The Stoics did a lot of counter-intuitive things to ensure they lived their best, most virtuous lives. One of them was practicing voluntary discomfort when their lives were good in order to prepare for the times in which the Wheel of Fortune would inevitably turn on them. This post explains what this exercise in Stoicism is all about, how you can practice it and why you’ll become a mentally tougher version of yourself by doing so.

What Is the Meaning of “Voluntary Discomfort”?

We all know what discomfort means and we’re all familiar with how it feels. Think of a time when it started to rain suddenly and you didn’t have an umbrella, when your crush rejected your proposal to go out together or when you had to give a presentation in front of a big crowd despite having stage fright. While the experience might not have been pleasant, you survived it.

However, I’m willing to bet that given the chance, you’d do everything you could to avoid discomfort in the future. I can’t blame you, but you should know that Stoicism teaches us that there is value in being uncomfortable. So much so that they opted for self-inflicted discomfort as a tool to toughen themselves both physically and mentally. (Yes, that’s exactly like you’re imagining: intentionally choosing cold showers over warm bubble baths, a hard floor over a cozy bed and a simple meal over a fancy gourmet dinner.) 

Subjecting yourself to this exercise is called practicing voluntary discomfort and its merits go way beyond building resilience (although that is in itself no small feat!). It can help you be happier, more successful and less anxious. Let’s find out why you should and how you could start incorporating this Stoic technique into your life - in just 3 simple steps.

What are some examples of voluntary discomfort? 

Swimming in a frozen lake, doing intermittent fasting, not turning on the air conditioning when it’s hot outside are all examples of practicing voluntary discomfort. 

For the exercise to work, it doesn’t have to feature physical discomfort. Donating the money you would have spent on that new gadget to charity instead is also a good example. So is any instance in which you give up something meaningful to you for a short period of time so that you better understand what it would be like to live without it.

Why Should You Practice Voluntary Discomfort?

Consider the following quote:

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs maneuvers, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.” – Seneca

Seneca reveals the essence of the exercise: to prepare yourself for a crisis before it appears. Practicing voluntary discomfort can help you level up in life in numerous ways; it will teach you how to worry less, enjoy your life more and stop being afraid of negative emotions. It seems like a small price to pay when you consider the reward, doesn’t it? Yet I sense that you’re not yet convinced that such tiny changes can lead to such a huge impact, so let me explain the connection between the Stoic exercise and each benefit one by one. 

1. Practicing Voluntary Discomfort to Become More Resilient & to Learn to Worry Less

Biologists have discovered a process called hormesis, in which an organism (or a cell) exposed to a very small dose of a toxin can trigger an immune response that allows it to become resilient to that particular substance, even when encountered later in larger doses. While not yet proven scientifically, this knowledge was around in Ancient Rome too, as is obvious from the story of Agrippina. 

Remember Nero, the 5th Roman Emperor? Tall, dark and… uh… murderous? Agrippina the Younger was his mother, who, after a series of unfortunate events, started to fear that she too would become one of his victims. Suspecting that she would be poisoned, she started to drink small amounts of poison daily, in order to fortify herself against it, just in case. (You can find the whole story here, if you’re curious.) It turns out that Nero DID attempt to get rid of her by poisoning her dinner. Much to his surprise though, his mother survived. Long live hormesis! 

You can think of practicing voluntary discomfort as a way of triggering hormesis for your spirit. You’re exposing yourself to a tolerable level of adversity, but your mind will build up hefty defenses to deal with future misfortune. Having experienced some uncomfortable things will also expose them for what they are: irritating, but ultimately surmountable obstacles. This will allow you to worry less about bad things happening, since you’ll know you have it in you to deal with them, should they arise.

Let’s be real - if it works for ACTUAL poison - you think it won’t work for you to strengthen your resilience muscle? Get over yourself, you’re not that special that the tried and true Ancient exercises won’t work for you.

2. Practicing Voluntary Discomfort to Get Off the Hedonic Treadmill

The hedonic treadmill is a fancy name for an age-old phenomenon: the fact that even the most coveted things we have lose their appeal after we’ve had them for long enough and push us into wanting ever more. Remember how happy you were to get your first car as a teenager? Even if it was a ratty hand-me-down, you were elated. Then you slowly started to envy the newer, shinier models your friends had, until you finally got one of those too and you were elated again, only to have that feeling of bliss evaporate once you saw someone in a Ferrari. That’s the hedonic treadmill; you’ll never be able to achieve lasting happiness while you’re standing on it. The problem is… it’s evolutionary. This mechanism is literally responsible for your being here today, in this shape and form, since your ancestors sought permanent improvement. It can be a net-positive thing driving you to be more ambitious if you manage to mitigate the not insignificant happiness penalty that comes with it. 

Luckily, practicing voluntary discomfort is a way to do just that. Let’s stick to the car example since we’ve already gone down that road (pun intended!). Every time you start to feel that your car is not as great as it used to be, take the bus to work. What the heck, do this preemptively; don’t wait for the desire for a new car to appear. I guarantee that after experiencing the discomfort of NOT owning a car, you’ll appreciate the one you have a lot more than before. You might even rediscover some of the happiness you felt when you first got it. (Even the thought of not using your car and taking the bus should have made you feel something along those lines already!) 

Oh - and fighting the hedonic treadmill with voluntary discomfort might also have the positive side-effect of lowering your consumption. Both the environment and your wallet will appreciate the respite. 

Note: if your car is in bad condition, please get it fixed or replace it. Neither I, nor the OG Stoics endorse unsafe vehicles.

3. Practicing Voluntary Discomfort to Develop Gratitude for What You Have

As I hinted at with the car example, the exercise can help you feel a renewed sense of gratitude for the things and people in your life. In similar fashion, consider spending a weekend away from your partner - “absence makes the heart grow fonder” - and you’ll gain a fresh perspective of what their impact on your existence truly is. From the small things they do for you to the moral support they provide when you’re having a bad day, the appreciation you’ll feel will come in handy when navigating the next fight you’ll have. It’s very easy to get used to things and people, once they’ve been around for a long time as we have seen already. Feeling that their value has diminished is an illusion we need to actively fight against.

4. Practicing Voluntary Discomfort to Gain Self-Awareness

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb mentions in “Antifragile” - discomfort is a form of information. Think about it: a cold breeze tells you that the weather is changing, the hot plate on your stove teaches you that it’s a terrible idea to try to touch it before it has cooled down. Forgoing dessert informs you that you can live without sugar, if you really wanted to.

Wait. Zoom in on that last one, it’s important. Not only does discomfort reveal something about the outside world, it also exposes truths about ourselves. 

5. Practicing Voluntary Discomfort to Become More Successful

Being successful (and more particularly reaching your goals) requires delaying gratification. You have to put in many hours of study to get your degree and countless push-ups at the gym to reach your desired body composition - Rome wasn’t built in a day, either. There is no way around that and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying, or isn’t honest to themselves about how much luck (rather than skill) contributed to their accomplishments. 

This disciplined attitude of putting in the work is not usually our default state, as many parents of teenagers have noticed. However, it can be trained even outside of that the scope of the specific goal you are pursuing. It’s all about giving yourself the confidence that you’ve done hard things before and that you can do them again at will. 

I believe that our pursuit of instant gratification hides the fear that the pay-out of our actions will not be as high as we had hoped if it is obtained in the future. It’s as if you can’t trust the world to deliver on your effort if it doesn’t do so instantly. (OK, I admit that social media and the Internet have pushed us further in that direction, but they cannot be solely held responsible for it.) 

By practicing voluntary discomfort you organize an experiment in which the pay-out arrives without fail since you’re the one in charge of delivering it. Let's say you decide to take cold showers from Monday to Friday. You're able to stick to the plan because you know that come Saturday, you’ll feel the comforting warmth of the water again. And with each such small-scale experiment, you rewrite your brain circuitry to last just a little bit longer in anticipation of reward.

6. Practicing Voluntary Discomfort to Learn to Face Your Negative Emotions

OK, I admit this benefit can be obtained through 2 other Stoic exercises, premeditatio malorum and memento mori. You can think of those as a subcategory of practicing voluntary discomfort. The first invites you to ponder what might go wrong through negative visualization - i.e.: imagining that the worst case has actually happened, while the latter invites you to sit with the most uncomfortable thought of all: that of your own death. 

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t always distract yourself whenever you encounter a disquieting thought. Accepting these into your conscious mind allows you to explore them before they have actually happened and to train yourself to respond appropriately if (or when) they do. Nobody likes negative emotions, but they are an unavoidable part of being human. 

Who knows? By doing this exercise, you might even feel compelled to take action to prevent a bad outcome from happening or to minimize regret as a result of pondering on your own mortality and that of your nearest and dearest.

How do you practice voluntary discomfort? 

Step 1 - Pick a Source of Comfort 

Find one thing you’re willing to give up for a while - or better yet, make a list to go through one by one. A good choice would be something you do daily because you will have ample opportunity to reflect on how the thing (or lack thereof) makes you feel. The prompt to keep practicing is built into your routine, so you don’t need to spend too much mental effort reminding yourself of the exercise. It should also be easy enough to renounce that it doesn’t consume all of your thoughts and stops you from being a functional human being. As with any practice you want to build, start small and then work your way up to more challenging discomforts. You risk giving up too soon otherwise. Remember, outcomes trump good intentions.

Step 2 - Decide on a Safe Way to Renounce it for a Set Amount of Time

Once you have picked your discomfort, it’s time to define the rest of the experiment. Decide for how long you will practice and what qualifies as a win. Let’s say you picked intermittent fasting in the form of skipping breakfast, because you’ve noticed you love the sugar in your coffee and your daily croissant a little bit too much. You’ve accomplished your goal if you manage to give up both for a week and excelled if you can keep it up for 2 weeks without cheating. (It’s always good to have a stretch goal to motivate you if you still have energy left after reaching the main goal.) 

Step 3 - Reflect, Rinse and Repeat

During the experiment, examine how voluntary discomfort makes you feel and what it takes to keep yourself on track. As the period comes to an end, decide if the exercise was helpful and pick a different type of discomfort to focus on next time. 

You could also journal about your progress daily, if that fits into your routine, but don’t feel compelled to do so. The important thing is to reflect on what is happening, be it in writing or simply in your mind as you go about your day avoiding temptation. You also don’t need to jump into the next experiment immediately (unless you want to). I’m sure you will get a lot of benefit even from a single trial. 

That’s it! Now you have everything you need to try this Stoic exercise for yourself. Before we part ways, I need to make you aware of a caveat: a lot of the efficient things we have today (such as dishwashers, washing machines and vacuum robots) might fall under “comforts” and as such, you might be tempted to avoid them for a while to practice voluntary discomfort. There’s nothing wrong with that and I definitely encourage you to do it once in a while.

However, don’t try to use this as an excuse to organize your ENTIRE existence around this and thus spend all your precious time on problems that we have already solved as a society. It would just be keeping you from fulfilling your potential and achieving moral excellence, which, as you will remember, is the one true Stoic virtue and the marker of a life well lived. Focus on making the world better by moving it forward, not by trying to regress to the Middle Ages allegedly in the service of philosophy. (I debunk a similar approach to another Stoic exercise here.)

In other words, don’t take philosophical exercises so literally that you miss their point entirely. As with everything, quality is more important than quantity and it’s better to reflect more on the voluntary discomfort experiences you have, than to try to collect them mindlessly and at the expense of other kinds of personal development.