Discomfort Tolerance and Believing in the Unseeable
When the military recruits individuals into their special forces, the most sought after quality they’re looking for isn’t great marksmanship, superior fighting skills, or tactical knowledge. It is the ability to tolerate discomfort. The military tests for this by telling their recruits to take a jog down an isolated, remote road. The recruits know their task is to run down this road, but how far is the end? Is it 300 yards, 3 miles, or 35 miles? They have no idea, but their only task is to make it to the end. As the recruits continue on down this road, many of them begin to lose focus, lose confidence in their ability to finish, and quit simply from the discomfort of not knowing how long this road is. The one’s who do make it to the end pass the test and prove that they have the ability to tolerate an unknowable amount of discomfort and commit to finishing, no matter what.
What is Discomfort Tolerance?
Discomfort tolerance is a person’s ability to tolerate and persevere past the feeling of discomfort towards achieving their goal. The test these military recruits do is so similar to many of our own tasks and goal pursuits. We know what our end goal is, but we don’t know how long it will take to get there. It may be next week, next month, next year, or even several years down the road. We don’t know when we’ll reach it, and the simple fact of not knowing is enough to make many of us quit. The truth is, we can’t know and there is no way in telling. But like the recruits who finish their long, unknown jog down that remote road, we have to believe that there is an end somewhere. And if we just keep going and moving forward, someday we will find the end of that road and finally achieve the goal we want.
It is important that you find it within yourself to tolerate the discomfort. Harness the fighter inside of you to push past it, to overcome the thoughts of doubt and discouragement, and ultimately arrive at the end knowing it was your own strength and perseverance that got you to that point. You have it within you, all you have to do is search for and find it.
