Conquering Disrupters Phase 3
Rewards of Traveling Against the Pulling Current to the Sea
I grew up on a hill overlooking the Rhine River where the long transportation barges depressed with coal and other goods float close to the water. They ferry up and down the river day and night. Sometimes a barge reverses course to go upstream. The length of the barge is almost the same as the width of the river. The rest of the river traffic must come to a halt. Meanwhile, the sound of labored engines churning in the murky water dominates the noise space. For a long time, in spite of the grating exertion, it appears like nothing is happening. Why bother with all of that effort? Then, slowly, the whirring engines still and stop, and the barge belches forward against the pulling current, a wide path of white water trailing behind. The barge is on its way, much more slowly than before, but steadily.
Coping with disrupters is a lot like turning a barge upstream. In the previous two posts, I introduced a five-step process in conquering disrupters. “Make it go away!” is a common first reaction that leads to condemning our circumstances. Unless we are aware of our own ways of condemning distress, we will remain stuck there. Getting unstuck has to do with enduring the awful feeling of fear provoked by the disrupter. These two steps are, however, short term; they prepare us turn around. How do we actually travel against the pulling current of the easy flow to the sea?
It’s one thing to endure distress for a short time, but another to tolerate it. I read many stories of advanced stage cancer survivors. They have no sweet perfume, no pretty bows to tie up their stories, and yet many are brave and full of hope. One such person is Kate Bowler who calls herself “an incurable optimist.” In 2016, at the young age of 34, she discovers stage 4 colon cancer with a grim prognosis and writes a bestselling memoir. Her life is marked by scans—a perennial reminder of mortality— but much more. She discusses this juxtaposition:
“Our society finds it especially difficult to talk about anything chronic — meaning, any kind of pain, emotional or physical, that abides and lives with us constantly. The sustaining myth of the American Dream rests on a hearty can-do spirit, but not all problems can be overcome. So often, we are defined by the things we live with rather than the things we conquer. Any persistent suffering requires being afraid — but we hang our fears in the balance of our great loves and act, each day, as though love will outweigh them all. Life is chronic. Fear will always be present. I can only make those brave, soft choices to find my way forward when there is no way back.” (Bowler, Kate. “Living a Chronic Life in a Fix-it-now World.” Washington Post, June 17, 2019, Opinion.)
Endurance is a strategy for short sprints, but tolerance is for marathons. A perspective change to resist the allure of normalcy is the starting gun. Living one day at a time sets the pace.* Questions like “When is this over?” or “When am I done?” or “When will I return to normal?” slow our progress, pulling us back to condemning the disrupter—toward the pulling currents to the sea. Tolerating the “chronic”—a lowering of expectations—focuses our attention from where we want to be to where we are. This actually increases our capability and likelihood of benefitting from disrupters. Tolerance is chosen, clawed out, hardscrabble.
How do we keep from being depleted? Like a cheering crowd that spurs on the runner to keep going, a well-tested theory supports us along the way. This theory states that challenges requiring more discomfort and effort—making us question the gains—actually create greater benefits than challenges we feel more comfortable and competent mastering.
Take the experiment of Cal Poly SLO’s baseball team with how to improve batting skills cited in a ground-breaking book on learning called Make it Stick (80-81). Half of the team practiced the conventional way of hitting 45 pitches in 3 sets. Each set was one kind of pitch thrown 15 times. For each set, the learning seemed easy as the hitters saw more of the same pitch. The other half of the team faced three types of pitches randomly thrown for a total of 45 pitches. At the end of the 45 pitches, the hitters still struggled to connect, calling into question their proficiency compared to the other half of the team. It turns out, though, that the perception of proficiency is unrelated to skill development.
After twice a week of these extra practice sessions over 6 weeks, the players with random pitches, who felt less proficient, showed significantly better hitting skills. Hitting a baseball is arguably one of the most difficult skills in sports. This is especially interesting because all of the players were already skilled before the experiment. This experiment underscores how comfort not only skews perspective but also hinders learning and growth. The same applies to disrupters: tolerating discomfort is a winning strategy for the long haul. When the disrupter ends, the victory is sweeter than imagined.
The next time comfort rears its seductive head, chase it away, like a rodent in the vegetable garden. Develop a mental sonic fence against this sly intruder. Embrace discomfort, and you will discover you can do far more than you ever expected to do. Like this year’s world series—this is for the four men in my life—the victory is worth the exhausting fight and long wait.
Source cited:
Brown, Peter. Make it Stick. Harvard University Press, 2014.
*https://lifeafterwhy.com/blog/live-in-the-moment-for-more-than-a-moment