According to most swimming superstars,“Getting in a cold pool first thing in the morning” is the single hardest thing about training. Those first few minutes are the toughest part of the day. They dread the initial immersion in the chilly water and even though they do it everyday most say they never get used to it.

But once they’re in, they’re in.

Overcoming the initial pain, worry, or discomfort can be the most challenging part of any endeavor but it is the only way to reach your potential:

Just like how athletes must practice to be comfortable in discomfort, you must as well if you hope to improve your skills and advance your career. The hard stuff, the stuff you’d rather skip or do later is often the stuff that’s most necessary. Every time we choose to play it safe or bypass challenging intellectual prompts, we impede our ability to innovate and grow, waste our own (or our company’s) money, and squander our talent.

Fear is often at the core of resistance to make a change. So how do you push past it? Break it down. Ask yourself, “What is the very first step I need to take?” and take it. As Special Forces Instructor Mark Hickey describes,

I can say from my own experience that after you do one thing and conquer it, the next thing is a little bit easier.

Each time you fight through the discomfort, you arm yourself with confidence, you fortify yourself with experience and you inoculate yourself against setbacks. Taking action is empowering regardless of the outcome. Don’t hesitate or dip your toe in the water.

The best way to deal with initial discomfort is to literally jump in as the swimmers do. I cannot promise that the rest will go swimmingly well but getting wet certainly makes swimming easier

For many of us, rationalizing what went wrong in the wake of a failure or disappointment is a common response. It protects us from dealing with unpleasant emotions and feeling badly about ourselves. A student gets a C on a paper and dismisses the bad grade as not mattering that much. An employee receives negative feedback on a presentation and blames the client and convinces themselves they will do better next time. These self-protective measures enable us to get over the disappointment and to move on.

According to new research, we may be getting it all wrong. In fact, the best way to learn from a setback may be to feel the pain. In the study entitled, Emotions Know Best: The Advantage of Emotional versus Cognitive Responses to Failure, participants were asked to complete a simple task. If they succeeded, they were told they could win a cash prize. One group was told to imagine focusing on their emotional response to winning or losing. The other half was instructed to take a more cognitive approach and to focus on their thoughts about winning or losing. The task was rigged so that they all failed. Both groups were then asked to complete a second task. The group that had been asked to embrace their negative emotions exerted 25% more effort than the other group. The researchers believe that reflecting on the failure and the accompanying unpleasant feelings enabled them to learn from their mistakes.

It’s counterintuitive and defies conventional wisdom. From childhood, we are told not to dwell on mistakes and to move on but as the study shows, leapfrogging over messy unhappy feelings may not be the best strategy. If we want to learn from our mistakes at school, at work and in relationships, we need to lean into them.

This article originally appeared in the March 2018 issue of Marie Claire Magazine.