Healthy Dissatisfaction
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. — Leo Tolstoy
There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used. — Zig Ziglar
Agitation almost always precedes and accompanies growth. I’m going to borrow a quote from an incredible article I read yesterday by Maria Camille, a woman who escaped a suffocating marriage to a man in the mafia and became a thriving, independent human and adventuring entrepreneur…
“When the pain of the problem becomes greater than the pain of the solution is when you’ll take action.”
Put another way, we need a critical mass of healthy dissatisfaction with our current state to spur change, because as humans we are hardwired to constantly click “Remind Me Later” when we get a notification to upgrade our Life operating system. We prefer to keep schlepping around with the same buggy, shitty software because it’s just too much to ask me to wait while the new version installs and then learn a bunch of new features and commands.
Our mind and body have a way of manifesting the signals we’re trying so hard to ignore. That faceless, low-grade anxiety quietly running in the background is trying to tell you something isn’t right. The dread when the alarm clock goes off, the heaviness in your body throughout the day, the leg that won’t stop bouncing during a meal with your coworkers. Something isn’t right. Don’t drown it out. Don’t hide from it. It’s trying to tell you something.
