Embracing Voluntary Discomfort | Ep. 1

Dane: 00:00

‍It's not just that people are in pursuit of happiness. They're in pursuit of a certain kind of happiness, a very comfortable happiness. To be human is to suffer. It's just the human condition. At the end of our lives, we die. To ignore that is dishonest. So if we're going to have a difficult life anyways, wouldn't it be best to have the best difficult life we could?

Dane: 00:23

As humans, we prefer the path of least resistance. We crave convenience, the payoff without the price. When our lives revolve around comfort, it doesn't deliver. Living in perpetual comfort. Leave this week and asleep. This podcast is an invitation to flip that script, to choose the unlikely path to get the life you really want through voluntary discomfort. This is strong and awake.

Dane: 00:49

I'm Dane Sanders.

Mitch: 00:51

So I think it might be helpful to start with strong and Awake. Mitch, let's unpack that a little bit here, because for anyone that might be tuning in, watching this, listening to this, they need to know what they're getting into.

Dane: 01:03

So we have a mantra at men and Women of discomfort. And I'll say the whole mantra at the end and it rhymes, which is helpful. And honestly, if I'm real about it, we started the mantra just because it was clever and it rhymed. But what we stumbled into were two very particular aims. The order could be debated whether it's strong first or awake first.

Dane: 01:25

I think maybe you need to wake up before you can get strong. Or maybe in the process of getting strong, you wake up. I'm not really clear on that, but I will say that there's a lot of other options we could have picked, but it seems like those particular character traits are an outcome of people who engage our practice.

Dane: 01:45

Our kind of philosophy, and they're in contrast to other character traits. So, for example, with strong, let's take that in turn. When I think of strong versus something else, like a, let's call it let's go with powerful, I think power oftentimes power comes outside of us. So if you have positional power, for example, you have leverage because you are in a position like in a hierarchy, in an organization, you have position over other people and you can put that on others.

Dane: 02:13

They kind of it's their job to do what you tell them to do and is currently outside coming in where strength actually in our world, it connotes something internal, intrinsic that is is something that I have agency over. And if I work something I can get stronger. It also fit the bill because so much of our work at the beginning especially, was really focused on embodiment, like, how do I actually physically get stronger?

Dane: 02:37

How do I actually go from not strong to some baseline level of strength? And then how could I get stronger over time? And really, the effort of discipline and putting ourselves, our bodies in an uncomfortable position, stretching, trying to compete at a high level, whatever. The thing is, all of those efforts are connected to a process where you get weaker first.

Dane: 03:00

You break things down and you recover and the recovery, those things strengthen and you build off of that foundation. You can keep going stronger, but it doesn't require any outside input. I have full agency over whether or not I can get strong. I don't have full agency as to whether or not I can be powerful, and that's really important for people.

Dane: 03:16

Understand we don't promise power. We don't promise other people will think well of you or do things for you, or you're going to get that raise or get that promotion, or you're going to do is even when you don't get that raise or you don't get the outcome, the power that you prefer to get, you're going to be okay because you on your own, your strength was developed in such a way where you can keep getting stronger without anybody else's permission.

Dane: 03:40

So that's the first part. Strong, the second part awake. The contrast of that is more it's antithesis, which is asleep. Demello talks a lot about sleep and being asleep. And for those who don't know, Anthony Demello is this Catholic priest who was prominent in the 80s, and he's since passed away, and he was from India, and he was a Catholic priest and a lot of his cultural kind of Hindu world was really influenced his perspective on his Catholic faith.

Dane: 04:07

And he would talk a lot about the contrast of asleep for a week. So he would say things like, most people are born in their sleep, they grew up in their sleep, they get married in their sleep, their babies in their sleep, and they die in their sleep. They never wake up. And so much of our work at men and women have discomfort is to just be aware, to wake up to the reality that we're in.

Dane: 04:26

And that is a courageous act. There's a lot of interesting people who talk about this idea of waking up from various traditions. I think of, like Sam Harris from the New Atheist tradition all the way to, you know, Christianity and the Jesus tradition. This is a common phenomenon of you can't even get started until you're on some level awake to reality.

Dane: 04:47

And what's nice about voluntary discomfort is it both helps you get strong and it wakes you up. And again, the order I think is up for debate. But what is clear to me is you need both. If you want to be someone who's flourishing in life. And when I say flourishing, it's not said that I can just become strong and I can just wake up.

Dane: 05:07

It's actually so that I can do something for others. It's actually putting myself in a position of strength and awareness so that I can love. And that's that's the mantra, is to become strong and awake for love sake, for the, you know, the most powerful force in the world and the universe. For anything that humans have ever been conscious to is love.

Dane: 05:25

And that's what we're building toward. And we're willing to suffer in order to put ourselves in a position where we can increase that capacity.

Mitch: 05:35

Hmhm I love that breakdown, and I love that we're starting with a breakdown, because even seeing you wrestle with the order of the Strong and Awake, I think communicates that there. So intertwined even you talking about the embodied nature of kind of what we're doing and the practices. But I love that that end goal of For Love Sake and I think oftentimes in our culture, especially Western culture, especially America, where we have set in stone from our forefathers, you know, like for the pursuit of happiness, you know, happiness seems to be this, this end goal, this aim that a lot of us have.

Mitch: 06:13

So I love that you're kind of turning that on its head in a sense. And instead focusing on doing these things to ourselves, for ourselves.

Dane: 06:22

Well, I just get bored with myself so quickly. I think most humans do it just when I'm the end of the story. What a boring story. And when I can actually make my efforts instrumental to somebody else's life. The other well man, now we're now we're in a whole different kind of conversation where I'm becoming increasingly self unconscious for the sake of our consciousness for the other.

Dane: 06:47

And this is moving from the individual to the collective. This is the great opportunity that, philosophers have been talking about for millennia. We are just happened to be in a season where, to your point around happiness, it's not just that people are in pursuit of happiness. They're in pursuit of a certain kind of happiness, a very comfortable happiness.

Dane: 07:05

This kind of mythical notion that I can just I have a divine right to be happy without any effort to get the happiness in my life. And we're deliriously confused when it comes to how one actually gets to a place of, you know, in Aristotle's language, eudaimonia, flourishing, the sense of it's way more that happy. It's a sense of alive and and fully functioning and, you know, executing where we all have different bodies, different capacities.

Dane: 07:34

I get all of that. and it's all that part is all relative to like, where I'm at, where how could I most flourish as a 53 year old man, who's interested holistically at looking at every thing I could imagine and, and, and illuminating it and going well, if I could be willing to be uncomfortable to eliminate those things, what might emerge in my own flourishing as a person, it probably has very little to do with me, and more to do with putting myself in a position to love and and to create value external to myself.

Dane: 08:07

And that's that's a such a freeing place to be. this is a theologian. We just recently passed away in New York City. Guy named Tim Keller, who he wrote a little booklet, this tiny little booklet on, like, the gift of self forgetfulness or hidden, the Art of self forgetfulness, maybe something like that, but I've read it a number of times, and every time I read it, I just keep thinking like I'm.

Dane: 08:28

So when I just obsess about me, I get so bored and tired. He. But when I am focused freely, unconscious to myself and freed up to focus on the other, I'm alive. I don't, I don't. I do the natural rhythms of that. Humans and all living things have done where you can't. You work and then you rest and you and you recover and you do it again.

Dane: 08:49

But I have a sense of purpose to it. That is. So, talk about a motivation that lasts for a long period of time is incredibly, resourceful. I think the people who live for others out of a sense of a strong sense of self from that foundation, they end up being in a position of great value to society and really to themselves, because they tend they rarely suffer from depression and discouragement.

Dane: 09:17

And they can be sad. They can grieve like they're human, but they don't tend to be self-obsessed. They tend to have a sustainability and a longevity where their their vibrancy is communicated everywhere they go.

Mitch: 09:32

Yeah, I love that articulation. And as I'm listening through listeners ears, the question we might be kind of asking ourselves is like, okay, this sounds great. Wonderful, I love that, and I agree, actually. But two questions. You know why? Because you know, the we have the expression, you know, ignorance is bliss. And, you know, I've had conversations with people I love craft beer and making kombucha and roasting coffee and things like that.

Mitch: 09:59

And, you know, some people are totally satisfied with the taste of Folgers. And part of me, part of me thinks like, okay, well, good for you if you're satisfied with that, then like, why should I try to.

Dane: 10:13

You know, ruin it? How would you reply? By telling them of their good coffee? Yeah, right.

Mitch: 10:17

Right. But but you know, I think realistically and, you know, people might be thinking this sounds hard. Obviously. You know, we're talking about voluntary discomfort. We're talking about leaning into these things like ultimately what's at stake if we don't do that.

Dane: 10:33

Life is hard for everybody, even the Folgers drinkers. Right? So the question is like, what kind of hard do you want? What kind of difficult? Like Scott says, life is difficult. This first line of his book, The Road Less Traveled, and he's right now there's some people, there's a handful of people who actually think, no, no, life isn't that hard.

Dane: 10:53

And maybe they're in denial or they've gotten to such a, self-actualized state where they they say, I don't see suffering anymore. I think that's hogwash. I think to be human is to suffer. This is a common understanding for since the beginning of time, for anyone who's thought about it like, we we're at the end of our lives, we die.

Dane: 11:13

I like to ignore that. I think is is and dishonest. So if we're going to have a difficult life anyways, wouldn't it be best to have the best difficult life we could to create the most value from that life? Now there's nihilists and other folks that, they get really cynical about these ideas and they just go, oh, what's the point of anything?

Dane: 11:35

And and I feel for those people because they're really despairing. there's no sense of hope or redemption. But what I'm noticing is when I think beyond my little life to like generations, like my kids, my kids, kids, kids, generations before me, that set my life up. He I'm so struck by the the much bigger game that we're actively participating as a collective group of humans.

Dane: 11:56

And for all of the the advances that we've experienced in our lives of civilization evolving over time and improving and, you know, one generation building something and the next generation standing on their shoulders and the next generation sitting on their shoulders. That's that's the enterprise we're part of. So what I'm realizing is if I do my life well as well as I can imagine, as well as I can dream, the benefactors, even after I'm dead, are my kids and my kids kids, kids.

Dane: 12:22

And would they? Could they squander it? Of course they could. Just like I could. Just like you could. But that'll be on them. The the opportunity is to go. How can I be a part of a contribution? For what? I will, in my view, stand before God and, and account for, and in that from that perspective, I want to be able to be glad for my contribution or even better, that that God would be glad.

Mitch: 12:51

With my condition.

Dane: 12:52

But it's very motivating for me. So, you know, why ruin it for people? I, I don't want to ruin it for people. Again, man finds a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness. That's true for everybody. Kirkegaard was right about that, including me. But my interest is to go, well, what if I be courageous enough to go, well, where am I despairing?

Dane: 13:08

And would I be willing to illuminate that in such a way that I could despair, better have a higher caliber of despair to to live at a higher level? Well, it turns out the road to get there is voluntary discomfort. That's the secret. And some people might go, what secret? There's no secrets left. Like, well, then I say secret.

Dane: 13:28

What I mean is it's in plain view for everyone to see, but very few people practice it. Most people spend their entire lives looking for a way to avoid discomfort. And I get it. Involuntary discomfort is awful. When you get cancer, it's awful when when you get hit by a bus, it's awful when you see someone you care deeply for suffer.

Dane: 13:50

It's awful easy. Yes, those are involuntary discomforts. What I'm talking about is agency. When I choose to to to be discomforted, I gain a strength and an awareness that isn't available unless I raise my hand and say, I'm going to go do that hard thing. And that's what we do. We teach people how to do hard things. So since most people are afraid of all hard things and they step back from it, the bell goes off.

Dane: 14:16

They run in the opposite direction. We just have a different habit in our community. When the bell goes off, we run in the direction of the bell and that tells us that we're probably putting ourselves in a position where things will break down and it will get difficult. And as we persist through it, we will become stronger and awake, and then we can actually love better.

Dane: 14:34

So it's not a it's not a complicated calculus. It's just a largely on practice calculus. I've forgotten calculus. It's discipline. And most people would prefer to get the benefit without the discipline. But it's a fool's errand. That's not actually how it works.

Mitch: 14:50

Yeah, that's so true. And maybe it's because we live in this world that it seems like this conversation is coming up a lot. You know, we've discussed a number of books and other kind of peers in this space that are talking about the same thing. Why do you think that is and why now?

Dane: 15:08

Yeah, it's a great quote. Well, Michael likes to read a great little book called The Comfort Crisis, and he is in a genre of books that are, all pointing at the same idea. And I think it's kind of this kind of fringy perspective that I hear a lot of them, because I'm in that algorithm where then these things are getting served up by a bunch.

Dane: 15:26

You are, you match. Oh, yeah. But the vast majority of people, what's getting served up in their algorithm isn't those things. It's actually, how to find a more convenient way to get something, an easier way to get something. A less painful way to get something. If I would just buy this thing, I'm going to get relief.

Dane: 15:44

And three easy steps and two pills and five easy payments and all of these examples are symptoms of an economy that's built around the removal of discomfort. Discomfort is evil. And I want to avoid that. Even if you look at the world of medicine right now, it's largely built around patients putting themselves in a position where they can reduce symptoms and feel less discomfort and to be comforted, even, common phrases you hear all the time, like if you feel comfortable with this suggestion, would you consider, like, we hear this all the time, like, someone objection or something?

Dane: 16:21

They don't say I object. They say I that doesn't make me feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable with that solution. I'd like something else. And it's pervasive. It's all over our world. And the goal is to is to comfort people, which, again, I, I kind of like it from a a relief from the involuntary discomforts of the world.

Dane: 16:39

I'm really going to be grateful for those things, I suspect. And at the same time, it never promotes voluntary discomfort where I would actually get the benefits that only come from people who embrace challenge in their lives. So the reason there's a handful of people in France talking is because we're noticing this isn't good, like child obesity is a problem.

Dane: 16:59

Diabetes is a prob. All those kind of the Four horsemen is Peter talks about our problems, and the solution for them is to remove the symptoms that tell us where we can fix the the actual root of the issue and not the symptom of the issue. That's the part that is most concerning. So I think these are prophets on the fringe who are wisely inviting us to go, whoa, wait, there's a lot better ways to live.

Dane: 17:24

And we've known this for a long time. Let's learn from history. And you know, why is Ryan Holiday so popular these days? Well, he's pointing at guys like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus, who were all wise thinkers wrestling with how do you flourish in life? Aristotle himself and you know, what is the good life? And it turns out the good life is the disciplined life, but the disciplined life is uncomfortable.

Dane: 17:46

And we have a whole culture committed to saying discomfort is bad. So in this space, we want to create the opportunity to say, well, actually discomfort can be very, very good. It's actually the path to good. This is why guru seeker guru says hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life. And it flips on its head. It's it's why Scott Peck talks about this fundamental developmental stage amongst children that if they can't delay gratification, they won't flourish in life, putting off the comfort in order in the short term, so that when the comfort finally comes, they're in a position where they can really enjoy it.

Dane: 18:24

But that's not the way of our world right now, and I suspect there will be other seasons in our future where we won't have to talk about this much and the ebb and flow of these ideas, but we happen to live in a particular moment where this is not common, and we're on a mission that men and women have discomfort to make it common for people to see this as natural and normal.

Dane: 18:43

We wouldn't be freaks, but right now, we're freaks. Right now, when we tell people we voluntarily get in cold water, or we hold our breath, or we work out six days a week, or we eat whole food all the time, and we don't drink alcohol during our season at certain seasons. And when people hear that, they go, oh, I'm a man or woman of comfort, and they think they're being clever.

Dane: 19:04

And I say, oh, you mean you're an American in 2023? Because that's the standard American diet, that's in lifestyle. That's what you get. it's very sad. And, we don't want to live like that.

Mitch: 19:19

Yeah. And it's funny too, because I think, you know, people might raise their hand and say, yeah, well, I'm a man of comfort or a woman of comfort, like you said. But then there's also those people who say, no, I live that way. but oftentimes, I mean, we can all always do better, but oftentimes it's so compartmentalized.

Mitch: 19:37

Oh, well, I'm an athlete, so I live that way on the pitch or. That's right. You know, I'm an entrepreneur. I live that way in the boardroom. but but what is it about this practice? And practice is a word that's going to come up a lot, I'm sure, in our conversations. But what is it about what we're doing that kind of encompasses your all of life?

Dane: 19:58

Yeah, yeah, I love this question. So much because you're right, people are so specialized in their world that, like, they justify easy comforts first, easy choices in certain areas of their life because they make hard choices and in particular areas of their life. He's I think of the, parents or single parents with young children. Gosh, talk about involuntary discomfort.

Dane: 20:21

You're in that world right now. And, and I've been in that world. I know what that world's like. But I also think about, like, I, I'm, I'm a CrossFit athlete, and I go to CrossFit six days a week, and I love CrossFit. I love my community. And there are a number of people and number of people in my community who know how to voluntarily be discomforted to suffer together.

Dane: 20:44

It's one of the but it's one of the reasons why CrossFit is so powerful is because when you suffer together with people, you bond with them in remarkable ways. And when they're in the box, that's what we call our gyms a CrossFit. They are living exactly what we're describing. But oftentimes the moment they walk out of the box, there's so many different areas where things can break down very, very quickly.

Dane: 21:07

And we recognize that men and women have discovered that that temptation to compartmentalize is very evident in our world. So what we invite our members to do is to methodically and roughly gently just explore. Like where are there gaps in our practice? Where as and by practice, we just mean what if you think of like how you start your day, you sustain your day and your and every day, whatever that is.

Dane: 21:31

Everybody has a practice. That's your practice. And the stuff that's immovable, that are really important to you, that you always work around, that's really the core of your practice. And, we just recognize that in our day, how we practice life, we have an opportunity to go, well, where are their gaps? And we actually actively look for gaps.

Dane: 21:55

We call it gap hunting. And that effort to hunt for gaps is the point. We don't do this for ourselves exclusively. Back to the strong and awake thing. That's kind of ego driven and we're not that interested. we're not looking to stand on the hill and say, I did it. Look at me. I'm awesome. Although we have moments where that feels that way.

Dane: 22:14

what's more interesting to us is to go, oh, I found some gold. Another hole in my life, a broken commitment, an area where I said I was going to do this side and I didn't. I wasn't standing as my word. I. I said this was important to me, but yet I behaved in this other way. And when those things get revealed, we don't shame anybody.

Dane: 22:33

We just go, let's celebrate. Now that you see it, you're awake. How do you want to get strong with it? And there's so many opportunities to do that. In fact, you could do that over decades of your life and talk about someone who's flourishing at their end of their life. And that's what we're up to. And we're not.

Dane: 22:51

We don't feel bad about it. We feel great about it. And, and then when involuntary discomforts come, when things we don't choose come. What I have seen happen over and over again is individuals, women and men who are able to stand up in the storm in such a way that it just utterly inspires you. You just go, how do they not crumble underneath that news or that difficult?

Dane: 23:19

And again, they're very real about it. They they're they're sad. They're they're they're could be undone for a long time. But even in their undone this they're alive. They're the most alive people I've ever seen. And I think that's a better litmus test of flourishing. Where are you when you're at your worst? How do you show up that?

Dane: 23:38

And, even if you're a puddle, there's different calibers of puddles and, or or even more remarkably, in my experiences, when there's a puddle next to you, someone is really under it. And I see men and women of discomfort stand with those people. It's just utterly inspiring. It's the kind of thing you see your guy. I wish I could be more like like that.

Dane: 24:04

and that's what we try to do. We spur each other on to that. That effort.

Mitch: 24:09

I love it. So you talked about a particular kind of compartmentalization where, you know, you're you're all in, in the box and you leave and you're living your life looking very differently. But there's another kind of compartmentalization that we often leverage to try to accomplish this stuff. So people listening this might be thinking, well, I've done whole 30 or 75 hard or something like, how is this different?

Mitch: 24:33

What is this thing that you're proposing?

Dane: 24:35

Yeah, well, I've done both those things whole 30 of them several times. So the things I'm about to share with you, I'm going to share from experience, when it comes to challenges, the question to ask isn't what happens with those 30 days or those 75 days, because those days are amazing. They are absolutely in tune. But here's the question you need to ask what happens on day 76?

Dane: 24:57

And everyone knows the answer. It's a universally known truth. When it's event oriented, when it's a challenge. Day 76 is relief. Day 76 is I did it. Day 76 is the practice is over. And I understand seasonality. I understand ebb and flow. I think it's appropriate to have on seasons and off seasons. So if you if you don't get too fickle about day 76, just talk about day 156.

Dane: 25:20

What happens is even more discouraging because what happens is people get to day 76 are the most fit state they've ever been in certain categories, and they begin the process of going from day 76 to day 156 of giving up all of their gains. And they're often worse off than they were at the beginning of day one. And this is why, for us, this is a community long term effort.

Dane: 25:43

I just finished my 20. I about to finish my 21st round of this, but this is a sustainable pattern. This is not a, an event. It's not a challenge. It's an operating system. And we have we understand that there's seasons where, like your first round at men and women have discomfort. We call you a future. Your future.

Dane: 26:06

And while you're not married yet, get around under your belt and see what you discover. And in that process, it might even feel like a challenge. but what almost everyone figures out by the time they're done, their first round was this was not just about getting in shape, even though they're in great shape. They're walking billboards. That's not they realize, like the opportunity that they have is to build a life around this.

Dane: 26:30

And there's ways to go from our prescribed practice to a practice that they own 100% themselves. It's their practice and still be a part of our community. So that's what we want. We want to introduce people. If you participate, you make one choice to get in, and we make all of your choices for you for your first round, bye bye.

Dane: 26:49

Your second round and third round and fifth round and 10th round and 12th round. However long you want to stay in our community, you're in a perpetual evolution of refining the practice that is particular to you. What puts you in a position of strength and awareness for love sake? And how can you borrow from the prescription and adapt one that's very custom to your personality and lifestyle and circumstances, and the season of life in such a way that you will extend this practice and have it evolve over time such that you build a life, not just have a cool trophy on your shelf and say, look, I did that back then.

Dane: 27:25

And what's fun about it is it really it does evolve. You learn fascinating new things. I learn things in this round that was just not available to me in round 17 or 14 or ten, and I fully anticipate that in round 57 I, Lord willing, will discover more. So it's sustainable and and it adapts and it and you get to speak into what that looks like.

Mitch: 27:53

I love that and obviously will be able to unpack this a lot more. So I encourage you that are watching and listening, make sure you're subscribed on all the platforms that you can subscribe on. And, check us out at MWOD.io, to learn more. I'm looking forward to many more conversations with you.

Mitch: 28:11

Dane, thank you for taking the time to to talk about these things.

Dane: 28:15

Thanks, Mitch. Men and Women of Discomfort is our membership community and we are open to everyone. But keep in mind our tagline is it's probably not for you. If we're wrong about that, or if you want to find out for yourself, you can find us at

Dane: 28:29

MWOD.io the information materials we're sharing. But in this podcast or anything connected to have men or women have discomfort or feeling as corporate, it is all for general information purposes only.

Dane: 28:38

You should not rely on this material or information on this podcast. The basis for making

Dane: 28:40

any kind of decision. We do our best to do everything up to date, correct? We do a lot of due diligence, but the responsibility on you to make sure that you're in sync with your own medical professionals, that you wouldn't see what we're offering here is somehow a warranty or representation in any kind, expressed or implied about the complete, accurate, reliable, suitable or comprehensive in any kind of way.

Dane: 28:55

It's critical you own your agency, which is the heart of everything we do a minimum of discomfort. We invite you to take the up what they're offering and consider for yourself. And if it's helpful, please do take advantage of it. But if you do is you who is taking the opportunity. And we're assuming that you've done your due diligence with it.

Dane: 29:07

Thanks.

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