The Uncomfortably Fun Truth about Growth

**Please note special registration instructions in your confirmation email**

This Event Awards 1.0 Core Competency and 0.50 Resource Development CCEUs

All who register for the event will receive a link to the recording, afterwards.

Date: October 1, 2025

Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm MST | 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm EST

Tickets: ICF Members: $28.00 | ICF Premium Members: Free | Non-Members: $35 CAD

This presentation explores how embracing discomfort is crucial for growth and how it can be developed. Participants will learn five science-based tools to help their clients change their brain chemistry by incorporating fun, which makes new behaviors more appealing and repeatable.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN:

• Understanding why our brains naturally avoid discomfort

•  Strategies to help clients tackle challenging tasks despite their brain's resistance 

• How to use fun to make difficult things more enjoyable through: 

• • Fun-Fusing: combining challenging tasks with enjoyable activities 

  • Fun-Framing: reframing threats as challenges and gamifying tasks 

  • Fun-Friending: leveraging social connections for fun and accountability in productivity sprints 

  • Fun-Setting: strategically incorporating recharge time 

  • Fun-Vesting: building stress resilience through consistent fun activities 

The session emphasizes that true achievement lies beyond comfort zones and provides evidence-based techniques to make stepping outside those zones enjoyable for both coaches and their clients.

About the Speaker

James Garrett

James Garrett is a brain coach and founder of Brain by Design. He’s spoken on stages ranging from Harvard to TEDx and his work has been featured by The New York Times, FastCompany, and Harvard Business Review. He spent years doing research with some of the best psychologists in the world at Columbia, Tufts, and Yale. He’s a content creator and course builder and his course called, “Brain Science for Coaches” has been rated as one of the best courses for coaches and is currently certified by ICF for 30 continuing coach education credits. He’s a certified coach through the Whole Fit coaching program. He also built one of the only brain-based positive psychology curricula in the Middle East and trained thousands of Arab youth in partnership with Queen Rania of Jordan. A rare combination of scientist, trainer, and entrepreneur, in 2019 James launched the Deep Change Project, a personal journey to discover what’s possible at the outer edges of neuroplasticity and how to overcome fear.