4. Stop Letting Your Discomfort Stop You from Writing: N.E.S.T. Framework

Are you ready to break free from the chains of discomfort that are holding you back from becoming the writer you were meant to be? Can you imagine the joy of creating a consistent writing habit and bringing your book to life? This episode is all about facing discomfort head-on and using it as a catalyst for growth. We share insights on how to dodge the trap of artificial comfort and explore the benefits of embracing discomfort. You'll also learn how fear of failure and criticism could be hindering your progress and how to overcome these barriers.

Let's also dive into the NEST framework, which is a powerful tool for using discomfort as a stepping stone to becoming the writer you aspire to be. Discover how to recognize the urge to divert from your writing task, let it envelop you without acting on it, and sift through the data to understand what's happening in your brain. Finally, we talk about the transformational process to align your life with your true desires using this data.

This episode is packed with valuable insights and tips that will challenge your mindset and transform your writing journey. Don't miss out!

Gem of the Week:
Siri, Who Am I?   by Sam Tschida - a witty rom-com about Mia who wakes up with amnesia and has to play detective using only her iPhone and Instagram to rediscover who she truly is.

https://www.instagram.com/therealsamtschida/

Take the QUIZ! Discover how to use your mom superpower to reach your writing goals.

Ready to take back your time and add hours to the day so you can finally manage it all? Then you have to check out the FREE Time Audit Guide. You'll get coaching, worksheets, and tips on running your first time audit so that you can finally write your book without burning out. It's absolutely free, and it's my way of supporting and empowering YOU!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Do you stop yourself from writing when it gets tough, when you're stuck, when you don't know what to write? Do you set aside time to write but then inexplicably find yourself cleaning the house, folding the laundry, checking your work emails or scrolling endlessly and mindlessly on social media instead of actually writing? Do you shy away from sharing your work with anybody or avoid feedback or self-critique of your work? If any of these questions resonate with you, then you're going to love this episode. Today we're covering all the ways in which our discomfort stops us and how we can overcome it. That way, you can become the writer you were always meant to be. Welcome to Mom Writes First, the podcast that helps the busy, overwhelmed mom create a 10-minute a day writing habit so that she can finally write, publish and sell her first book. Hey, welcome to all my mom writers out there. I'm so glad that you're here.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Today. We're having a tough and honest conversation about discomfort, what it is, why it's useful, how to sit with it and even how to really lean into it so that we can finally write that book. This is one of my absolutely most favorite topics because it's so easy to get those big results by focusing on the discomfort and how you can move through it. Before we go any further, though, I have to tell you about a little surprise at the end of this podcast, where I'll share with you a book from a friend of mine, a dear friend. Please stay on all the way to the end so that you don't miss what could be your next favorite read.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Alright, let's talk about discomfort. Let me start by acknowledging that I'm always hesitant to bring up this topic with folks, because, let's be honest, who wants to be uncomfortable? Not only do we not want to be uncomfortable, but we also don't want to talk about what it feels like to be uncomfortable or how we can then move past that discomfort. Sometimes, when I teach on this topic, I hear from folks that they initially feel triggered, and they argue with me about the importance of trusting how they're feeling and avoiding the pain of that discomfort. Now, look, this is a hard topic for folks to wrap their brains around and, honestly, in our current larger social paradigm, this is a super controversial topic, because I don't think that we really think that we should ever have to bear the burden of being uncomfortable. Here is what I do know, though your discomfort is coming. One way or the other, it's going to be there. The blessing is that you get to pick what that discomfort is. You're at choice. So you can either have the discomfort of getting to the end of this year, the end of the next decade or the end of your life and never having written that book that's on your heart, or you can have the discomfort right now of overcoming all the noise inside and outside of you, all of the objections, all of the obstacles, and sitting down and actually writing that book, doing what it takes.

Speaker 1: 3:49

I know that this isn't easy and I'm not making light of it. Being uncomfortable does not feel good. A lot of us have been taught to avoid all negative emotion and to hide and buffer from it, to push it away, to repress it. When I work with my coaching clients, we spend a significant amount of our early time together learning to help them to stop avoiding anything uncomfortable and this is not a dig on them. In our society and in our culture we don't have a lot of training or practice around being uncomfortable aside from avoiding that feeling of discomfort, and what I want to do today on this podcast is really make the case for discomfort, but not just any discomfort, a special kind of discomfort, the kind of discomfort that's going to bring you into alignment with who you actually want to become. I like to think of this as useful discomfort. I want you to familiarize yourself with your discomfort, learn to allow it, let it envelop you, so that you can then become the writer that you want to be.

Speaker 1: 4:59

When I talk to my clients about the importance of accepting discomfort and allowing it, sitting with it, even inviting it into that space, I often get a raised eyebrow. And that's because we're taught to look for comfort, we're hardwired for it, and so many of the people around us especially the people who love us the most they push comfort upon us, and the result is that we end up being way too comfortable. We have an abundance of artificial comfort available to us, and by artificial comfort I mean the comfort that comes with overeating, over drinking, over working, over exercising, over shopping, even over cleaning All that comfort that's available to us. It's a trap. Here is how I see it show up in my clients' lives, and here's what the impact is.

Speaker 1: 5:56

They're not able to sit and make time to write because they can't handle their own self-judgment about their writing. They're unable to persevere through writer's black because of the discomfort that comes with not knowing what to write next or even how to actually write in that moment. They're too afraid to share their work with the world. They don't call themselves a writer, a poet, a storyteller, a blogger, because of how they think others are going to react. And ultimately, that fear is about their own inability to deal with or handle their negative feelings about that person's reaction. It's about their discomfort. Similarly, they avoid making any changes that they would need to make in their life to make their writing a priority, because they're afraid of what it will mean for them, their family, their sense of identity and their future. And why do they have those feelings? Again, it's because they don't think that, whatever happens, they're going to be able to handle it and they want to avoid that discomfort.

Speaker 1: 7:10

They have a fear of failing and not being a successful writer and at the same time, they also have this fear of succeeding, because what will it mean then for them and how will people look at them? They're closed off to any kind of feedback or criticism around their writing. They dodge questions about their writing and hear tragically, they even ghost people who've helped them with their writing, who've edited their work or who even they've just shared their work with. A lot of times I notice that this comes from the idea that the other person is going to somehow judge their work or judge their progress on the work. But what is really happening is that they the author themselves are judging the work, they're judging their progress and they're projecting that onto that other person. So then they ghost them because they don't want to have to deal with their own thoughts and feelings. So if ghosting is kind of like your MO, I urge you to really check in on that and look at it a little bit closer, make some time and space to explore it.

Speaker 1: 8:16

Ghosting someone is very rarely the power move that we sometimes think that it is. More often, it's a signal to really work on that self-trust and that self-confidence that comes with being able to handle uncomfortable things. When we find ourselves in a place where we're really avoiding discomfort, the only way through it that I've found is to allow the discomfort and then process it and move through it and transform it. Now I'm going to give you an acronym and a system for doing this, something that's worked really well for me. But before that I do that, a caveat, because if you have a situation that you're dealing with that is particularly traumatic, then it would not be appropriate for you to be trying to work through this on your own. You should be getting professional help, and by that I mean a licensed therapist, a licensed counselor, a social worker of some kind, somebody who has the training and the qualifications and the licensure to help you to work through that effectively.

Speaker 1: 9:22

When I'm talking today about discomfort, it's important that you know that I'm coming at it from the place of those everyday type of discomforts the fear of judgment, then see towards perfectionism, the fear that we are not somehow good enough or worthy. We're talking about those kinds of discomfort. We're not talking about trauma. Okay, there's definitely a difference, and it's important, as we do this work, that you have the awareness within yourself to know the difference and recognize the difference within yourself. So, again, what I'm about to give you today is something that you can work through those ordinary type of discomfort, those things that are really just part of the human condition that we all deal with.

Speaker 1: 10:06

And here is how you do it. The acronym is called NEST. This is a tool that I use when I am noticing that those feelings of self-judgment, unworthiness, not being good enough, my perfectionism tendencies, my fear about being judged by others, my concerns about not being good enough in a certain space come up. So here's how it works. Nest stands for notice, envelop, sift and transform. Now what's going to happen is that you are going to find yourself in a situation where some of those uncomfortable feelings come up. Let's think about what that could look like. Let's say that you go to sit down and you've set aside some time. You go to sit down and write and all of a sudden, as you're about to write or maybe you've been writing for a little bit all of a sudden you get this urge to do something else, really anything else, but write, and your brain is coming up with a lot of ideas and there's a lot of urgency and noise behind it, really telling you hey, you know what, you should stop writing right now and you should go do this other thing.

Speaker 1: 11:18

It's important that you learn how to notice those urges, those thoughts, when they come up, because discomfort is not necessarily going to be recognizable as discomfort. It doesn't announce itself and stand up and be like hey, I'm discomfort, I'm here to get in the way of all of your hopes and dreams. No, it's much more sneakier. And so it shows up as this urge to do something else and urge to eat, to snack, to have a glass of wine, to go for a walk, to watch TV, to take care of the dog, to make a list that's a big one with me To do the laundry, to check your email, whatever. So when that urge comes up, you have to hit pause, you have to learn to sit with it, and that's really where the second piece comes up. So first you notice that urge and then you allow it to really envelop you.

Speaker 1: 12:14

This isn't about resisting or white-knuckling our way through the urge. It's more like just allowing it to be there and not acting upon it. And as you allow it to really envelop you without resisting it, it might get louder or it may get quieter, it may turn into something totally new. Instead of wanting to check your email, all of a sudden you think, hey, I really need to call my mom. I haven't called my mom for a while, I haven't chatted with her. I really should go do that. And that's a sign that your brain is really looking for an urge to distract you. That's going to feel more urgent to you. But again, you're not going to take that bait. You're going to just allow all those urges in their various forms to continue to envelop you. And as you do that, you're then going to notice that one of two things is going to happen. The urge is either going to dissolve and you're going to be able to carry on writing, or the urge is going to continue to be there. It's continued to be present. And if that happens, that's when you begin to sift.

Speaker 1: 13:24

The third part of nest is sifting, and when we're sifting, we're looking for data. We're noticing what's coming up in our body, where that discomfort or tightness or feelings are happening within our body. For me, it's often in my shoulders, sometimes it's in my eyes. I feel like I have to rub my eyes. I notice, for a lot of folks, discomfort comes up in their neck or in their stomach. You might also notice hey, I'm really fidgety right now, or I feel heavy and stuck. However you're feeling physically, be gentle with yourself, just like you would with a friend. Talk to yourself nicely and then just keep noticing what is behind that feeling of urgency, that feeling of needing to do something else. What thoughts are coming up. You can ask yourself questions like hey, what's the concern here. What's the problem? What are you afraid of? And all of these questions are way to continue sifting through the data to try to understand what is really going on in your brain.

Speaker 1: 14:33

As you collect that data, you're going to start to notice patterns, and that's where the transform part of nest comes in. You take that data and you use it to transform by moving through the discomfort and growing from it. In this way, discomfort is really like a signal pointing you towards where you need to go, pointing you to what you need to examine in order to continue down that path of becoming the writer that you were always meant to be. And that, my friends, is the nest framework for growing and moving past your discomfort, so it doesn't stop you, so it doesn't derail you anymore and you can actually grow from it, so that you can then go on to be that writer that you've always meant to be.

Speaker 1: 15:25

I know that this isn't easy. I know that this work is hard. I also know that every single thing that you want is on the other side of your discomfort. One of my coaches once told me I could learn to deal with a life that I hate or I could create a life that I love. I was going to be uncomfortable at some point along the way. Either way, you can either continue to deal with a life where you are not a writer, where you don't write the books, the stories, the poems, where you have all those ideas swirling around your head and you never, ever give voice or life to them and you can hold all of that discomfort that comes with it, or you can get down and dirty and write and you can then experience that discomfort instead. That's the Nest framework for moving through discomfort, for really leaning into it and using it to transform and create a life that's aligned with who you really want to be.

Speaker 1: 16:40

But don't go anywhere yet, because I am all excited to bring you a new segment in this podcast, which is called the weekly gem. This week's gem of the week is Sam Cheetah's Siri who Am? I? Imagine what you would do if one day you woke up and you suddenly had absolutely no idea who you were. All you had to go off was your iPhone and your Instagram account. That's the premise of this absolutely witty, hilarious, slightly sacterical, fun rom-com where the main character, mia, emerges from an accident with amnesia. This particular book is all the more special to me because Sam and I went to law school together. She was seriously one of the highlights of my world during that time.

Speaker 1: 17:31

I have closely followed her work as an author over the last few years, and with good reason, because Sam is hilarious. She has this way of noticing things that the rest of us would miss and then describing them in the most witty and fabulous way, and that has to be, I'm sure, why she is such a wonderful writer. This is an absolutely adorable read by a wonderful human and a very fun, hilarious author. I hope you'll check it out. It's on all of us to empower each other in this life and support one another, and so let's get out there and send some love Sam's way. The link and Sam's socials are going to be in the show notes. I will also post it over on my social media, at momwritesfirst on Instagram. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Now get out there and write.