The Beauty Of Discomfort

Why do some people drive change while others are blindsided by it? Why are some people able to adapt and thrive? How can we make change easier? Truly successful people don’t merely tolerate discomfort—they embrace it and seek it out again and again. Business founders and university students, top athletes and couch potatoes, meditation gurus and military leaders all have very different ways of coping with discomfort, but the most successful among them believe that withstanding discomfort is a skill that has helped them in hugely positive ways. Some were forced into discomfort through no choice of their own—a life-altering illness, a business fiasco—while others signed up for it because they had goals they were determined to achieve. Some degree of discomfort is inherently good for you. It can spur you on, pushing you to test your own limits. Learning to tolerate, and then embrace, discomfort is the foundation for change, for individuals and businesses alike. Becoming comfortable with discomfort won’t just make us more resilient and more successful, however we define success. It will also make us happier.

WINNER OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE A stark and gripping tale of childhood grief from one of the most exciting new voices in Dutch literature Ten-year-old Jas lives with her strictly religious parents and her siblings on a dairy farm where waste and frivolity are akin to sin. Despite the dreary routine of their days, Jas has a unique way of experiencing her world: her face soft like cheese under her mother’s hands; the texture of green warts, like capers, on migrating toads in the village; the sound of “blush words” that aren’t in the Bible. One icy morning, the disciplined rhythm of her family’s life is ruptured by a tragic accident, and Jas is convinced she is to blame. As her parents’ suffering makes them increasingly distant, Jas and her siblings develop a curiosity about death that leads them into disturbing rituals and fantasies. Cocooned in her red winter coat, Jas dreams of “the other side” and of salvation, not knowing where this dreaming will finally lead her. A bestseller in the Netherlands, Lucas Rijneveld’s radical debut novel The Discomfort of Evening offers readers a rare vision of rural and religious life in the Netherlands. In it, he asks: In the absence of comfort and care, what can the mind of a child invent to protect itself? And what happens when that is not enough? With stunning psychological acuity and images of haunting, violent beauty, Rijneveld has created a captivating world of language unlike any other.

“If you’ve been looking for something different to level up your health, fitness, and personal growth, this is it.”—Melissa Urban, Whole30 CEO and New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Boundaries “Michael Easter’s genius is that he puts data around the edges of what we intuitively believe. His work has inspired many to change their lives for the better.”—Dr. Peter Attia, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Outlive Discover the evolutionary mind and body benefits of living at the edges of your comfort zone and reconnecting with the wild—from the author of Scarcity Brain, coming in September! In many ways, we’re more comfortable than ever before. But could our sheltered, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged lives actually be the leading cause of many our most urgent physical and mental health issues? In this gripping investigation, award-winning journalist Michael Easter seeks out off-the-grid visionaries, disruptive genius researchers, and mind-body conditioning trailblazers who are unlocking the life-enhancing secrets of a counterintuitive solution: discomfort. Easter’s journey to understand our evolutionary need to be challenged takes him to meet the NBA’s top exercise scientist, who uses an ancient Japanese practice to build championship athletes; to the mystical country of Bhutan, where an Oxford economist and Buddhist leader are showing the world what death can teach us about happiness; to the outdoor lab of a young neuroscientist who’s found that nature tests our physical and mental endurance in ways that expand creativity while taming burnout and anxiety; to the remote Alaskan backcountry on a demanding thirty-three-day hunting expedition to experience the rewilding secrets of one of the last rugged places on Earth; and more. Along the way, Easter uncovers a blueprint for leveraging the power of discomfort that will dramatically improve our health and happiness, and perhaps even help us understand what it means to be human. The Comfort Crisis is a bold call to break out of your comfort zone and explore the wild within yourself.

If fear is holding you back from your best life and you're sick and tired of spinning your wheels, then this book is for you. The world in which we find ourselves today is a tough and unforgiving one. The stress of trying to survive alone takes so much willpower that most people simply give in to their fears and insecurities and gives up. The more persistent ones try to seek out information that will help them overcome their fears, weaknesses and insecurities, but the overabundance of information and their inability to sort out the wheat from the chaff poses a barrier. But it doesn't have to be that way. In The Power Of Discomfort Discover How Greatness Waits on the Other Side of Fear. Manny Languasco skips all the fluff and filler that is all too common with this topic, showing you how you can overcome your fears and obliterate your insecurities while discovering your natural strengths and capitalizing on them. With concise explanations, case studies and actionable advice, Manny clearly demonstrates how you can become a better, more proactive version of yourself, no matter who you are right now. In this book, you're going to learn how to: * Transform your life by creating the person you want to become * Stop focusing on your weaknesses and master your strengths instead * Find a mentor who's waiting for you and willing to help * Expand your comfort zone * And Much more.... Whether you've lost hope, struggle with procrastination or you simply want to break out of your glass ceiling and self-imposed limitations, there's something in these pages for you to help you get started on your journey to self-awareness and success. Scroll up and click the link to buy now!

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 * Vulture’s #1 Memoir of 2022 * A Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA TODAY, Time, BuzzFeed, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From Chloé Cooper Jones—Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient—an “exquisite” (Oprah Daily) and groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and the search for a new way of seeing and being seen. “I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.” So begins Chloé Cooper Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as “less than.” The way she has been seen—or not seen—has informed her lens on the world her entire life. She resisted this reality by excelling academically and retreating to “the neutral room in her mind” until it passed. But after unexpectedly becoming a mother (in violation of unspoken social taboos about the disabled body), something in her shifts, and Jones sets off on a journey across the globe, reclaiming the spaces she’d been denied, and denied herself. From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths. “Bold, honest, and superbly well-written” (Andre Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name) Easy Beauty is the rare memoir that has the power to make you see the world, and your place in it, with new eyes.

Entrepreneur, motivational leader, and internationally recognized public speaker Sterling Hawkins shows readers how to get comfortable with discomfort to create breakthrough results in life and business using his #NoMatterWhat system for transformative change. If you’re like most people, you probably shy away from discomfort. But the uber-successful—from elite athletes to billionaire founders and famous entrepreneurs—do the exact opposite. They know that discomfort can be high-octane fuel for performance or the most direct path to their goals. And they’ve learned how to turn rock bottom into one of life’s greatest gifts. You can, too. Entrepreneur Sterling Hawkins has spent his life coming back from the brink to sell companies, finish ultramarathons, and realize goals through his #NoMatterWhat system for achieving larger-than-life results. Now it’s your turn. This book will show you how to: Expand your reality Commit so deeply that there’s no going back Surround yourself with those who hold you to your potential and nothing less Use roadblocks to your advantage Flow, flex, and pivot to the best possible outcome—no matter what The journey you are invited to embark upon will not be comfortable. But it will be extraordinary. Welcome to the hunt.

The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen’s tale of growing up afraid of spiders, school dances, urinals, music teachers, boomerangs, popular girls, and his parents. It’s also a portrait of a middle-class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America turned away from its mid-century idealism and became a more polarized society. Whether he’s writing about the explosive dynamics of a Christian youth fellowship in the 1970s, the effects of Kafka’s fiction on his own protracted quest to lose his virginity, or the web of connections between birdwatching, his all-consuming marriage, and the problem of global warming, Franzen’s recounting of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood is warmed by the same blend of comic scrutiny and affection that characterizes his fiction. Funny, insightful, and daringly honest, The Discomfort Zone is Jonathan Franzen at his most engaging.

The author of the acclaimed novel Scarborough weaves an unforgettable and timely dystopian tale about a near-future, where a queer Black performer and his allies join forces to rise up when an oppressive regime gathers those deemed “Other” into concentration camps. Set in a terrifyingly familiar near-future, with massive floods leading to rampant homelessness and devastation, a government-sanctioned regime called The Boots seizes on the opportunity to round up communities of color, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ into labor camps. In the shadows, a new hero emerges. After he loses his livelihood as a drag queen and the love of his life, Kay joins the resistance alongside Bahadur, a transmasculine refugee, and Firuzeh, a headstrong social worker. Guiding them in the use of weapons and close-quarters combat is Beck, a rogue army officer, who helps them plan an uprising at a major televised international event. With her signature “raw yet beautiful, disturbing yet hopeful” (Booklist) prose, Catherine Hernandez creates a vision of the future that is all the more frightening because it is very possible. A cautionary tale filled with fierce and vibrant characters, Crosshairs explores the universal desire to thrive, love, and be loved for being your true self.