The Discomfort Zone

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.

You want people to stretch their limits, but your conversations meant to help them often fall flat or backfire, creating more resistance than growth. Top leadership coach Marcia Reynolds offers a model for using the Discomfort Zone—the moment when the mind is most open to learning—to prompt people to think through problems, see situations more strategically, and transcend their limitations. Drawing on recent discoveries in the neuroscience of learning, Reynolds shows how to ask the kinds of questions that short-circuit the brain’s defense mechanisms and habitual thought patterns. Then, instead of being told, people see for themselves the insightful and often profound solutions to what is stopping their progress. The exercises and case studies will help you use discomfort in your conversations to create lasting changes and an enlivened workforce.

'Honest, witty and insightful' Emma Gannon 'A brilliant, useful book' Dawn O'Porter 'Farrah has written a book about the things no one wants to talk about: failure, discomfort, and how to deal with both' Sophia Amoruso, author of #Girlboss While it is human nature to shy away from things that are outside of our comfort zone, it is only by spending time in our discomfort zone that we can grow, and improve, and realise our full potential. Whether it's putting yourself forward for a new challenge, asking for difficult feedback, nailing a presentation or getting a dream job, in this book Farrah Storr shows how you have to push through what she calls "brief moments of discomfort" in order to get to where you need to be. Farrah describes these brief moments of discomfort as "like HIIT training for your life" - and shows how the more you force yourself into them, the easier it will get. This book is full of advice, practical exercises and examples both from Farrah's own life and career and from all sorts of other successful people, from athletes to entrepreneurs. By adopting the brief moments of discomfort, or BMD method, you will soon understand that nothing in life is an insurmountable challenge, only a series of small, uncomfortable tests that can easily be overcome. Once you have used Farrah's techniques to transform your fear into bite-size, manageable pieces, you'll be able to take on anything. In fact, in time, you'll even begin to enjoy these moments.

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULTIZER PRIZE WINNER • The captivating inside story of the woman who helmed the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media: the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate In this widely acclaimed memoir ("Riveting, moving...a wonderful book" The New York Times Book Review), Katharine Graham tells her story—one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for the courage, candor, and dignity of its telling. Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husband—a confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson—plunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressman’s union as she entered the profane boys’ club of the newspaper business. As timely now as ever, Personal History is an exemplary record of our history and of the woman who played such a shaping role within them, discovering her own strength and sense of self as she confronted—and mastered—the personal and professional crises of her fascinating life.

What is this place called the comfort zone? Where does the comfort zone exist? Why is stepping outside of the comfort zone so frightening? "The Comfort Zone Illusion" answers those questions by taking you on a journey of discovery to uncover the mystery of the very personal space we call our comfort zone. It is an exploration through the stages of change, beginning with the very first step outside of the comfort zone to exposing the five walls of fear that create barriers to change. This book looks beyond the illusion of comfort to the stark reality of the discomfort of change, and offers strategies to transform fear to energy, break down the brick walls of fear, develop movement habits, and create success enablers. Every breakthrough exercise provides a reflective understanding of your comfort zone, and although the exercises have a specific purpose, each offers a chance to reveal an "a-ha" moment. One of those moments is the turning point, the awakening to move you out of being stuck in the comfort of where you are to where you are meant to be.

Leaving your comfort zone is frightening, and fear can stifle action, inhibit the ability to attempt a new approach, and can create unnecessary stress, making you less likely to welcome change as an opportunity for discovery, growth, and personal development. The author, Susan Neustrom, shares numerous stories about confusion, uncertainty, anxiety, and success derived from her life-changing experience of facing her fear of educational failure from being a high-school dropout at sixteen by returning to school at forty-eight to earn a GED and then a doctorate. Susan conveys her thoughts, feelings, and unbelievable discomfort with leaving her comfort zone, as well as many "a-ha" moments, in her personal transformation of abandoning a twenty-two-year career to follow her vision to do work with greater purpose and meaning. Not only does she offer her personal account, she also shares the stories of people in a variety of situations, and from experts who clearly understand change.

If you are stuck in your comfort zone, ready for change, but walls of "I can't" stand in your way, this book shows you how leaving your comfort zone is not so hard after all. "The Comfort Zone Illusion" truly demonstrates that possibilities are endless once you learn how to get out of the discomfort of being in your comfort zone, eliminate fear, and unleash purpose, passion, and potential.

“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.

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.

Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.