This small aphorism, seemingly contradictory and nonsensical, has stuck with me since the first time I heard it, more than 20 years ago. I like that it’s contradictory and that it makes you stop in your thoughts, retrace your steps, and take a more considered view of what is being posited. This simple statement is actually asking you something. You miss the question if you simply nod your head in response to this lulling statement. Increasingly, life seems to ask that each moment be filled to capacity…and beyond. The density of our lives is not only how many things we can cram into the time we’ve been given, it’s also how we experience those things. What did that blueberry you had for breakfast really taste like ? What was it like on your tongue, in your mouth ? Do you think about these sorts of things, or do you eat what’s in front of you without too much consideration ?

Shifting your attention towards the quality of your experience and what you do is to take a step on the longest path and will yield immediate and tangible results. You and your work benefit by deliberate action and focus.

I’m nearly at the end of my post for the evening and I realize that I hadn’t even considered the question of destination. Fastest way, longest way, shortest way, no matter…Where the hell are we headed, anyway ?

Everybody’s got ‘em. Whether it’s something physical that is a minor annoyance or an emotional sensation that makes you feel as though you want to crawl out of your skin, we all feel something we’d like to get rid of and out of our lives for good. While it’s true that no one wants to feel bad, it might just be the case that our symptoms are trying tell us something that we’ve ignored elsewhere. For example, a person might experience extreme anxiety when faced with going to a workplace that has become gradually more hostile over the past months or years. She may not have considered the possibility that the workplace is no longer a healthy or viable one for her and that the time has come to make a change.

Here the symptoms, anxiety, fear, ruminations, among others, are not merely a person’s reactions to a particular environment, but are also important clues about the environment itself. We’ve all heard the story about the frog who won’t (or can’t) get out of a pot of water whose temperature is gradually increased to the boiling point. Whether or not the facts of this tale are true, the important piece to take away is that the frog finds a way to be oblivious to negative changes in it’s environment. Human beings have a similar capacity, though even more deeply refined through our language and the stories we tell ourselves about situations. “It’s not that bad…I’m sure it will get better soon…There must be some reason for all this…”

Symptoms cut through this barrier of language and make real the very things we find so easy to gloss over. They are like the stone in our shoe shouting “Hey ! You up there ! I’m the stone in you’re shoe….telling you exactly that. I’m here.”

Now that you know, you have a choice.

Some time ago, I was speaking with a woman who was telling me about the problems she had been having at work with a band of difficult co-workers and a particularly virulent supervisor. She mentioned that she had been off work for several months and could not imagine returning, and in the next breath, explained that she was unable to work due to problems she had with concentration and focus. As she detailed the months of slights, disrespects, harassments and her responses to each and every one of them, I came to understand that there was nothing at all wrong with this woman’s ability to concentrate and focus, and, in fact, both her long as well as term memory were perfectly functional and intact. When I mentioned to her my observation that there seemed nothing wrong with her concentration, she countered with specific details of an incident 6 months earlier where a co-worker had spoken to her in a particularly harsh manner and how that had resulted in poor work performance because she could not concentrate.

“You remember every detail of a brief conversation that occurred over 5 months ago, if that’s not concentration and focus, I don’t know what is,” I said to her. Reluctantly, she admitted that she had been spending a lot of time thinking about the workplace to which she would not be returning.

I paused, considered her situation for a moment, then asked, “What do you think you could accomplish for yourself if you directed your formidable concentration resources towards what you want in your life rather than the pain you’ve finished with and rejected?

I was struck by an idea this evening as I answered a rare knock to my door. Namely, that if you’re feeling stuck in your life there are probably areas in your life where there isn’t much movement. Sounds obvious, right? You might point out the many daily activities you do as evidence of your movement, the rituals of daily life I’ll call them. Yet we absolutely take these small rituals for granted, thinking of them as movement simply because we, as human beings, are animated. For example, I might get in my car every morning and drive to work, stopping along the way to buy a paper at the newsstand and a coffee and pastry at the cafe. I’ve created a routine for my experience, something dependable and smooth. I might even tell myself that I count on the experience as an important touchstone of my day.

And it is exactly that. Stone.

When you want to unstick yourself in the larger arenas of your life, the first place to look is to the smallest, simplest detail. Make the small changes and the larger ones will follow. If you drive to work, change your route, even by a block or two. Take a different exit on the highway. Pay attention to the movements and choices that you make on a minute by minute basis, all the things that you take for granted. When you notice what they are, you can vary them, you can expand the level of choice you have in all the things you do. Habit can be comforting and it can be the very glue that is keeping you stuck to the emotional experience you’d so much like to change.

Imagine that you’re sitting in a chair or on a couch and you begin to feel uncomfortable. There might be a stitch in your side or a cramp in your leg or a twitch in your eye. What do you do? If you’re like most people, you shift position, you move to try to achieve something a bit more satisfying and comfortable. Another way of looking at it is that you move to avoid the discomfort you experience in the moment. And, again, if you’re like most people, you don’t give any of this a bit of thought. You just move. And, for a moment or several, you feel more comfortable. Perhaps you experience a palpable sense of relief or perhaps you simply return to a “normal” state of being.

What’s happened to the discomfort? Has it truly gone away, or has it just hidden behind the momentary absence of discomfort that you’re now experiencing as comfort? Did you notice that feeling or simply try to rid yourself of the uncomfortable feeling that, for the immediate moment, took all of your focus and attention?

Such is the nature of our experience, whether sitting in a chair, a comfortable couch or living inside our bodies, skins and beings.

I would encourage you, the next time you experience something that brings a sensation of discomfort, to pay close attention to it. Watch it with your mind’s eye as the feeling and experience changes and moves around your body. Take just one or two minutes to pay attention before shifting position and getting comfortable again.

Your discomfort is telling you something important.