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Greetings!
Being Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
A note from Garrett, our newest physical therapist.
Starting a new job is equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking. Even when the big things line up, how we treat people and what the business stands for, it is still uncomfortable figuring out where you fit in a new culture.
Then Shawn asked me to write this newsletter, and a second wave of discomfort hit. It has been a while since I wrote one of these. Will it land with the people reading it? Will my new colleagues agree with it? I will admit I put it off for a few days, but it never left the back of my mind.
What kept surfacing was a book I read years ago, The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. His argument is simple: a life with no discomfort in it makes us weaker, physically and emotionally, and short, manageable doses of the hard stuff do the opposite. I was living a small version of that, and my whole approach as a PT is about bridging the gap between rehab and real training, so it felt like the right place to start.
Fear of change, two weeks in
As Shawn mentioned in a previous email, he was my patient about five years ago. We had plenty of table time to talk about the state of physical therapy, the good, the bad and the ugly, and we agreed on nearly all of it. Even so, as my first day got closer, I was nervous about how I would fit in and whether I would be any good here. Call it fear of change or imposter syndrome. It was uncomfortable.
Two weeks in, some of that is still there. But Shawn and Will have been incredibly welcoming, I am finding my groove in the flow of the clinic, and the discomfort is slowly turning into excitement. Which is exactly Easter's point: repeated, manageable discomfort is what builds resilience.
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