Embrace Discomfort

“Deep down I felt I was doing something wrong… This can’t be all I’m supposed to be doing.” Thus Ashanti Branch, the incredible talent behind the #millionmasksmovement, shared how he made the slow-but-profound transition from high school math teacher to movement-maker. It came down to a sense of frustration that, not only “must things be different,” but specifically, “I have some bigger role to play.” And unbeknownst to him, that feeling birthed the foundational elements of The Ever Forward Club.

According to the BBC, “Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, director of the Creativity and Emotions lab at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, recently surveyed various ‘creatives’ – artists, designers and writers – and asked them to describe the emotions they feel during their work… Many lay people assume that innovation comes easily and feels ‘fun,’ she says. ‘But the number one thing these creatives mentioned was frustration.’”

As I listened to Ashanti’s truly phenomenal story (more details to come!), and the period of frustration that preceded his epiphany, I couldn’t help but remember *the letter Vincent Van Gough wrote his brother, Theo, shortly before his own breakthrough.  

“I would be very happy if you could somehow see in me something other than some sort of idler.

Because there are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast.

There’s the one who’s an idler through laziness and weakness of character, through the baseness of his nature; you may, if you think fit, take me for such a one. Then there’s the other idler, the idler truly despite himself, who is gnawed inwardly by a great desire for action, who does nothing because he finds it impossible to do anything since he’s imprisoned in something, so to speak, because he doesn’t have what he would need to be productive, because the inevitability of circumstances is reducing him to this point. Such a person doesn’t always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! I feel I have a reason for being! I know that I could be a quite different man! For what then could I be of use, for what could I serve! There’s something within me, so what is it! That’s an entirely different idler; you may, if you think fit, take me for such a one.”

It doesn’t always feel great to be in the space which precedes the breakthrough. At the d.school, we call this essential stage the “productive struggle.” But take heart: if you’ve got the feeling that there’s something more, that you’re “an entirely different kind of idler,” that “this can’t be all I’m supposed to be doing…” many have been there before. You might call it your preparation for a breakthrough.

*Many thanks to David Epstein for pointing to the fantastic Van Gough letter in his weekly Range Widely bulletin.

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