Discomfort as a Signal of Goal Progress
Weekly Thoughts
Discomfort as a Signal of Goal Progress
A few days ago, I came across a recent study published by Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach that explored the idea of “Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort.”
This publishing section is titled “discomfort as a signal of goal progress,” which I found rather fascinating.
“Specifically, seeking discomfort when pursuing a goal could cause people to reappraise discomfort as the goal progress. Although personal growth is challenging to detect, people know when they feel uncomfortable. They can use this to cue that they are advancing toward their goal and be motivated to persist. Although reappraisal interventions traditionally focus on regulating emotion (e.g., decreasing negative emotion; Gross, 1998, 1999), we propose that this technique can motivate the pursuit of personal growth and merely be activated by encouraging people to seek discomfort.”
In my own experience, the periods in which I am under the most stress and discomfort often (in hindsight) turn out to be periods of substantial personal growth. If you think about it from a practical standpoint, you must go through periods of discomfort during physical training to grow physical muscle fiber or increase the cardiovascular load.
The biggest issue with this period of discomfort is the mind’s desire to avoid it. It is much easier to stay within your comfort zone and perform (reasonable or acceptably) well.
Work-board week of April 17th, 2022
Clay has been diligently working on getting 3 pairs of mule samples made for us. From the first prototype to now, we have been adjusting the toe box shape to make it appear less “clown-shoe,” for lack of a better word. He utilized the 3d printer to help speed up the process of reworking the toe box.
This is the front of a short-sleeve button-down shirt that will most likely be a 1 of 1. I want to explore mixing 2 mediums (traditional art & apparel construction). The most challenging aspect of this piece will be the hand embroidery required to follow the outline of the NYC subway scene. Since a machine cannot reproduce this level of embroidery (or maybe I just haven’t found a place willing to take this type of project on), we will have to have it be a single individual. I fully expect the cost of embroidery to be staggeringly high.
We continue to sample new wash types for the crewnecks (which can also be applied to any kind of hoodie that we want to make in the future). I find that enzyme washing produces radically different results depending on the concentration of the mix.
Below are two different samples of running shorts (we will do both lined and unlined running shorts). You can notice the difference in fabric construction (the dull fabric is a stretchier fabric, and the glossy material is more closely related to a bathing suit). I have yet to decide which would be best moving forward... we will continue to test by wearing them ourselves.
Training
Monday - Saturday, we had a solid week of training. We hit all of our runs, and the lifts had proper intensity. Sunday comes along, and I caught some sort of 24 hr stomach bug. Had to miss an 11-mile run and was in bed all day trying to hydrate and let my body recover. I know it’s not the end of the world, but I spent time thinking about my sleep cycles for these last 2 weeks, and they have been less than ideal (6-7 hours per night). I believe this is attributed to my body (and therefore immune system) becoming worn down. It’s essential to track these things when trying to perform and physically ask a lot of my body. Paying attention to what it needs is equally important to training... maybe it was trying to let me know it needed some rest.
Articles I found interesting this week:
Human Brain Compresses Working Memories into Low-Res’ Summaries’
A Drug that Cures Alcoholism Maybe the Next Anti-Anxiety Medication
Have a great week
-Marcus
As always I look forward to this every week. Would love to see some women athletic gear for this summer, but understand you have a lot of other projects on your plate. Keep up the great work. Best,
Lindsay
You should select random people to test your up coming releases, personally I'd pay to test some prototypes out!