What, Like Discomfort Is Hard?
I watched the new Elle Woods show this week. All eight episodes. In two sittings. (Zero regrets.)
If you missed the news, it's called Elle, it's on the rainforest app, and it's a Legally Blonde prequel.
Before you panic, I'm not spoiling anything. All you need to know is what the trailer already told you: it's 1995, and Elle's family moves from sunny LA, where she fits everywhere, to rainy Seattle, where she fits exactly nowhere. The girl who never had to try suddenly has to try at everything.
And toward the end of the season, one of the characters says:
"Sometimes friction means you're in the right place."
I immediately grabbed my phone, opened the notes app, and typed it out so I wouldn't forget it. And them my mind started turning over and over…
Most of us were taught to read friction as an error message. Struggling with the new skill? Maybe you're not cut out for it. Feeling awkward in the new room? Maybe you don't belong there. The struggle itself becomes the evidence, and the verdict is always the same: go back to where it's smooth.
And look, I get why our brains do this. When you're a kid, that error message is actually useful. You try soccer, you hate it, you're bad at it, you quit, you try piano instead and go on to play in Carnegie Hall instead of a on the pitch in the World Cup (yes, I'm still watching all of the games…please send help).
Friction helps you sample your way toward the things you're good at and the things that light you up. Which makes sense.
The problem is nobody ever tells the system to shut off. So here we are, decades later, still treating every hard thing as a sign to quit. But is it?
This is exactly what makes the study I'm about to tell you about so freaking cool. In 2022, researchers Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach partnered with Second City, the famous Chicago improv theater, and told some students to make feeling awkward and uncomfortable their actual goal for the exercise.¹ Not "do your best." Not "learn something." Just: go feel awkward. Those students took more risks, stuck with it longer, and made more progress than the students who got normal instructions.
Let me say that again. The people chasing the awkwardness outperformed everyone else.
Comfort usually means you already know how to do the thing. Friction shows up when you're learning something you don't know how to do yet, which happens to be the only place growth has ever lived. (unfortunately, I know…)
So let's talk about your friction for a second. Maybe it's saying no to the "obvious" path to success because it doesn't actually align with what you want. Maybe it's finally building the dream business because you've been seeing the same problem, the same gap, for years, and you know you're the one who can make a dent in it. Maybe it's setting a boundary that you know is right but getting the guts to say it out loud makes you want to vom.
Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, it can sometimes feel like you're failing. And yes, watching yourself be a beginner at something can feel deeply, painfully cringe.
Because that's the word for it now, right? Cringe. Posting the thing: cringe. Saying your big dream out loud: cringe. Caring visibly about something before you're good at it: the most cringe of all. But cringe is just discomfort wearing a trendier outfit. And we already know what the research says about discomfort. That feeling means you're moving.
I'm super susceptible to all of this. I feel cringe on the daily. (I think saying “on the daily” might be cringeworthy itself?) But here's what I think about when that feeling hits:
the glow up montage.
Your favorite teen movie definitely had one of these. For me, the first one that comes to mind is from Legally Blonde. It's the scene where Elle shows up to the party in the bunny costume, Warner tells her she's not smart enough for law school, and she says "I'll show you how valuable Elle Woods can be." Then the music kicks in. And suddenly she's buying the laptop, studying on the treadmill, doing the reading, raising her hand, and running circles around everyone who wrote her off.
The montage is always made of the friction. The studying while everyone else is out. The awkward reps. The showing up again after being humiliated in a bunny costume. That's the part they set to music, because that's the part where she becomes her.
So now, whenever I feel the discomfort of choosing something different, something out of the ordinary for me, something that makes me squirm because it's fucking hard, I think: THIS is my motivational montage moment.
One caveat, because you know I don't do toxic positivity: there's a difference between the friction of growing and the friction of being somewhere that diminishes you. A room that dismisses your ideas, questions your competence, or asks you to shrink is giving you information too, and the answer to that friction is the door. The friction I'm talking about is the stretch kind. The kind where your hands shake a little because the thing matters.
You know which kind you're in. Trust yourself on that.
And if you're in the stretch kind? Good. Stay there. Embrace the awkward. Welcome the cringe. Let yourself be visibly, publicly new at the thing that matters to you. Nobody in the theater is rooting against the girl in the montage. They're leaning forward in their seats, because they know exactly what comes next.
So put on the playlist. You know the one, the soundtrack to your motivational movie montage moment. The music has already started. Now go show them how valuable you can be.
xoxo Kels
This Week's Thing
Steal the move from the improv study. Pick one thing on your calendar this week that makes you feel like a beginner, then flip the goal. Your job is to feel awkward. Cringe, even. Seriously, that's the whole assignment. Say the rough draft of the idea in the meeting. Post the imperfect video. Ask the question you think you should already know the answer to. Then notice what happens when the discomfort stops being the thing you're avoiding and starts being the thing you're collecting. Cue the music.
A Girls' Gotta Cite Her Sources
1.Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2022). Motivating personal growth by seeking discomfort. Psychological Science, 33(4), 510–523.