Learning to Sit With Discomfort
You Want to Fix It. Right Now.
Something feels off. A conversation with your chair didn't go the way you wanted. A colleague's feedback landed harder than expected. Your career feels stuck and you can't quite name why.
So you do what you've always done. You move. You strategize. You draft an email, update your CV, schedule a meeting, make a plan. Anything to stop the discomfort.
I get it. You're a physician. You're trained to assess and intervene. Sitting still when something hurts feels like negligence.
But Not Everything Needs an Immediate Intervention
Here's what I've learned coaching faculty in academic medicine: the fastest path to the wrong decision is refusing to be uncomfortable for more than five minutes.
That urge to fix it now — it's not wisdom. It's a coping mechanism. And it works beautifully in clinical settings where speed saves lives. But your career isn't a code blue. Most of the time, the situation can wait. You just can't stand the feeling of not acting.
What Discomfort Is Actually Telling You
When something feels uncomfortable, your brain flags it as a problem to solve. But discomfort isn't always a problem. Sometimes it's information.
It might be telling you that a belief you hold about yourself is being challenged. That a pattern you've relied on isn't working anymore. That you're on the edge of something new and your nervous system doesn't like edges.
When you rush to fix the feeling, you skip the part where you actually understand it. And then you end up solving the wrong problem.
The Practice Is Simple. Not Easy.
Next time something feels uncomfortable — a piece of feedback, a stalled project, a decision you can't make — try this. Do nothing. Not forever. Just for longer than your instinct says you should.
Sit with it for a day. A few days. Let it breathe. Notice what shifts when you stop trying to make the feeling go away. Often, clarity shows up on its own. The right response becomes obvious once you stop forcing one.
This Is the Work
Every physician I coach hits this moment. The one where they realize that growth doesn't feel like progress. It feels like sitting in a room with something they'd rather not look at.
That's not a sign you're failing. That's the work doing what it's supposed to do.
If you're in one of those uncomfortable stretches right now and wondering what to do with it, I'm happy to talk it through. Sometimes the best next step is just having someone to sit with it alongside you.
