The Real Reason We Get Stuck

July 15th, 2026

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I took Spanish all through high school. AP Spanish too. On paper, I should have been fluent. So when I landed in Valencia, fresh off a flight, hungry, ready to order tapas like a local, I opened my mouth and nothing useful came out.

I could conjugate verbs on a test. I could not ask for a plate of patatas bravas without pointing at the menu like a tourist.

It embarrassed me more than I expected. I had put in the hours. I had the grades to prove it. But none of that prepared me for an actual conversation with an actual person who wasn't going to slow down or wait for me to get it right.

When I got back, I made a decision that felt small at the time but changed everything. Instead of another course or another app, I asked my babysitter, who's a native Spanish speaker, if we could just talk. In Spanish. About nothing in particular. My day, her day, whatever came up.

It was awkward for weeks. I mixed up tenses. I forgot basic words mid-sentence. I said things that probably didn't make sense. But two months in, I was holding real conversations. More progress in eight weeks of uncomfortable talking than in ten years of comfortable studying.

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The Real Reason We Get Stuck

Here's something I think about a lot. One of the biggest problems we face in modern life isn't that we're lazy or unmotivated. It's that we've engineered discomfort out of almost everything.

Uber Eats delivers dinner so we never have to cook when we're tired. Laundry services wash, dry, and fold our clothes so we never touch a hamper. Our thermostats hold the exact same 22C degrees year round, so the only time most of us choose to feel hot is when we voluntarily walk into a Bikram yoga class and pay for the privilege.

None of that is bad on its own. But it means comfort has become the default setting of our lives, and anything outside that setting starts to feel like something to avoid rather than something to move through.

That's exactly what happened to me with Spanish. I chose ten years of comfortable studying over two months of uncomfortable talking, and the comfortable choice was the one that actually held me back.

I came across this idea in Adam Grant's book Hidden Potential, and it explained exactly what happened to me in a way I wish I'd understood years earlier. Grant argues that the people who reach their full potential aren't the ones born with some rare gift. They're the ones who got good at doing the uncomfortable thing repeatedly, long before they felt ready.

He breaks that discomfort into three specific kinds. I recognized all three from my own Spanish stumbling. See if you can spot them below for you as well.

1. The discomfort of making mistakes

Most of us wait until we think we'll get something right before we try it in front of other people. I did this with Spanish for a decade. I studied with index cards (remember those?!) and memorized words in Duolingo, instead of speaking because speaking meant risking a mistake someone could actually hear.

But you can't learn a language, or anything else, by staying in the part where you already know the answer. My babysitter probably heard me botch a dozen sentences in our first conversation alone. She thought I was "funny" but I just felt embarrassed. That was the actual practice. The mistakes were the way, not the obstacle.

Takeaway: If you're waiting to feel ready before you try the thing, you're avoiding the exact step that gets you ready.

2. The discomfort of facing your flaws

There's a specific kind of pride that comes from a good grade as a kid. Growing up in a traditional family where your Asian Mom tells everyone when you get As, I had that pride with my AP Spanish score, and it worked against me. It let me believe I was further along than I was, which made the gap even harder to face once I stood in that restaurant unable to speak.

Adam points out that chasing a flawless performance keeps you from improving the parts that actually matter. I didn't need perfect grammar. I needed to be willing to sound a little foolish long enough to get better. Letting go of the need to sound polished was the part that actually moved me forward.

Takeaway: Progress usually requires looking worse before you look better. Protecting your image gets in the way of that progress.

3. The discomfort of being proven wrong

The hardest part wasn't the vocabulary. It was accepting that a decade of classroom success hadn't prepared me the way I assumed it had. The pain of omitting that I was wrong and lost all of that time. That's a strange thing to sit with, realizing that something you were confident about wasn't quite true.

But that's exactly the moment Adam says matters most. The people who grow are the ones willing to find out they were wrong about their own ability, and then do something about it instead of defending the old belief.

Takeaway: Being wrong about where you stand isn't a failure. And only you can get that by actually testing yourself.

How this shows up for me in life

I think about this every time I hesitate before doing something new in my business. A business idea I'm not sure will land. A conversation with a client I'd rather avoid. A skill I keep meaning to build but keep "preparing" for instead.

The pattern is always the same. Comfort feels like progress because it feels productive. But it's often just a disguised way of avoiding the one thing that would actually move you forward.

This idea about discomfort isn't just personal for me. It's actually the thing I see most often inside companies too. When I work with founders and professionals on AI training through Modern Skill AI, the biggest barrier is rarely a lack of tools or lack of intelligence. It's comfort. People default to the workflows they already know because trying a new way of working, even a better one, means feeling a little incompetent again for a while.

So where are you preparing instead of practicing?

Is there something you've been studying, researching, or planning that you could just start doing badly instead? What would it look like to have your own version of that awkward discomfort?

I'd love to hear what comes to mind. Just hit reply, I read every single one (I might get back to you later than I'd like given the amount of lovely readers on this email newsletter but I will get back to you!).

To your growth,

Laurie 🙌

​6 Ideas That Will Accelerate Your Career and Life​

If this newsletter got you thinking about where else you've been avoiding the uncomfortable step, I made a video sharing six lessons I've learned that have made the biggest difference in my own career and life, the kind of things I wish someone had told me earlier.

You can watch the full video here.

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