How to Be Comfortable in the Uncomfortable and What our Discomfort Teaches Us. [Episode 910]

Topic: How to Be Comfortable in the Uncomfortable and What our Discomfort Teaches Us

Namaste loves welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. I hope that you’re having a wonderful week so far a wonderful summer and This is a great time to talk about our topic today Which is how to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and going beyond having to control and I say this in summertime because we’re out in the sunshine We’re maybe out in water and we’re feeling maybe a little bit looser in our bodies enjoying the time less restriction in our schedules. So this is such a wonderful time to think about how we can step more into this bigger field of potentiality. And today we’re gonna be talking about some of the research around this and very action focused steps and things that we can do. I’m also very excited to talk about this topic because it’s very close to my heart.

Join me as we navigate this important discussion!

Episode Summary

How to Be Comfortable in the Uncomfortable

In this episode, Kimberly Snyder discusses how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations and let go of the need to control. She shares her personal experiences with control and fear, and how she has learned to find safety and security within herself. Kimberly emphasizes the importance of living a heart-centered life and finding harmony and flow in the unknown. She provides practical steps and techniques, such as heart coherence and meditation, to help listeners navigate uncomfortable situations and expand their comfort zones.

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction
01:22 Finding Safety and Security Within Yourself
02:20 Living a Heart-Centered Life
19:12 Practical Techniques for Letting Go of Control
29:43 Expanding Your Comfort Zone for Personal Growth
34:23 Conclusion

SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS

KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
The Beauty Detox Solution
Beauty Detox Foods
Beauty Detox Power
Radical Beauty
Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
You Are More Than You Think You Are

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

STUDIES AND RESEARCH

Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset – Dweck, C. S. (2006). “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” shows that individuals who believe their abilities can be developed through effort and learning are more likely to embrace challenges and persist in the face of setbacks.

A 2003 in the Journal of Personal and Social Phycology indicated that cognitive reappraisal, or changing the way we think about a situation, can reduce the negative impact of stress and discomfort. For example, viewing a stressful situation as a challenge rather than a threat can improve coping and outcomes.

A 1990 Study in the Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice Journal showed that mindfulness practices can help individuals manage stress and discomfort by promoting present-moment awareness and reducing rumination.

A 1996 study in the journal of Traumatic Stress on post-traumatic growth suggested that individuals can experience significant personal growth following adversity. This includes greater appreciation for life, improved relationships, and increased personal strength.

A 2008 study in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment on adaptability indicated that individuals who can flexibly adjust their behavior and thinking in response to changing circumstances are better equipped to handle stress and uncertainty.

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Transcript:

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.534)
Namaste loves welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. I hope that you’re having a wonderful week so far a wonderful summer and This is a great time to talk about our topic today Which is how to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and going beyond having to control and I say this in summertime because we’re out in the sunshine We’re maybe out in water and we’re feeling maybe a little bit looser in our bodies enjoying

the time less restriction in our schedules. So this is such a wonderful time to think about how we can step more into this bigger field of potentiality. And today we’re gonna be talking about some of the research around this and very action focused steps and things that we can do. I’m also very excited to talk about this topic because it’s very close to my heart.

First of all, as someone who liked to try to know, control, literally trying to control my weight when I had eating disorders back in high school, all the way to trying to have this really set plan for my life. So I understand what it’s like as a fear response, a nervous system response of trying to feel safe by trying to control the outside world. It’s something I’ve experienced a lot in my life. And number two, this relates very much

to some of this heart work, this incredible heart coherence work, which is a forefront of my work right now. What I really feel like is the biggest message, some of the biggest things I can share in the world, which are centered in my new book, The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts. I’m gonna share some of this with you today because the heart doesn’t need to know and plan like the ego or the mind. The heart harmonizes with life, the heart pivots.

from moment to moment because the heart is secure and safe within itself. So we’re gonna talk about shifting from a very linear, fear -based, ego -based life to living a more heart -centered life where no matter where we go, where our bodies are in space, here we are centered in ourselves. And ultimately, this is the biggest way to get past trying to control, trying to have these set expectations.

Kimberly Snyder (02:23.794)
to find your safety and security inside of yourself and this is something that can actually be trained not just an esoteric concept like yeah anchor to yourself But actually through science and evidence -backed techniques and tools some of which I will share with you today I’ll also share some specific passages with you So before we get further into this topic reminder that the show notes will be up at my saloon a calm reminder

Please share the show with anyone that you think would benefit or enjoy one or some of these episodes. Please also write us a review, which is a great way to support the show. And I will also mention that the new book, Hidden Power, The Five Hearts, which I just mentioned, is now pre -selling. So be sure to get your copy to be amongst the first to get it in your hands and in your heart. We are also offering, I am also offering something I’ve never offered before.

just to go with pre -ordering the book, which is an immersion course. This is a way in which I would work with clients really deeply for the first month. And I’m talking weekly Zooms, video chats, and community, group settings, accountability, tips, worksheets, all sorts of things to help you really dive into your heart. Four -week Heart Reset Immersion, plus,

Instant access to my brand new recipe vitality heart awakening recipe book. So check it all out at mysalina .com slash five hearts book. All right, let’s get right into our show today question from Susan and San Francisco Thank you, Susan for being part of our community and you write Kimberly. I love your show and I listen every week. So thank you Thank you for tuning it Appreciate it so much

I would like to get your advice on how to handle uncomfortable situations as I tend to just shrink and shut down emotionally when I find myself out of my comfort zone. So this is something I think a lot of us can relate to Susan, whether it’s a social situation or we play it safe in the relationships that we pick, whether that’s friendships or romantic partnerships, or maybe we keep our living

Kimberly Snyder (04:46.11)
situation safe enough. I can’t tell you how many people I asked, do you love where you live? I was talking to someone recently and they said, you know, if we don’t love where we live, and I’ve been there too, we can, you know, work to make steps to break out of it so that we love our lives. We love our daily experience. Believe this is something that we can all create. We are all creators. We don’t want to just shrink and play it small.

and play it safe. And that’s the trappings. These are some of the trappings of the control of the ego. So everything we’re talking about here is really of the mind and beyond that as a different, much more expanded intelligence and power inside of you, which is in your heart, physically, metaphysically, spiritually, energetically. Your heart is a power center. Your heart is a brain. It has 40 ,000 neurons. Once we learn to tune into this different way of living,

and being and literally have a different nervous system setting where we’re filtering life more through the power of our heart versus the reactive mind, we can start to step more and more comfortably into the unknown and realize that, I can handle this. I’m OK. Maybe I fall down or stumble a little bit, but ultimately I’m OK. I can navigate this. I can flow. I can.

be okay with that mistake or that rejection and reframe it and know that I’m learning lessons. So we just start to move out of this constricted cage that we’ve mostly placed ourselves in. Now, before we go into some of the research, here’s the cover of The Hidden Power of the Five Hearts. For those of you watching this on YouTube, I’m going to give you the first sneak peek of the book, the actual first passage I have ever spoken or shared publicly.

right here, right now. So there’s five heart stages we all go through to awaken the heart. And stage number two is the propelled heart, which by nature is seeking action. How do I find truth? How do I find meaning in my life? How do I feel good enough? How do I find my worth? It’s very externally focused. So there’s a lot of focus on achievements and how our life looks and how neatly we check things off the box, what our body looks like to other people. And

Kimberly Snyder (07:09.536)
really fits in with this specific question around control, discomfort, This stage of the propelled heart, we like things just so. So just like I’m saying here, plans such as what we are going to do the next few weekends or the five -year trajectory, the age when we will get married or buy a house and a detailed career path can make us feel like we have a concrete direction. The mind likes

because direction and plans create a sense of safety and security, while unknowns feel scary to the linear mind. The mind also likes when others agree with our plans and ideas because it reinforces a feeling of security that our path is, quote, right. Plans can be helpful, of course, and there’s practical benefit to getting schedules and basic timelines organized. But issues arise when we create strong expectations that our plans and life

must go exactly as we expect. We can create a rigid sense of seriousness and importance around these plans. Trying to control and overly plan your life is ultimately lack thinking and cuts off your abundance. Control narrows things down to a specific way, which might feel safe to the ego, but it’s really not. Instead, when we are open, we are connected to the whole, which means amazing things and opportunities can show up in the infinite ways.

the little mind can’t possibly plan for. When we stop trying to force our way, we open up instead. Openness is a huge part of abundance. So let’s talk about this topic again from this framework back to this question, uncomfortable situations. In other words, what we’re talking about here, Susan and all of us, is that situations

which we don’t know exactly. Maybe we don’t know the space, we’ve never been to this restaurant, maybe we don’t know everybody at the party or at this event. So this registers in our mind as ding, ding, ding, there’s this type of a threat here. So discomfort is part of our fight or flight response. It’s something that has evolved over time to protect us from danger. But what happens for many of us individually to varying degrees,

Kimberly Snyder (09:32.854)
is that our worlds become smaller and smaller because of past wounds, triggers, things that happened in our childhood, so that many things start to seem unsafe. And I can say this from firsthand experience. So we’re trying to grasp for feeling safe and loved and seen and validated by what we know. But guess what? Just like I was reading in the passage, what we know compared to what’s out there,

is infinitesimally tiny. We don’t know. So this is the trick of the mind. The mind telling us that it’s protecting us and to an extent we may feel safe in it but ultimately we are limiting ourselves and we are keeping ourselves in a box. So a study in the Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology found that there was an optimal level

arousal for performance. So when there’s a little bit of stress or it’s registered as, again, I don’t know, there’s, you know, we have to come into this moment and perform. We’re able to create performance and learning. And we’re able to expand ourselves, right? So this is one of the things that’s been measured. If we stay in our little comfort zones, we keep ourselves

Small and small, I think about some of these beautiful, there’s this author, Elsa Biscow, she makes these gorgeous, she’s originally from Sweden, like 100 years ago, she writes these really beautiful magical stories about trolls and fairies in the forest. It’s very Waldorf, it’s very much in alignment with my kids’ education. So we read a lot of these books. And I think about these little houses that the trolls live in, or like these little mushroom houses, and this is their world. And it seems funny and in a way ridiculous.

But just consider for a moment ways in which you keep playing out similar patterns. Like, okay, every day I do these things and I don’t do anything else. I don’t try to take on new work projects at work. I don’t try to do anything new. My heart is calling me to this new hobby or to take this new skill up or try this new thing or start my own website or whatever it is. And I sort of dim myself down. And

Kimberly Snyder (12:00.338)
We are used to swallowing expansion in a way to try to feel this. What’s been so deeply programmed, this is programming, right? Programming our own energy to feel like this is keeping us safe. So we need to transcend these patterns. We need to crack them open and realize that the unknown is not

scary place where terrible things can happen necessarily, anything can happen. But when we reframe it to see that the unknown is this field of pure potentiality, this openness is saying that I don’t need to know everything. Right? So that’s the overall, how do we really live that? How do we really take that on from someone? And I can say this again, from personal experience, who’s lived in a very small place, a very fear -based place.

There’s lot of research around here and some of this I’ll link to in the show notes. And some of it I’d just rather talk through spontaneously again from my heart because there’s also a lot of research in my new book around this. But what I want to say to you is that you literally can be the anchor for yourself. And this can happen from connecting to your heart, not just in a sort of vague sense, but even right here right

When we connect in, take some deep breaths with your awareness on your heart. can place your hand on your heart. Those of you that are watching me on the video, see I’m doing it right here. It starts to feel really good and grounding. So just slow down and focus on your heart.

Kimberly Snyder (13:45.314)
So many times something happens, a trigger goes off and something in our amygdala, the emotional, the part of our brain which stores emotional responses and reactions gets triggered and we say, I saw something on the news, I’m feeling really fearful now or my gosh, I’m starting to think I’m going to that spiral of thoughts. So when we come into the heart, which we learn to do more and more, we start to build this coherence capacity to the point where I can say in my day,

There’s moments where I’m in my head and I notice and I come back to my heart, but now in my heart far more of the time. So this changes your perceptions. It says, hold on here, there’s fear. I noticed this, but I don’t identify with it. It’s not me. I don’t have to get swept up in it. I’m this expansive energy, which you know, it’s hard to put into words, but you can experience it through doing some of these heart aligned practices.

the heart aligned harmonize in life, the heart aligned meditation, the heart aligned steady yourself in life through big emotions, all of which I teach through the five heart stages, right? But right now let’s do one together. Let’s say something happens. I walked into the party. Let’s do a real world example. I don’t know anybody here. Heart starts beating. I don’t feel comfortable with this. I want to leave. Okay, so this is what it could look like.

You go over to the drink section, you pour yourself some water or whatever beverage you want. And at the same time, you shift into your heart. Take some deep breaths. I’m doing really preliminary practices here. I go into much further detail in the book, of course, but I want to give you some takeaways today. So you’re doing this.

Focusing out of your head, out of your thoughts, focus your full attention on your heart. Like you’re pouring the drink, your body’s moving in space and physical reality. But at the same time, you’re coming and you’re taking deep breaths into this very grounded place inside of you. Now research shows in many clinical journals, including the American Journal of Cardiology, this alone starts to rewire our nervous system. We’re not getting caught up in the neural networks, which are sweeping us into more chaos, stress responses, sympathetic nervous system overdrive.

Kimberly Snyder (16:03.278)
We’re actually creating a balance through these neural connections between our heart and our brain. And so now we’re starting to slow down and we’re starting to feel instead of that familiar fear, chaos, lack, we can start to ground into this abundant whole energy. We’re taking deep breaths, everything’s slowing down. And then we start to slowly look around the room.

And we feel so grounded in ourself that it feels much more useful and natural to maybe smile or maybe you naturally catch someone’s eye and you don’t feel that sense of panic. So maybe then you continue to take some of these heart focused breaths and then you shift into a moment of feeling appreciation right there. It’s easy to access more than peace or love. You can feel like,

grateful for this delicious drink or the fact that I get to be in this new situation. And you actually start to shift into a more expansive place of enjoying where you are from your heart, not from this linear mental place. But you can start to find a way to enjoy it. And then just go your own pace. You don’t have to walk up to someone if you feel uncomfortable. Maybe you sit on the couch for a moment and you just feel really open.

So much here I want to talk about, but I don’t want to go so far deeply into the book, but there is an electromagnetic field of frequencies given off by your heart, which is 100 times stronger than your brain, which other people can register. So as you become more coherent and harmonious, you become more approachable, you become more magnetic. So people may come up to you. But the point is you are not in this state of stressed out anxiousness. You start further and further move into this pushing out of your comfort zone little by little. Now maybe you don’t stay for a million hours at the party, maybe you end up going in 30 minutes or an hour, but you didn’t bail right away, right? You started to see, and this is what smaller things first, and there’s a study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine down that slowly.

Kimberly Snyder (18:25.322)
exposing individuals to the source of their discomfort in a controlled manner, reduced fear and avoidance behaviors over time. So we can take baby steps, right? Maybe your discomfort comes from not having plans on the weekend. So maybe you can just start to go into what’s it like to ease into my Saturday and then you have plans for Saturday night or later in the afternoon. But you can start to experience this spaciousness.

and then feel like, I can actually enjoy this. Now this reminds me of a time actually last summer when I was writing this book. And my husband sometimes would walk me into the forest because I was writing in my writing cabin and sometimes I go out there at three or three thirty in the morning and there were times where I would hear the wild pigs, just noises in the woods and I would get a little nervous. And so he would walk me in.

And one time I went in by myself and the flashlight went off, like the light on my phone and I think the battery died or something happened where I didn’t have any lights. And I went into that panicked place literally of the unknown where I couldn’t see anything and it was completely dark. And then I realized, okay, I’m in it. I’m here, right? Life is happening right here.

then I can either thrash around and resist it or I can find a way to be with it. And I remember in that moment, I could look up and see some of the stars. My eyes were getting adjusted to the dark. And so I started to sort of enjoy moving through the dark. Excuse me, was like feeling my way. I was feeling my way with the trees and finding

here’s bark and I could just sort of find my way into my cabin and then I was able to come up onto the porch and find my way but the point is that Despite the fact that I would have thought that it would horrible and terrifying and I don’t want I don’t want this I don’t like this Life is not laid out for us like a red carpet There’s going to be many things that we do not expect that we do not know what’s around the corner So the only

Kimberly Snyder (20:51.438)
that we can do practically speaking is to start to find the real safety and security inside of you. And again, we can do this with heart coherence, some of these tools I teach in the book, the heart aligned meditation, which has been shown to increase your coherence 29 % in four weeks. It’s going to be free tracks up on the site, mysaloon .com for everyone to access. Eight minutes every morning, you start to feel more clear and your heart and your brain start to line

So this means that you can start to flow more with life instead of trying to be so externally oriented and trying everything for everything in your work to be just so and every relationship to be just so and every detail and every plan to be perfect. You start to come back in to I don’t need to control all this because I have me wherever I am and I can just show up in each moment and flow with life.

And this is the real power of this heart coherence work is it shifts us to much more resilience against stress because we can’t control the external circumstances, the time pressure, the traffic, what goes on out there, but we can control us moving through life feeling alert and present and able to

say I’m going to shift, I’m going to see what I’m drawn to, I’m going to add my energy in here, I’m going to flow with what I believe is the best decision coming from my intuition, but I don’t have to know everything.

And there’s incredible personal growth and confidence, real confidence that comes from this. A study in the Journal of Traumatic Stress found that there was incredible personal growth following adversity. So adversity can come in small and larger ways. It can come from more traumatic events. It can come from saying, wow, I stayed an extra 30 minutes at a party where I didn’t know anyone and I was okay. And I actually sort of enjoyed it.

Kimberly Snyder (23:00.438)
I talk to someone or I really enjoyed my drink. The setting was beautiful. I love the music. Right? We start to feel a little bit lighter that everything isn’t so serious that we can start to move past our comfort zones bit by

So there’s also more room for all of us to work on being more adaptable and flexible because this rigidity as I was sharing before in some of the passages of the book, it creates this cage around us, right? Like I only go to this coffee shop because I know exactly what my drink is. What about exploration?

What about, hey, I’m going to go to this new city and try these coffee shops or this coffee shop across the street and experiment a little bit and, you know, feel alive because I’m not in this cage. Our energy is expansive and huge. And so we like to, you know, be expansive and huge, however that looks for you in your life. It doesn’t mean you have to go on some crazy trip if that’s not what calls you. You don’t even have to make external changes in your life necessarily,

You start to change and feel more expansive on the inside. And what naturally happens a lot of the time is that certain things may change. You may try reading different books or you may experiment with different foods, or you just have, you know, more moments of enjoying not planning or trying different things or, you know, being drawn to new people or hanging out with different communities or deepening some of the connections that you have, whatever it is.

It’s really important that we are able to be more adaptable with life because ultimately, as I mentioned, this is a huge part of stress resilience. And I want to read a little bit about stress resilience because it’s an enormous, enormous part of our health. When we are trying to control life, it creates a lot of resistance to what is.

Kimberly Snyder (25:17.774)
Harmony is when we start to flow and adapt. It means we’re part of the whole. It means that we can move from this thing to the next. Or as I put here, your heart saying this way is closed, no problem. Let’s go this other way. This is on page 74. And this didn’t work out as planned, no worries. Let’s just adjust. And then I say, at the end of the day, who cares if the exact plans aren’t met? Ego does. But if you engage your heart’s intelligence. Hold on one sec.