Episode 422: Monday Mindset: Get Used to Being Uncomfortable

Our Monday Mindset Episode for today is about Discomfort is not your enemy, it’s your evidence. We open with a raw teaching memory: a first day in front of students, every word scripted, terrified of getting it wrong and being exposed. If you’ve ever tried a new lesson, a new routine, or a new approach and immediately thought, “That was messy, so I should never do it again,” you’ll feel seen here. We dig into why our brains chase certainty, how perfectionism sneaks into classroom decisions, and why the shaky moments often mean you’re right at the edge of real growth. 
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Transcript

Why Discomfort Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello teachers, and welcome to a Monday mindset. And this is all about being uncomfortable and getting used to it. And I will tell you right now, in my own life, there are a lot of things that are causing immense discomfort for me, especially as a single mom. All of the things that come along with that, and it is hard and it's expanding me, and it's uncomfortable. And so I want to actually start with a confession about being uncomfortable in the classroom because I think a lot of you can relate to this, and then we'll talk about how this applies to teaching, but also your life.

First Day Teaching Fear

SPEAKER_00 0:43

So I remember very vividly my first day in the classroom. I literally and I remember what I was wearing, I remember what I was standing, I remember what the piece of paper looked like. I wrote down word for word, sentence by sentence, every single thing that I planned to say. Every single thing I planned to say, every second was scripted out, like literally word for word. I was so terrified of doing it wrong, of saying the wrong thing, of having my students look at me like, who even are you? And why are you standing in front of us? Because I was 22 years old and I was hired five days before school started, handed the big red anthology book, given the keys to a classroom and said, good luck. And I was teaching juniors in high school, 22 years old. I had a communications degree, no teaching background. I'd never been taught in a classroom before because I did no student teaching, right? My undergraduate degrees in communications, my master's is in secondary education, but I hadn't started that program yet, right? I had just graduated from college. I was totally out of my comfort zone. And it was a deeply uncomfortable experience. And I even cringe thinking about it now.

Dating And Choosing Expansion

SPEAKER_00 2:03

But here's the thing that I now know in my old age of 40, as I've gotten wiser, is that discomfort is not something to necessarily shy away from. It's not necessarily a sign that we're in the wrong place or that we should be making a different decision. A lot of the times, it's a sign that we are growing, that we are changing, that we're becoming a newer, better version of ourselves. And becoming a newer, better version of ourselves is always going to feel a little bit or a lot of bit uncomfortable at first because you're getting used to something new. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, just because I find myself like right back in that uncomfortable feeling with the concept of dating and opening myself up to somebody else again. And like, I haven't been on a first date in like 20 years. Like it's deeply uncomfortable. And I am afraid that I'm gonna end up in a same situation that, you know, I don't want to get divorced again. I have all of these fears, right? That are coming up for me that are making me feel really, really uncomfortable. And it is so much easier for me to just sit in my house and be by myself and be like, nope, you know what, not gonna deal with that, not doing that. But if I don't open myself up to the discomfort of what dating might look like, then I'm never gonna get the experience of finding a partner in the second half of my life. And so I have to decide like what is more worth it to me, being uncomfortable in the unfamiliar and uncertain, or being comfortable in the familiar and certain and not having the possibility of expanding my life into something that I actually want. And so I think about that in terms of like this is what we're all doing when we're feeling uncomfortable and trying something new, is that we're expanding. And when we feel that discomfort, it's evidence that we are on the edge of expanding.

Comfort Is Not The Same

SPEAKER_00 4:08

And I want to talk about what this means for you as a teacher and how it relates to the classroom because I think a lot of us have really been conditioned to see discomfort in the classroom as like a problem that we need to solve, as like a red flag, like if a lesson feels shaky or a new approach isn't working, or if we try something we've never done before and it's weird and it didn't go as well and it's messy and you know, it just didn't work. We treat that experience that it wasn't like perfect. We treat that experience as confirmation that we, you know what, I shouldn't have even done it in the first place. And so what do we do? It's human nature, right? We retreat back to what's comfortable, we retreat back to what we know. We retreat back to the certain, right? Human brains love certainty. We struggle with unlike deep uncertainty, right? We want uncertainty in some capacities in our lives because that's what makes us feel alive. And when we see some experience in our lives not go the way that we wanted, we're like, see, I knew I shouldn't have done that. And so we go back to what we know and we go back to something that doesn't ask anything new of us. And the thing is, is that I get it. Like teaching, it's already hard enough. And the last thing that we need as teachers is to add more uncertainty to an already pretty uncertain job. But here's what I want you to really, really sit with and chew on. And, you know, what is the phrase? Eat the chew on the meat and spit out the bones or something like that. Being comfortable and with you with what's certain and being happy are not necessarily the same thing. Right? You can be completely comfortable, and I don't mean comfortable, like cozy blanket comfortable. I'm talking comfortable like certainty. Like I know I'm familiar, familiarity. Right? You can be completely comfortable in a teaching life that is actually making you miserable. Right? You can be comfortable with the Sunday scaries because you know it. It's familiar. It happens every Sunday. Or you can be comfortable with the exhaustion, right? This is just how it is. This is what I know teaching to be. Or you can feel comfortable with the feeling that something has to change, but you're not sure what, so you're just not gonna do it. And that kind of comfortable isn't happiness, isn't peace, isn't ease, isn't expansion, isn't living a full life. It's just what's familiar to us. And because our brains feel safe in familiarity, it's really hard to do something different and move our way through the discomfort. And the only way out of it, the thing that we don't want anymore, is through the discomfort of doing something different. The only way to it is through it. And so it's like, as much as you might want to run back to what's familiar, right? For me, retreat back into my house and never speak to another man again for the rest of my life, right? I have to sit in the discomfort because I want expansion in my life. And like you'll have to sit in the discomfort as you want something different for your life.

Health Crisis And Hard Choices

SPEAKER_00 7:26

And I think about it in terms of my like as I was saying this, like my injury comes up for me. And for those of you who aren't familiar, I had a cerebrospinal fluid leak in January of 2025 and went through a major health crisis and had back surgery almost a year ago. Actually, it was July 17th of last year. So we're coming up on the one-year anniversary. And I remember that in order to heal and get better and like actually be able to have any semblance of any quality of life, my discomfort was in having to have a major surgery that was risky, that was scary, that they operated on my spinal cord. Like I had to go through that discomfort in order to experience what was on the other side of that. And as scary as, you know, just every part of me was frightened by that and like deeply uncomfortable with the surgery that I had to go have. A part of me was like, all right, let's go. I have to, I have to get better. The pain of staying the same and being that sick was so intense that the surgery almost seemed like not a big deal in comparison to what I was experiencing in my life. And so I think a lot of the times in order for us to like really truly be okay with sitting in the discomfort, we have to realize how deeply unhappy we are in the uncomfortable. I'm sorry, in the comfortable and the certainty. And like be honest with ourselves. Like, is this really the life I want to be living? Is this really what I want to be doing as a teacher? And if the pain of staying the same is more than the pain of changing, than the discomfort of changing, then you're gonna make a change.

A Classroom Mock Trial Breakthrough

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I actually heard from one of our EB teachers recently who finally did a mock trial in her classroom and she had been wanting to do one for so long. But, like many of you, and I probably said that, freaked out a little bit. It made her nervous. Like, what if it got chaotic? What if she lost control of the class? What if no one did anything that they were supposed to do? What if it doesn't work? What if I look like an idiot when my admin comes in? What if I look like an idiot when the community comes in to watch the mock trial? And how do I do all the moving pieces, right? All the stuff. But she finally just decided, you know what? I'm gonna do it. And it wasn't perfect, it didn't go exactly the way that she wanted, right? She even said that. But her students were licked up in a way that they hadn't been in months. And she walked out of her classroom that day, feeling more like the teacher that she wanted to be than she had all year, because she had chosen growth over comfort. And that choice just changed something in her. And that story, that experience, that narrative is available for every single one of you. But it requires being willing to feel the discomfort first to know you're gonna sit in it. And like when I'm uncomfortable, my anxiety comes up, and it's like, well, what about this? And what about that? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, hello, anxiety. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. But I actually don't need that thought. That is not helpful for me. Right? I'm choosing to stay in the discomfort in order to expand and in order to grow. So here's what I want to leave you

One Small Step This Week

SPEAKER_00 11:00

with. Think about one area of your teaching life or your life in general where you've been staying comfortable, familiar, certain instead of growing, where you've been choosing the known, even if you're unhappy, over the possible, over the future, over what might be different for you. Where have you been letting the discomfort of change talk you out of the thing that you actually freaking want? And what would it look like to take even one step into that discomfort this week? Not a leap, but just one step. Because that is where your next level as a human being lives, right on the other side of uncomfortable. Like truly. And when you get uncomfortable and you're like, oh, I really don't want to be doing this right now. I hate this so much. When you feel that, just like acknowledge it and be aware of it. And that's what I've been doing. I've been saying, like, every part of me wants to run, every part of me wants to retreat, no part of me wants to be doing this, but no part of me wants to be doing that because it's scary. Because it's unknown, because it's uncertain. And guess what's happening? I'm expanding my capacity to handle uncertainty, which makes me unbreakable, right? And like think about you as a teacher. Same thing. So I really want you this week to think about choosing growth over comfort, and I will see you tomorrow on the podcast to talk about curriculum stuff. And then I'll see you next Monday as well for another Monday mindset. Alright, you guys, here's to another week of living intentionally.