Pushing Past Discomfort to Learn

 

This is a segment inspired by Fred Shoemaker’s book “Extraordinary Golf” that Gil and Vicki used at a coach’s clinic in Nebraska about coaching kids.

 

One of the things you have to get kids to overcome is fear. They’re all afraid to screw up because they’re intimidated by their peers.

The coach actually has to be an igniter. The coach has to be an ignition source for them to drop down their fears and inhibitions and try something they’ve never tried. You get those kids to keep trying it, and all of a sudden when it happens all you do is just shut up, feed them bullets and encourage them and be excited and be a cheerleader.

After about 13 or 14 shots, the kid has a new technique or a new way to do things, and then their brain submits that circuit so quickly.

Fear is not a set of physical sensations. It’s the interpretation we make of those sensations. And because we make the interpretation of the sensation, we can change it.

We live in a culture of comfort. We don’t throw away old tennis shoes. We don’t recover our favorite chair in front of the TV. We don’t want to try a new salad dressing, but we want to keep things comfortable. We want to avoid discomfort, whether it’s physiological or emotional. That affects us all.

Emotional discomfort can create fear. We want to be comfortable. This brings about complacency. And the real paradox about all of this is the only constant in the universe that we live in is change. Learning requires a willingness to explore and take risks. And any time you’re in a learning situation there will be an initial feeling of discomfort and confusion.

Now, for some of you, the first time we asked you to be in the breakpoint early there was not just an initial feeling; but there was an extremely uncomfortable feeling about being in the breakpoint early. Some of you had a very uncomfortable feeling about choosing and committing to a breakpoint.

So often we look at discomfort or confusion as an undesirable thing. But if you’ll step back from that a little bit and actually look at it, you’ll find that the best things in life always make us feel a little uncomfortable at first: a new relationship, a new job, shotgunning in general, not having enough money in the checkbook, realizing that some other S.O.B. has got your credit card number.

We all want to be comfortable, and we’ll spend great amounts of money on insurance to keep us from being uncomfortable. Some of the best things in life always make us feel uncomfortable at first.

Fear limits our possibilities when we label these sensations as fearful and undesirable. When we look at discomfort as undesirable, that’s a product of fear, and that fear limits our possibilities; but fear is a reaction.

We have always tried to help our shooters recognize fear and not be stopped by it; and if you can help somebody understand how debilitating fear is and how that it absolutely robs you of your ability to push your potential if you can help them learn something like that through a game called sporting clays or through learning to be a public speaker (whatever it is) you can give a personal life lesson that will create many successes for them.

 

This is an excerpt from the February 2011 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.