Too comfortable
Read time: 6 minutes
We live in an age of privilege.
One must understand that there’s never been such opportunity, such access to resources, such openness to the world in all of history until now.
We live in the greatest time to ever be living in… But that is making all of us soft.
Why are we comfortable?
The privillages of the 21st century are simply amazing.
Having access to all of the books ever written in the world, being able to fly across the continent in less than half a day or having food cooked for you and delivered to your door in less than an hours; these are all incredibly achievements of the age of information, yet they make life more and more convenient and make us softer and softer.
There’s nothing wrong with using the conveniences of modern life.
After all, we’ve been working for decades to achieve such marvels.
There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to get our hands dirty…
But we have to understand that all of this comes at a cost.
All of these benefits come with a hidden cost.
That cost is our ability to comfortable being uncomfortable.
Why get comfortable with being uncomfortable?
Let me get you in on a secret.
Almost everything worthwhile is on the other side of discomfort.
Discomfort is not something to be ‘taken care of’.
Discomfort is something we should try to seek out.
Discomfort is just as much stretching the threshold of our comfort zone as it is about stretching ourselves into the person we want to become.
We need the discomfort in our lives.
Feeling too comfortable is not really something to seek, it is the symptom of a life where we settled, it is the byproduct of not trying to grow.
How to get uncomfortable?
In our daily lives, if we are on the trajectory of growth, life will make sure to make us uncomfortable.
But for whatever reason, if we’ve been feeling stuck, if we’ve been feeling too comfortable, it could be a good idea to try and seek discomfort.
If we think that the best thing to do is seek discomfort I have a few suggestions:
1.Cold shower
The corner store of discomfort.
It’s not complicated, it just requires will.
In the morning we can make sure we’re awake by jumping in cold water (a shower or a river) for 1 straight minute.
2.No internet
Being able to tweet, find out anything, watch whatever random crap you come across off is all pretty comfortable and a little bit unhealthy.
We should try to get over our sense of needing these convienences by taking ourselves away from those sources of constant gratification.
Let’s take just 1 full day and not touch the internet.
We’ll thank ourselves later.
3.Set the alarm 5 minutes earlier than usual and actually get out of bed
Sure we can be really good at getting up on time, especially if we have a routine set up.
But how good are we, really, at waking up and jumping out of bed?
How good are we, really, at dealing with the discomfort of less sleep, with the inertia of the softness of our bed?
Reminder: These are all suggestions and being comfortable with discomfort is a great to achieve big goals, but we need to understand that extremes are almost never good.
Learn how to do it, but don’t over do it.