Does avoiding discomfort keep you stuck?

This week we have been having some building work done to replace the (misleading named) sunroom at the back of our house. This has involved knocking down the existing structure (before it falls down) and replacing it with something sturdier and smaller. I know that in the long run this will have benefits (like no leaking roof) however, for now there is a lot of discomfort and disruption. At the beginning of the week when things were being knocked down and the skip had yet to arrive, I struggled to see how outside my backdoor would ever be anything but a building site again.

I know that it will, that this feeling is only temporary because we have professionals who we trust to do their jobs and hopefully by next week we will have all the benefits and I will be back working in my office with an improved view. So often when we make changes in our lives, it can feel like taking ourselves apart so we can build something new, sometimes without having seen the plans for the next structure. This is why we can be reluctant to make changes, even when we know they are the right things to do, because we are resistant to going through the messy part in the middle. We want to just skip to the end where everything is fixed and sometimes when we can’t we become stuck.

We might try and make some small cosmetic changes, maybe add on something extra, but when we haven’t fixed the structural issues, it is hard to maintain even these small changes. We need to let go of the things that are no longer serving us to make space for the things we want to have in ourselves and our lives. This can mean sitting with the discomfort, to look at the difficult truths, to know what is already there so that when we are ready to rebuild, it will last.

With this in mind, I have sat with the discomfort and as what was useful and needed was sorted from what could go in the skip things improved and order was restored. We now have foundations and after years of putting up with leaks and sticking doors I can begin to see how it will be when it is finished. I know there will still be more to do and that it will also mean working on other areas (the garden) but having lived with the discomfort of the initial dismantling and sorting now is now space for something else, something we choose.

What choices are you putting off to avoid disruption and discomfort?