How to Practice Discomfort Tolerance
Creating Space Between Discomfort and Your Response
Discomfort tolerance is one of the eight behavior change skills, I help clients with, to reach their health and wellness goals.
Discomfort tolerance is your ability to experience discomfort, without automatically reacting to it, and mindfully choosing what you want to do next.
It’s about noticing moments when discomfort shows up, and practicing creating a little space, before automatically reacting to it.
You can practice a discomfort-tolerance rep using:
NOTICE → NAME → STAY → CHOOSE
NOTICE: Catch the moment discomfort shows up.
NAME: Identify what you’re experiencing, and what you have the urge to do.
STAY: Stay with it for 30-60 seconds, without immediately fixing, escaping, or reacting.
CHOOSE: Decide what you want to do next.
THE PRACTICE IS THE PAUSE.
You do not earn the rep by choosing the “harder” option. You earn the rep by creating space between
discomfort and your response. You can still choose to do the thing, change the thing, or not do the thing at all.
Discomfort shows up in a lot of different ways:
Physical: “This exercise is hard.”
Emotional: “I’m disappointed the scale didn’t change.”
Cognitive: “I don’t know if I’m doing this perfectly.”
Social: “I feel awkward being the new person, at the gym.”
Urges: “I really want to skip this.”
Delayed gratification: “I’ve been doing this for six weeks. I want results NOW.”
Imperfection: “I only have 20 minutes. That doesn’t feel like enough.”
Uncertainty: “I’m doing the behaviors, but I don’t know when the outcome will happen.”
3 Examples of a Discomfort Tolerance Rep
1. Starting a Workout
NOTICE: “I really didn’t want to start my workout.”
NAME: “I noticed the urge to skip it.”
STAY: “I sat with that feeling for 60 seconds.”
CHOOSE: “I decided to do the first 10 minutes.”
2. Choosing Rest
NOTICE: “I didn’t want to work out and immediately wanted to call myself lazy.”
NAME: “I sat with that discomfort for 30 seconds.”
STAY: “I checked in with what I actually needed.”
CHOOSE: “I chose to rest.”
3. Wanting Something Sweet
NOTICE: “I wanted something sweet, after lunch.”
NAME: “Instead of immediately eating it OR telling myself I shouldn’t have it, I noticed the urge.”
STAY: “I stayed with it for a minute.”
CHOOSE: “I decided I still wanted it, so I ate it.”
Tolerance Does NOT Mean:
Ignoring pain
Overriding your body’s signals
Forcing yourself through everything
Automatically choosing the harder option
You are not practicing becoming comfortable with discomfort.
You are practicing creating enough space around discomfort, so that it does not automatically make the decision for you.
Discomfort tolerance gives you more choice, not less.
Your job isn’t to eliminate discomfort.
The goal is to start noticing the space between what you experience, and what you choose to do next.
