One of the lessons I learned during my time as a musician early in my college career was to "embrace the dissonance". As a fan of tonal music, this was something quite outside of my comfort zone and naturally made me feel uneasy.
For those that are not musically inclined, let me explain. In music you have two types of sounds that can occur together (generally speaking). You have consonance, and dissonance. The easiest example I can think of is to relate this to something we've all done: sneezing.
Think of how you feel normally during the day as consonance. Things are as they should be, your breathing is regular, and for the most part you feel at ease with the world. This is how we enjoy being because we feel comfortable and natural.
Then we feel this awkward feeling, one of discomfort. It is not painful, but it is away from our feeling of ease as we feel our eyes become squinty and our breathing become irregular and we feel a deep breath come on and then we hold it all in for a split second, then: aaaaAAAACHHOOOOO! That whole process is dissonance to your body, which eventually resolves itself to consonance and we feel so much better!!
So why am I talking about dissonance?
I had my first day of orientation for my new position, and at the end I had this crippling feeling of dread and discomfort. You see, I've never worked in human resources, EVER! All of my knowledge in the field is theoretical and book-based.
Understand that I believe I have the unlimited potential to do amazing things in my new position. I have a thirst for knowledge and my current field of study in my MBA is Human Resources. What I am lacking is a knowledge of how do even go about doing my day-to-day tasks. I know that my HR team is going to help train me and get me ready to go without throwing me in the proverbial "deep end", but it is a situation where I am not comfortable.
This is where I must remember to embrace the dissonance. It is when we are challenged and outside of our comfort zone that we have the opportunity to grow leaps and bounds, grasping hold of our potential to make our dissonant situations resolve into beautiful harmonies. It is during that tension before the resolution that we must live at times, in order to make the resolution more appreciated, more beautiful, and more harmonious.
I have a lot of days coming up where I will be outside of my comfort zone, and I am okay with that. In fact, I welcome it. Bring the noise, bring the funk!
"Embrace the dissonance..."
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