as best can be managed.
There'd be a bit of an overlap in some cases (depression would make someone an extreme pessimist), but the pessimism that comes from being realistic doesn't lead to depression.
"Depression is more of an "it is hopeless" take which is not logically sound - even if life is meaningless the sensible thing to do is leave a peaceful & cheerful existence as best can be managed."
It is usually more concrete in the sense of "it is hopeless, that I get into a state of happiness again". Which might or might not be correct. So calling depression not logical .. is a potential tough thing to say.
Life is tough, unspeakably horrible things happen daily. Never feeling happiness would be on the bad end of even that spectrum.
But nevertheless, as someone who is acutely aware that unspeakable horrors surround us, an accurate prediction of never feeling happiness again doesn't logically lead to feeling a sense of hopeless, so it doesn't follow that depressed people are more likely to be working from an accurate world model.
The logical thing to do is to either look for ways to feel happiness or ignore it and salvage some meaning from whatever is left besides happiness. Easier said than done I know, particularly for someone who is depressed. But logic is what it is.
Yes, that is a fact. Not just the personal opinion kind, but the kind in text books, accepted by 200k therapists in the US, and supported hundreds of research papers. .
As others posted, pessimism and depression different topics.
Come right out and say what you mean. No sense being coy, unless you know that your hypothesis actually is encouraging hate and will not be tolerated by this community.
Why dont you come out and say what you actually mean? It seems like you have a strong position you are not stating as well.
Im not afraid to read between the lines. They are saying the gun violence risk to the average person is low, and the risk is focused on certain groups. Namely the suicidal and gang members.
Suicide makes up 55% of gun deaths, and the US is literally the only country in the world that counts these as gun violence. The remainder is primarily gang violence. Shooting of non-gang affiliated people is extremely rare, and noteworthy because of this rarity.
Most discussion and statistics about gun violence intentionally obfuscates these facts. We could speculate about the motivations why, but it is largely irrelevant.
Which part of this do you think encourages hate?
Now, I happen to think that gang violence is a real problem. It does massive harm to those involved, causes massive damage to the local community, and is an economic deadweight on society.
Letting people die, wait no, misinforming people so they choose the option where they die, is criminal. Which also explains why you protect and defend criminals.
I’ve never understood what’s the point of harassing people until they lie about crime statistics, or even creating laws to hide the truth. What’s the point of being on the bad side?
Yeah you do. Australia has roughly 25 million people and yet we have had no mass shootings in 2024. America has had 200+ mass shootings this year but only 10x the population of Australia. The relative risk between Australians and US citizens risk of dying by mass shooting is a divide by zero error. The public discourse means that while the risk of dying by mass shooting in the US is tiny, the actual effect on mental health is massive.
If you bothered to look at the actual data behind "mass shootings", you'd already know they're mostly gang related, and avoid making such an abhorrent post.
Australia had literal internment camps during COVID, and Australians had to video chat to "check in" with police to prove they really were where they were. Fuck that. I'd rather have the 2nd Amendment.
> we suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation
Can someone help me understand this please? With an example? I haven't read the paper, just the abstract. I can barely understand the abstract, I am not going to understand the paper.
Per the paper, does the "discomfort" need to be in the same arena as that of the "motivation" one wants?
E.g.: If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language, or is it enough to do something like taking cold showers?
(FWIW, I have a strong suspicion that most Psych papers, including this one, have inadequate evidence. But I still like to understand what they're claiming.)
I don’t think it can be just anything. I experienced some discomfort this morning but I cannot speak to any consequential personal growth. I can tell you however that the Samyang Buldak instant ramen live up to their fiery reputation.
"The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
I think it's more an observation that the act of learning can itself be uncomfortable. So in the language example, going to a meetup and feeling awkward while struggling to use the language you're learning would be considered something to lean into and do more of rather than avoid and stick with learning from a book that feels less negative.
> If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language
Yes.
Comfort: Duolingo and similar. UX designed to make you feel proficient when in fact your are not, gamification, drag and drop words, point and click on things, streaks, leaderboards, etc.
Discomfort: write your own content, talk to people a bit before you are ready, seek content a bit too difficult for you, listen to a podcast many times to see how your understanding improves with each listening, deep dive onto a subject, shadowing exercises, etc.
In short: prefer harder and more efficient things even when easier and less efficient things are available.
Did you switch efficient with less efficient in your summary?
I find your conclusions interesting, basically you’ve listed every modern “appified” experience as unsuitable for true personal growth. I’ve felt this way for a while but never put this fine a point on it.
> E.g.: If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language, or is it enough to do something like taking cold showers?
Weird to restrict the focus of growth to one particular area, and to ask whether any discomfort (even physical) will contribute to your growth in that particular area, when the abstract just refers to "personal growth" and makes no claim related to some spooky cross-pollination of discomfort. It even gives a list of examples, and refers to feeling "awkward."
But when it comes to learning a language, some discomfort when you're using that language is obviously when improvement in the language is happening. If you're only in situations where your current knowledge is completely adequate, you'll never have any reason to get better. You're not getting better at anything if you're never breaking a sweat while doing it.
edit: could "results showed that these effects occurred only in areas of personal growth that cause immediate discomfort." be any clearer?
David Goggin's public persona comes to mind as an extreme example.
He frames his journey as one that involved embracing pain and discomfort.
Now he preaches it incessantly like a sort of addict to masochism.
I think this highlights the point of the study which attempts to say, instead of avoiding discomfort one could welcome it with the added risk that you become some sort of firestarter in the sense that you now cannot sit with being comfortable.
A natural extension of this work may be to study at what point does burnout occur.
He's a rather an extreme example and probably not applicable to most situations we are involved in. Most things in life only required consistency and adherence to long term effort to achieve 'success'.
I think it's the science behind the windhoff cold plunges. Also the belief that societies in extreme environmemts(deserts or alaska) thrive better due to prep or die conditioons which make them less averse to physical work.
I still think there is value in putting oneself thru adversity and discomfort, if for nothing else, to gain empathy for those who can't afford the comfort-lifestyle of those with means to build comfort. Not to mention raising one's threshold for discomfort. Our Biology itself is engineered for adaptation, one could argue that living in comfort is like the frog in the pot of water on the stove. this might be hard for first worlders to understand, but take a poor person in a third world vs. a middle class person in a third world. A poor person is limited to a bicycle means of transportation, while the middleclass person can afford a vehicle. The very nature of hauling your carcass around in a mechanical means of transportation makes your carcass much more healthy and raises the chances of longevity.
Not really know if this persons idea of discomfort, but I had to think about Kafkas quote: 'Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.'
Going over points of no return e.g. because you commit to certain decisions can be extremely uncomfortable and so many people will just push it off into the future, and so years can go to waste. Learning to spot that kind of discomfort in oneself (and reacting to it) can be extremely benefitial in avoid prolonging it.
Oof okay a gender change is s bigger thing than I thought about when I wrote this — although the evidence points to these generally making people happier in the long run.
It still applies perfectly tho.
These point of no return decisions can also turn out to be mistakes (from with we can learn), but if skateboarding thought me anything it is that there is a class of situations where you either need to do it or you don't — as soon as you try to do it "a bit" without following through you will get hurt.
Of course the art is to recognize when each one applies, e.g. if your goal is to live healthier that doesn't mean you need to run marathons right away or you are a failure, here committing means persistence and incremental improvement.
In another class of problems the outcome depends mostly on luck, without being in the know I could imagine that non-monogamy-thing could have gone differently depending on where the people involved are with their lives.
It is always discomforting to learn of our mistakes, failures, fallabilities, and other times we've caused unhappiness in others. The fact is, however, that those are the most fruitful and important experiences to learn from, for spiritual growth is always weighed against the unhappiness and happiness we've caused. Karma ensures that we feel some of what we've caused others, as a motivating feedback system, no matter how positive or negative their effects. As such, when we act right, we feel better because we are experiencing less negative feedback. We truly reap what we sow, and the crop is our happiness or unhappiness.
The spiritual path -- i.e. the Path of Love -- is the journey to learning how to cause more happiness and less unhappiness. Note that doing that is the most important way to really improve the society and cultures we are a part of.
Like Dunning-Kruger's true-experts in any field of endeavor, the seeker of self-improvement must humbly and honestly search themself to find out which of the vices we tend to use to justify our selfish ideals, attitudes, and behaviors. Once found, we must then ceaselessly fight against manifesting them and instead choose their virtuous counterparts. Compassion is the foundation of all the virtues, but we must develop and aim our moral compass.
To love someone is to want them to be happy such that you selflessly act for their benefit. That is the only goal of the spiritual path, for the universe really prefers us to explore its wonders in peace and happiness and utter enjoyment; Earth was made for just that. And yet, it's always our choice whether to harmonize with that optimal organization and participation, or selfishly avoid it if only by denying its optimality; to either increase one's humanity, or to fall short and descend further into callous disregard or even savagery.
"Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries." --Rumi
This is also known as hormesis, a biological phenomenon where exposure to a low dose of a potentially harmful stressor (toxin, radiation, or environmental factor) leads to a beneficial adaptive response in an organism.
Examples include exercise, vaccination, caloric restriction. Many would argue that exposure to germs, stimulating the immune system, works the same way. Cognitively, examples would be desirable difficulty and deliberate practice in learning, and exposure therapy for phobias.
Ofc this is what Nietzsche meant when he said the thing about “what doesn’t kill you…”
The best way to “grow” or get better in most dimensions of strength and skill is to seek discomfort. The trick is get to get just the right amount for where you’re at, since too much is discouraging, and too little is boring. We seek out coaches and teachers in the hopes that they can trace the growth path for us.
We can alter our environment and make behavioral choices that engage us with discomfort. Choosing to learn is one example. Exposure therapy is another.
I can attest that my greatest periods of personal growth came during times of greatest discomfort. My first job out of college was at a small IT consulting company where I managed the data center. This gave me complete access to the VMware cluster, the SAN storage array, every Cisco switch, router, and firewall, and root access to every VM running. I could create a LUN on the storage array, a VLAN on the switches, a subinterface on the router or firewall, a VM portgroup on VCenter, and a VM using all of them. It was incredibly stressful at first but I learned a ridiculous amount.
Andrew Huberman discusses how the AMC structure in the brain gets bigger when we do things we don't want to do. It is bigger in those that live longer and have great mental health- it may also represent the will to live. Its one of the main places that the brain shrinks in aging Huberman explains this:
Sorry, Huberman is a showman who takes real science and distorts it to trick simplistic people into buting his supplemets. There is ZERO evidence that "the AMC structure in the brain gets bigger when we do things we don't want to do"
Also the AMC has many more functions than Huberman lets on. So his "one neat trick" will do nothing to change ACC volume.
I’m happy to have this idea refuted but character attacks and platitudes aren’t the best way to go about it. What Huberman says, even if it is an mis representation is based on scientific studies. There are some links in the notes here to some of the studies: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/how-to-increase-your-wil...
First, the OP paper is called : "Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort".
Huberman does that all the time, posting "footnotes" so people can think his CONCLUSIONS are scientific.
Some of those "studies" are only articles. ("Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?")
And NONE of them show evidence that the AMC shrinks or grows based on "doing difficult things" but he just goes out and says this because it makes people freak out to think the brain can shrink or grow.
It is a character attack because researchers have already been all over this guy and said the same thing.
It concludes with something not far off from what Huberman stated. Not saying it proves he’s right but makes it easy to give him the benefit of the doubt and try to track down the actual new research he is referencing.
> One intriguing possibility is that the structure and function of aMCC could be
altered with sufficient behavioral training. Indeed, as a flexible hub, the MCC may be
better equipped than other brain regions to reshape its connectivity in response to
learning. It has been proposed that protein receptors important for plasticity (such as
CaMKII, NR2B, NMDA) are highly expressed in limbic circuits including aMCC (Wei et
al., 1999; Palomero-Gallagher et al., 2008; Garcia-Cabezas et al., 2017; Burt et al., 2018;
Palomero-Gallagher and Zilles, 2019). Interestingly, Garcia-Cabezas et al. (2017)
recently showed that in adult monkeys, markers of synaptic plasticity are high in MCC
(and other limbic regions) while markers of stability (as expressed by cellular factors that
inhibit synaptic plasticity) are low. These findings suggest that training related
improvement in behaviors requiring tenacity may be mediated through the aMCC. We
have seen evidence that aMCC can be ‘trained up” in the domain of exercise (Colcombe
et al., 2006).
I then realized that change has to be deeper on an identity and lifestyle level. "What is the kind of person you want to become, and what is the kind of lifestyle you want to live" - rather than doing one-off anxiety provoking tasks. In living up to your desired identity and lifestyle, if you face discomfort - THAT is a good discomfort to face.