The Problem with Comfort

I don’t love to sleep. It takes a chunk of the day away, which is very important for our health. However, I do love my bed. It is very comfortable, especially during the winter. Thick blankets and a soft bed make it easy to hit the snooze button and stay in bed.

Shedding the warm blankets to embrace the icy hands of the morning isn’t an exciting prospect. No matter how much cold training I do, pulling myself up in the still-dark morning is still challenging.

I know I’m fortunate, so I’m not complaining about my conditions. I appreciate it.

I traveled to India many years ago on a deployment with the United States Navy. We rode and walked through streets, outdoor markets, and malls. While walking in the midday sun, we would see many people grabbing a nap in doorways, sidewalks, and alleyways.

It turns out there is reporting on this phenomenon. Street sleepers. “Sleeping in the open saves them the cost of renting a place. It is difficult for most of them to afford accommodation with their low wages even in a city where rents are relatively cheap.” (1)

In the city I was in, they could’ve been workers and laborers, or they could have been travelers.

These people work incredibly hard. They are out seeking work. Trying anything they can do to earn a living to get them under a roof.

When a situation becomes untenable, it forces us to move. It is easier to get up from bed when the rain wakes you up. It gets easier to push yourself when you don’t have other amenities to distract you. Despite this, not everyone will earn their way off the street.

My situation is similar to many middle-class Americans, comfort, and distraction. Without passion in front of you and no immediate pressures, things seem easy.

It can be more difficult to push because you have just enough. You have food, so you are not pushing to feed yourself or your family. You have a home, so you don’t need shelter. In fact, you’ve met all of your needs.

With this comfort, pushing ourselves to the next level becomes less appealing. It has been an issue I’ve dealt with, and I know I’m not alone.

If you have those needs met, you should be grateful for those comforts. You are incredibly fortunate if you have a T.V. and video game consoles. But if you want to achieve more, you must extend beyond your comfort zone.

Here are a few ways to avoid letting your comfort keep you from your dreams.

If you are excited to get up in the morning, you won’t need an alarm. No matter how hard you worked the previous day or how exhausted your body is, you will leap out of bed if you’re excited about what you are doing.

This sounds like motivational, feel-good ammo because it is. It also isn’t so simple to find a passion and then pursue it. Maybe you don’t have anything you are passionate about or excited about. You can change what you focus on.

Instead of doing a project, you are passionate about, you can get excited about your job. Because you’ll get to talk to many interesting people and help them make crucial decisions.

The outstanding issues happen when we get comfortable in our position. Life is constantly changing, and if you work in a specific place, there may come a time it bores you. Or your situation has changed, and the money isn’t enough. It could be you are excited because of the pay you get, and once you save up a certain amount of money, you can take a dream vacation.

It could be several problems. Various studies show people without purpose tend to have more significant depression and mental health problems. Keep your mind active by finding something, even a hobby, that gets you excited to get up every day.

Ease gets boring. In my experience, people require challenges to feel fulfilled. I’ve met a few people who enjoyed what they did because it was easy and required little thought. However, they, too, eventually want to work on doing something better or more challenging and get frustrated.

You may think you want things quickly. Many times this backfires because people like to be challenged. There are not many better feelings than the excitement of having beaten a game you couldn’t beat. Excitement at completing a project littered with problems.

The electricity of winning a game against a superiorly talented team or the gains you make from working out. I remember completing my first half marathon and feeling incredibly proud since I didn’t like to run.

The constant push and pull of struggle eventually push us forward. The more we struggle, the more skills we build. You learn to think on your feet. You figure out how to solve complex problems. Now when you face variations of these same issues, you have more experience handling the situation the best way.

Challenges will pave the way for you to do many things you may not be sure you could’ve done without them.

The human mind adapts quickly. I mentioned this many times, and I’ll continue to mention this in future posts. So when we are in our comfortable present, it can be tempting to take a day off. You deserve a break, and sometimes it may be most beneficial to take a break.

However, one way to keep pushing ourselves forward. Prevent comfort from slowing us down is to find a place we want to go. It doesn’t have to be a physical place. It could be wanting to earn a specific amount of money to invest in a charity you are passionate about.

You could desire to create a company and hire employees so you can help them change their lives. You could be motivated by the positive comments of others you’ve helped develop.

It is easy to get complacent, especially if you’ve already completed a goal. When I ran the half marathon, it was easier to fall out of training without another race scheduled to follow up.

Find the next level to motivate yourself to keep on moving forward and not let comfort stall your momentum.

I’ve seen people struggle, which drove my initial push to succeed. I wanted to have my basic needs met. Once completed, it became easy to fall into a rut and away from further goals. My needs were met, after all.

I believe we are either growing or dying in life; nothing ever stays the same. It is when we are comfortable that we run the risk of atrophy. Even in our comfort, we could be slowly wasting away without realizing it, simply because we lack purpose.

A family friend was driven by his job for 30 years, but when he finally had the chance to retire, he jumped at it. He couldn’t wait to sit around his cabin and do nothing but relax and fish. Unfortunately, he died within three months of retiring.

Find something you love to do. If driven by projects or a job, it is easy to jump out of bed and take on the world. Being driven by what you do makes people feel more fulfilled with their life and increases happiness.

Challenges help develop us in many ways. We learn more technical skills, gain more knowledge, and often have to think on our feet. All traits that will make you better at whatever your business.

You can become a better leader with the more challenges and situations you experience.

Find a future destination that is more compelling than the present. It can be easy to fall enamored with where you are, and if you are happy, then perfect.

If you still feel you have a purpose to fulfill but feel unmotivated because of comfort, find something worth working toward. It could be a charity, a family member fighting a disease, or purchasing a specific type of house.

Find a way to give yourself purpose and motivation to push forward. If you need help to stop yourself from creating conditions for you to begin read more here.

(1) BBC. (2013, March 10). In pictures: India's Street Sleepers. BBC News. Retrieved June 25, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21626113