TAKE THE STAIRS by Ethan Sawyer

TAKE THE STAIRS

Becoming more comfortable through discomfort

At peak hours before classes, the Dubinsky lobby collects a crowd around the elevators. A gathering of mostly fit, healthy, youthful students shift their feet, minutes passing while faint creaks and dings indicate the erratic vertical oscillation of the elevators. Half of these people are waiting to exit at the 3rd floor.

A recurring issue I’ve noticed among myself and fellow students is our propensity to fall into bubbles of concentrated comfort. As learners within a highly specialized school, it’s an understandable inevitability. Most of us came here seeking specifics, to achieve exceptionalism in an extremely narrow field of study that we’ve already shown a natural talent for. However, the mindset that this environment nurtures has side effects. Many of us stick to what we know, we actively avoid failure, and we do everything in our power to avoid joining the ideological minority again. It drives us to succeed, yes, but it also seems to drive us toward closing ourselves off from the unavoidable complexity of the world. It’s also a mindset that actively decays our most valuable asset: our creativity.

So how do we accept the chaos of the world and avoid losing our unconventional minds? First, we must increase our cognitive reserve.

Cognitive Reserve, or CR, is a fancy neurology term, but the concept isn’t hard to understand. Imagine two cities. One has a single road running through it, and the other has a million roads. Now imagine a single road getting shut down for construction in both cities. For the single road city, this shit’s a disaster, where else are cars gonna go, they only have one road?!? In the million road city, it isn’t as much of an issue, there are a million-minus-one roads that can still be taken. Having a low CR means your brain is like the single road city. When your thoughts get overwhelmed, the only option is to sit down and cry. Having a high CR means your brain is like the million roads city. A bad grade on an exam doesn’t cause you to hide away and binge Emily in Paris for the fifth time this month, instead it pushes you to find an alternate path toward success. The new neural connections provided by a high CR also expand your creative potential. However, obtaining a high CR comes with a catch.

WANNA INCREASE YOUR CR? MAKE YOURSELF UNCOMFORTABLE!

It sucks, but your ultra-conservative uncle typing to the void of his Facebook page is right about participation trophies. A life without challenge and failure has been scientifically proven to impair your ability to resist chaos and think outside the box. New and difficult experiences are like food to the brain, and just like a stomach, if you don’t feed it, it’ll shrivel. Also similar to a stomach, the types of experiences matter. A chicken breast marinated in a balsamic mint reduction and grilled will be much more beneficial than french fries soaked in a bucket of coke. For the brain, the more uncomfortable the experience, the more streets your mental city builds.

On the luckier side, the challenging experiences you endure don’t have to be life-altering to have an effect. As explained by fear expert Rhonda Britten, when you challenge yourself, you aren’t removing yourself from your comfort zone, you’re actually expanding it, and like all good expansionary methods, it’s best to take things slow. Britten breaks the process of expanding your comfort zone into three steps: Stretch, Risk, and Die.

Stretching is for actions you know you can do, but that you find challenging.

Risking is for actions that are new, but build upon things you can already do.

Dying is for actions completely disconnected from who you see yourself as.

As you take on these challenges, your ability to endure the discomfort of newness begins to expand, and soon your comfort zone will be large enough to take on the “Die” category. But remember…go slow. As discovered by researchers from York University in 1908, new experiences cause initial anxiety that boosts performance ability, but when too much uncertainty is added to the mix, a panic zone is reached and we start ranting about sun people while cuddling a 6-foot teddy bear.

As we enter a new phase of the pandemic, many of you will struggle to readapt to a life of…well, the average in-person college student struggles. Since returning to campus, I repeatedly hear friends and classmates not only struggling to continue their education, but also struggling to remember any previous education that wasn’t contained within their narrowed comfort zones. I myself didn’t understand how addicted I was to a limited form of comfort until I went on a 35-hour video game binge that resulted in a panic attack at work while serving martinis to an old man and his prostitute. Since then, I’ve gotten back to a consistent gym schedule (stretch), I learned a new music production software (risk), and most challenging of all, I’ve been ditching the Dubinsky elevator and taking the stairs, even to the 7th or 8th floor…sometimes.

I explain my struggles not to gain sympathy, but to help you understand that I’ve been in the trenches alongside you, and I’m slowly but successfully making my way back home. Expanding your comfort zone isn’t the only way to help pandemic recovery, but it’s been the most effective thing so far for me, and I can’t wait to have other people join me in bucking the elevator, braving the thigh-pounding exhilaration of feet on stairs, and discovering new branches of creativity you never thought possible.

graphic by Donna Hellberg