Nichole Christian is a writer, artist and mother from Detroit.

I want to collect your favorite advice from this year. The advice that you're actually practicing in real life that you learned from this show. Tell me what that is by writing me at ZAK@BESTADVICE.SHOW. Or you can call the hotline, 844-935-BEST. I'm gonna collect your responses about the best, Best Advice, and put together a week or two of greatest hits episodes.

Embracing Discomfort with Wendy Walters - https://bestadvice.show/episodes/20201019_embracing-discomfort-with-wendy-s--walters/

TRANSCRIPT:

ZAK: Since the start of COVID and actually long before that, I've been on a quest for comfort. My friend, Nichole was also on that quest. But now she says she's given that up and suggests, maybe, we do the same.

NICHOLE: Kill comfort. Choose now.

ZAK: So is now uncomfortable?

NICHOLE: Yeah. Yeah. It's completely uncomfortable. But it is what it means to be alive. The more I let go of comfort, the more I accidentally open myself to surprise. To now. To things I've just forgotten. And I think that that's really where life is. Now is a lot richer, even with all of the hell surrounding it, now is a lot richer than we allow ourselves to believe.

ZAK: And for those of us who are comfortable in comfort, what's an exercise to tap into embracing the discomfort?

NICHOLE: I've had comfort but I think comfort requires a kind of clinging and grasping that you do it so long you don't even know you're doing it. And so the things that you're holding on to...like you probably know what you love to eat, you know where to go for this, you know where to go for that. Well, when all that's gone, who are you? So, what if you didn't choose the thing you always chose? What if you didn't say the thing you always said? What might that teach you? Comfort is transactional. You give something and you get something back. Discomfort says you go through it, the understanding may not come for a while. And if you are ok with that, you might find some surprise. You might find yourself able to do things you never thought yourself capable of...to talk to people you never thought you would...to learn from things that, um, you'd completely shut yourself off from.

ZAK: This advice kind of feels like a koan to me. It's gonna take some real work to unravel and figure out how to practice. But that's why I like it so much.

NICHOLE: My name is Nichole Christian and I am a writer and a deep believer in the power of creativity.

ZAK: Discomfort has been a theme on a couple of episodes of this show. The most recent one was with Wendy Walters.

WENDY: Discomfort is a real gift in terms of teaching you how to get past something that is completely internal.

ZAK: I linked to her entire episode in our show notes. You've been listening to The Best Advice Show and we are coming up to the end of the year. That means I want to collect your favorite advice from this year. The advice that you're actually practicing in real life that you learned from this show. Tell me what that is by writing me at ZAK@BESTADVICE.SHOW. Or you can call the hotline, 844-935-BEST. I'm gonna collect your responses about the best, Best Advice, and put together a week or two of greatest hits episodes. Talk to you soon.

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