Discomfort is the start line not the finish
I am not great at remembering directions or how to get anywhere I don't know but I'm slowly piecing together the area.
We learn best through stories, and each place I visit seems to have a story attached for christina and her mum or creates a new one for me.
It helps that the sea runs all the way along the side of the island. My normal route to school is to follow along the coast until I arrive.
Yesterday Christina introduced a new route, an apparently easier route that turned out to be hard work.
No doubt the 24 miles per day of cycling while carrying the girls was taking its toll on my thighs.
Afterwards I decided that the experimental route was perhaps not to be repeated too often.
But there was a small 1km part of the ride that was through a forest which I absolutely love.
After dropping Annabelle off at 8am this morning I decided that the forest part of the ride made it worth the struggle.
To my surprise it was significantly easier, there almost was no struggle.
It's easy to forget that the first time we do anything is always the most difficult.
Unchartered territory brings with it the threat of the unknown.
It's not that we grow as much as it is we know.
The threat has been removed.
This doesn't just work for bike rides though. It applies to everything unknown, or new.
Our brain sets off all sorts of alarms to discourage us, to stay within our zone of knowledge or comfort.
It's that part of our brain that evolved and survived because it treated every unknown as a potential Sabre toothed Tiger.
When we exercise to our physical limit for example, or rather we think we do, our brain says stop when we are at 70% capacity, often sooner.
Getting into the habit of expecting our brain to do this is a great way of allowing ourselves to plow forward with all the new things you want to try or achieve.
Better still though is getting into the habit of doing, being a person who feels the discomfort and then acts anyway.
Soon it's less a fear and more an indicator that we are moving in the direction we have chosen and breaking new ground.
Ed Ley
