The Joy and Discomfort of Trying New Things

For a lot of us, trying new things (aka learning) can be deeply, wrenchingly uncomfortable. It can also be super duper awesome, especially on the other side.

There is joy to be found in our expansion, in our stepping out or into the world of possibility and weathering the discomfort that comes from growth. We don’t use the analogy of roller coasters for nothin!

This is your pep talk and invitation to try something new – even if it’s just telling yourself how fucking awesome you are.

Speaking of new! I’ve been tinkering with every possible tool for podcasting (which has been deeply humbling and frustrating AF). I ultimately settled on Riverside.fm, though I’m not especially happy with it – an opportunity to practice hitting “good enough” over “trying to find the perfect thing will get in the way of actually doing shit and probably doesn’t actually exist.”

But one nifty tool of that platform is that it offers an attempt at show notes courtesy of AI! Which are mostly trash, but in this case, I’m surprisingly happy with the Key Takeaways. So, I shall share them here with you. With, of course, some editing by your human author/speaker.

Key Takeaways from This Fabulous Little Episode

• Trying new things can be both joyful and deeply uncomfortable.
• The brain is wired to look for danger in new situations (which is why they are usually uncomfortable).
• We get to choose our perspective on whether it’s exciting or terrifying.
• Newness is where growth and expansion live.
• Getting unstuck often requires doing something different and new.
• Finding a balance between familiarity and new experiences is important to your soul.
• Treating newness as a treat and adopting a mindset of practice helps with moving forward.
• Embracing discomfort and trying something new can lead to growth and reward.

Read the Transcript Below

cate blouke (00:00)
Hey, friend.

Today I want to talk about the joy and discomfort of trying new things. It’s especially relevant to me as I’m embarking on this glorious and terrifying journey of podcasting, which in some ways is new to me and in some ways isn’t. But it’s definitely an adventure that is both joyful and uncomfortable. And I was thinking about just like newness in general and learning the two things are basically the same and just how deeply uncomfortable it can be to be trying to do stuff and to be trying to do stuff in public especially how hard that is.

I have a love -hate relationship with trying new things, which as I continue to learn more and more about my own particular flavor of neuro -spiciness, it makes complete sense. But even folks more neurotypical brains, you know, like, just as a human, new stuff is inherently unsettling.

Our brains are evolutionarily wired to look for danger, to look for the tigers, right? And so anytime we enter a new situation, there’s a part of our brain that’s scanning for threats. And some of us have a higher tolerance for that than others.

Some of us are more kind of attracted to and excited by that than others. And that makes sense too, because on a physiological level, like there isn’t a distinction between excitement and fear. On a nervous system level, those two, like what is happening is the same, but our responses differ depending on our temperament, our life experience, our general brain wiring, whether when we encounter that sense of newness, that sense of the unknown,

we tap into this sense of like, oh yay, or oh shit. And one of the things that I’m learning as I pay attention to that more and more in my life is that knowing that, right? Knowing that when I’m feeling that feeling in my body, that is the fear, excitement reaction. That if I pay more attention, if I tap in, if I say, oh, oh, I feel that, am I afraid, am I excited? What choice do I wanna make? That really can shape my entire experience.

Mindset is gonna come up a lot on this podcast, in my writing, the ways in which we get to sort of choose or shape our own experience by really tuning into what are my thought patterns? What’s my narrative about this particular experience?

And we’re also gonna talk a lot about how stuff shows up in the body and bringing those two things together.

In my own journey in recent years, I’ve been learning a lot more about the nervous system. I’ve been learning how to pay more attention to my nervous system and the kind of wisdom and value that that offers when I’m paying attention. And oh, sweet baby Jesus, it is hard to pay attention.

None of us got taught how to, I mean, I didn’t get taught until I was in my late 30s how to pay attention to the sensations in my body, not really.

Obviously if you are into yoga, if you’ve been into yoga for a long time, if you’ve been into meditation for a long time, maybe this is familiar to you. But even as someone who has been meditating pretty regularly for the last 10 years… the sort of body scan noticing for me has largely only ever happened in that space. You know, when I’m sitting and paying attention to my breathing, paying attention to my body for five, 10, three minutes at a time, that has been the space for that. And so it’s been a big growth and practice for me to step into checking in with my whole system on a more regular basis.

And that comes up a lot for me and has been a really helpful practice for me as I’m leaning into this new frontier of literally putting my voice out in the world. Which is relatively new to me.

And it’s so hard, you guys, you gals, you humans.

It’s so vulnerable put stuff out there creatively and it’s also so exciting, right? But like that spectrum of excitement and terror really fluctuates from day to day.

And that I think one of the ideas that I’m wanting to explore in this particular episode is just like how much growth and and yumminess is available when I step forward into new shit.

Newness is where growth lives. Newness is where expansion lives.

And newness is always an opportunity to learn something about myself or a skill or a tool or what have you.

And it’s a huge and important and fundamental part of getting unstuck, of not settling in our lives, in whatever kind of area that we are settling. There’s a saying that I hear every so often in recovery that’s silly and trite and a little bit eye -rolly, but it’s also so helpful to me sometimes, which is that if nothing changes, nothing changes.

That if we want different things for ourselves, we have to do something different. And different often means new.

And I, in this moment even, just find it so helpful to just hear the reminder, to hear myself offer you the reminder it’s normal and natural and understandable to find shit deeply uncomfortable, that there’s nothing wrong with me for being uncomfortable, that I’m not doing it wrong just because I’m uncomfortable. That the discomfort is actually a sign that I’m doing something new and different and potentially really valuable and rewarding.

It can be so hard to take that first step, especially the first big step. Recording the first podcast was this ridiculously, I mean, not like, I’m gonna be nice to myself. It was not ridiculous that I had a hard time with that, that I needed to cuddle up with my squish mellow and push myself to do it because it was new, because it was vulnerable, because the internet is full of mean people. So of course I was a little nervous. And because I care about this a lot.

You know, I really want this to be amazing. And one of the great big beautiful lessons that I’m learning right now and that I’m modeling here and that it’s important to me to model here is that…

We have to start somewhere on the journey of great, big, amazing things and combating perfectionism.

Combating a fixed mindset, combating all of the shit that gets in the way of me being my most awesome self and you being your most awesome self can stop us from getting started if we’re not willing to like, fuck around and do the best we can with the awareness that it’s gonna get better eventually. As much as I want this podcast to be perfect and amazing and awesome right out the gate, which, you know, let’s be fair, in some ways I do think it is.

Like, I am having a great time doing this. Also, it’s been fucking terrible and exhausting because it turns out there’s a lot that goes into starting a podcast, everybody. If you didn’t know that, there is. And… I’m super excited for where this podcast is gonna take me, but if I were to let the discomfort of not having it perfectly figured out, of not… having my ideas beautifully, amazingly mapped out and sorted, because that’s not my style, if I let that stop me, nothing’s ever gonna happen. And I know a year from now, I’m gonna listen to this episode again and have plenty of things that I hear in it that I’m like, oh, I would do that differently, but I can’t find that out unless I do it.

Oh my gosh, right? But like, I can’t learn things unless I practice. And…

My invitation to myself and to you is to start treating life a bit more like a practice.

I mean, we talk about meditation practice, we talk about yoga practice in the kind of more mindful spaces. I feel like this idea is pretty prevalent.

But I think there’s just so much more ease and so much more exploration and curiosity when I adopt the mindset that it’s all just practice.

And when I step into new things, whether it’s a new hobby, whether it’s a new skill I’m learning at work, whether it’s a new skill I’m learning in my relationships, a new way of communicating, a new way of setting healthy boundaries, it’s fundamentally gonna be uncomfortable because it’s new. That discomfort is the companion of newness, and that I get to choose how I relate to that.

Sort of, sometimes, right? I can also often get caught up in the like, oh my god, this is so uncomfortable, ah. And that certainly used to be the case for me. For a lot of my life, if I wasn’t instantly good at something, I would just stop.

And I also wanna be clear that I don’t believe in constantly chasing the new. I am someone who really enjoys a lot of variety, but I suppose, especially as I’m getting older, as I’m now in my 40s, I think somewhat understandably I am finding a bit more balance between the familiar, like the comfortable, the routine, the familiar, and the new. That balance in all things, right?

But I think regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of, I have my routines, I like doing the same thing, versus like, oh my God, I want new stuff all the time.

I encourage both of us to really look at the value in both of those aspects.

And then if you’re listening to this podcast, if you are someone who is interested in personal development, self -improvement, thinking about how to be a bigger, better, cooler human in the world, right? If you’re here, then there’s part of you that wants something more.

And finding that something more, exploring that something more entails leaning into or adopting or picking up a little bit of something new.

And I really want all of us to explore the joy that can be found in newness, the delight, the surprise, the wonder.

What if newness were a treat we gave ourselves?

I like trying, I’m trying on that perspective right now as I think about this podcast that this is a treat. This is a delight. This is a joyful little moment, a yummy opportunity to dive off of…

A new cliff or a new, that actually sounds terrible. I don’t want to dive off the cliff. Let’s find a better metaphor there. To float up into a hot air balloon and get a new perspective.

I’m going to keep doing this podcast. That’s a fact. And so…

The more I do it and the more comfortable I get with the process, the more comfortable I get with my own voice, the more comfortable I get sharing things with you, my lovely, beautiful, marvelous, sparkly listener the more fun I’m gonna have.

You know, I do like roller coasters, and it is a bit like roller coaster. The initial phases of new stuff is going up that goddamn hill and kind of wanting to throw up and being like, oh no, oh my god, what am I doing, why did I do this? This was a terrible idea. And then you get over the hill and it’s like, oh, shit!

We’re doing it and this is amazing and oh my gosh. It doesn’t have to be that extreme. It doesn’t have to be… that level of terror inducing, of falling. Although if I think about it, there is something to the language that we use in terms of leaps of faith. Taking the leap. That I do think really captures that sense of terror and excitement that can happen.

And so here we are. You are on this flying leap with me.

And I’m super stoked.

And I’m choosing to adopt the mindset that I don’t have to do this perfectly. That you, my lovely, beautiful, sparkly, wonderful listener, is here because you want to hear me being human and hear me being vulnerable and hear my guests that are coming up talk about the stuff that is real for them in ways that are not super rehearsed or polished, but real. And that the people who want something different can go find something different. There are so many fucking different podcasts out there.

hearkening back to the comparison is the thief of joy episode, right? If I, it’s so easy as I’m starting this new adventure to be like, oh my God, there’s so many other things. How does this possibly matter? There are so many other podcasts. There are so many other blogs. There are so many other people. La la la la la.

But fuck it. Fuckity fuck it. You know, I’m doing this for you and for me, my friend. Not all the other peoples. You’re here. I appreciate you.

And my invitation to you as I wind up this third episode, my invitation is to, like, pick something this week, today. Like, pick something new. To treat yourself to and to really like look at it as a treat. And you can pick something that is a literal treat, right? Go to a new bakery, go to a new restaurant, eat something yummy or treat yourself to a new skill you wanna learn, a new… experience you want to have, a new way of being in relationship, a new way of setting boundaries, a new way of talking to yourself.

If you have a really mean inner critic, my invitation is to try on some new affirmations.

Do the uncomfortable and awkward and icky thing of looking yourself in the mirror and saying, I am loved. I am I am valued. And notice what shows up in your body.

Notice how that shifts how you feel.

Or if you wanna try on a really fun one, say, I am fucking awesome.

Because you are fucking awesome. You are. I don’t know which of you is listening to this, but you are fucking awesome. You bring beautiful and amazing things to this world, and I am glad you exist.

So there’s a new little affirmation for you, and if it feels really uncomfortable, tap into that and decide that that discomfort is fun. That it’s exciting. That it’s an opportunity to step into something big and new and cool for yourself.