We live in a society where we're taught to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We're taught that happiness is the most important thing in life and that feelings of discomfort (such as sadness and anger) are things to avoid. When we're taught that being uncomfortable is bad, instead of learning to sit with our feelings of discomfort, accept them & find strategies to work through them, it's no wonder that the average child today reports having more anxiety than psych ward patients did in the 1950's!
As parents and teachers, we try to shield our young people from having to face unnecessary challenges, hoping that their lives will be easier than ours when we were their age. What many of us forget is that when we take responsibility for experiences they are allowed to have, we also steal their opportunity to grow from the same types of experiences which forged us into who we are.
Sometimes, paving a path that has as few challenges as possible actually creates an effect opposite of that which we had intended, and studies in self-efficacy show that children aged 12-17 begin to experience depression when they start to realize that their successes were the result of lax standards instead of hard work and grit.
I'm a big believer in the adage which says "from pain, comes growth." Let's face it; learning is hard. It can be frustrating, demoralizing, and uncomfortable. Learning is the business of wisdom gleaned from making mistakes. After all, what have we ever learned from doing something right the first time?
A teacher's job is to push boundaries so that it allows for growth to happen, and we love talking about the "zone of proximal development" which is that sweet spot between challenges that are boring and those that are paralyzing. It's our job to tailor each challenge to each individual student so that they find the work energizing and are ultimately able to experience that incredible feeling of satisfaction that comes from a "job well done."
But we forget that the very best teacher we will ever have is ourselves, and it's imperative that each of us learns to become friends with our feelings of discomfort and to understand that growth is waiting for us on the other side. We must learn that knowledge and experience are born from the messiness of making mistakes, and we must become masters at identifying our own "zones of proximal development" so that we can look forward to hard work and find confidence in success that is hard-won.