Comfort Or Growth? Can We Have Both?

What is our obsession with being comfortable and having comforts?

What happens when we get too comfortable, and is that really what we want?

You can read more here, or listen to the podcast here.

Think about it. I know for me, when I want to get comfortable, I get home, kick off my shoes and put on my fluffy slippers! I want to get out of those work clothes, put on a comfy jumper (you know, the one with the little stains around the sleeves, but who cares, I’m at home and I want to be comfortable!). Maybe you do the same kind of thing.

You get on the couch, maybe have a cup of tea, a beer, or a glass of wine, maybe watch Netflix, or a movie. Of course, out comes the bag of chips, or the chocolate, because you need the chips with the beer, right? The chocolate goes with the wine – let’s face it, chocolate doesn’t go with beer!).

When we get comfortable we let our guard down. We let ourselves go.

That’s nice. We need to rest, and relax, and enjoy life, sure.

But what if we get too comfortable?

If we keep drinking the beer and the wine and eating the comfort food, we get fat (and don’t we know it around Christmas time!)

But I’m not just talking about getting too comfortable with food. Sometimes we can get too comfortable with life. We go with the flow, we let our guard down. We can let our goals go out the window, and before we know it, we are at the end of another year!

Do you know about palliative care? My mum went into palliative care when she was nearing the end of her life a few years ago. Palliative care is fundamentally tasked with making the patient what? Comfortable. Before they die.

If we get too comfortable…we die! Our dreams die. Our goals die.

So, what is the opposite? Does that mean we are supposed to live a life of discomfort?

Think about it. What do we do when we are not comfortable? If you are sitting somewhere, or you are wearing a pair of shoes that are hurting you, or you are in a situation where there is discomfort, we generally don’t stay there very long!

Sometimes we are pinned down, locked into uncomfortable situations, like an abusive relationship, where it is not so easy to move. Some countries live in a constant state of discomfort and dreadful situations.

But that makes it all the more compelling for those of us how have the power to do something ourselves. Discomfort creates the perfect environment for change. We want to move, change, we start to think, we start to act, we start to do something different because the situation is uncomfortable, we are experiencing discomfort.

It is very difficult to be apathetic when you’re uncomfortable!

But what I find really interesting is that our society is obsessed with comfort! The social media, traditional media, marketing, so many of the products and services are about making us comfortable!

‘Let’s get you away from here on a holiday where you can lay on the beach, in the hammock, with a cocktail.’

The photos look lovely, it’s appealing, but I don’t know about you, but I get bored after a few days of laying on the beach. Or you get to the point where you can’t go back out in the sun because you’ll burn to a crisp! Sometimes the things that look like they are going to be comfortable aren’t that great after a while.

It’s so easy to be lulled and lured into the desire for comfort. We are told that’s what life is all about.

Now, I’m not talking about mindfulness or spirituality here, the need to spend time resting your mind, praying, meditating. Taking time to stop, to breathe, to rest, is critical. We need that time to reconnect, to reflect, to get realigned with our purpose. That’s different from our obsession for comfort.

I may have shared this before in previous posts, that I was in a situation where my own life was comfortable. Very comfortable. I lived in a beautiful place near the water. I’d get up and go for a walk with my husband and the puppies, stroll along the waterfront, go and have a coffee, read the paper. Life was comfortable. I didn’t need to rush back. Some days it would be 9:30, 10am and I still hadn’t had a shower, hadn’t really applied my mind to the day. It was lovely, but I was stagnating.

So I chose to step out of that comfort into a life of discomfort, with a lot of challenges, a lot of pain. I didn’t have money in the bank, I couldn’t do some of the things I really wanted to do, and that probably looked stupid to most people.

Why give up all that comfort?

Because in that discomfort, in that pain, it created the environment, the opportunity, the conditions, for reflection, for growth, for change, for transformation. I had to get focused, create a new paradigm for me, and a new way to live, to survive.

But I only created that because of the discomfort.

So I just want to encourage you today, because I think we too often steer away from the uncomfortable moments, the discomfort, the times when things are painful, but they are sometimes the biggest blessings in our life. Those times when we get out of our apathy, out of our comfort, and we start to have to create, and think, and become agile, and move towards whatever it is we are meant to be doing, move towards our purpose, what we are here for, on this earth, and step into that with determination. Purposeful Determination (incidentally, that’s my new program I’m developing!).

This was just a random thought, and I had no idea where it was going to go, and maybe that’s a lesson right there. Sometimes we have to just embrace things, imperfect things, that burn in our hearts and minds, and just grab them and run with them, and trust!

Permission
Vanessa Hall – Comfort or Growth – Can we have both?

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