The Sneaky (Overlooked) Killer of Most Peoples’ Dreams and Success
Beat it before it tightens its delicate hold into a death squeeze
As I’m chittering on the toilet seat splashing hot water, all I can think of is jumping back into bed. But then a thundering realization erases all traces of sleepiness.
There was something terribly wrong.
Rewinding father time’s hands a few weeks, 6:00 AM meant grinding iron (alone) in the gym. Then a post-workout cold shower followed by meditation.
Not being cocooned in a fat blanket till 9:00.
Saturdays used to mean 24-hour fasts. Meals signified nutrition, not taste.
Leisure was reading books, not dopamine-bursts of YouTube. But since I went down with and recovered from the Rona, things had gone south.
What started as convalescence became the intoxicating poison of comfort.
“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”
—Unknown
Comfort Is a Surreptitious Slithering Snake
Comfort never comes knocking on the front door. It slithers through the attic window.
One skipped workout. One snooze. One night out drinking with the boys. One cheat day. One relapse. Taking one day off.
There’s nothing wrong with “one”.
But the moment one becomes two and two morphs into four, the python of comfort starts choking you.
Time loses meaning. Today you could be a hyper-productive ripped ascetic. Tomorrow, armed with a beer paunch, a bag of Doritos, and the TV remote, you wonder when things went south.
Comfort is the norm. Both your mind and body worship it.
Growth is “unnatural” — it requires a vigilant fight against the ever-lashing waves of comfort.
Not until it tightens its delicate hold into a death squeeze, do most realize comfort is swallowing their dreams.
The Antidote Is Practicing This
Neuroplasticity is a superpower — through practice, you can rewire your brain to become a champ at anything.
Even discomfort. When did you last deliberately put yourself in an uncomfortable situation?
Most of us have become experts at being comfortable — given that we’ve been practicing it 24/7 a day, 365 days a year, for decades.
Your brain’s a weighing scale and every time you choose comfort over growth, you’re adding weight to the wrong side.
David Goggins’ memoir Can’t Hurt Me taught me just how much we underestimate what we’re capable of.
David calls it the 40% rule — when we think we’ve hit our absolute limit, we’ve actually only hit 40% and still have 60% left in the tank.
With a hole in his heart, David became a navy SEAL, army ranger, champion ultra-marathoner, triathlon monster, and pull-up world record holder.
Despite a hyper-abusive childhood, he became a motivational speaker and an inspiration for millions of young men.
We have no idea what our ceiling is — and the only way to realize it is by tilting our mental scales the right way.
Make Discomfort a Habit
We all have comfort zones — circles with certain radii. The goal isn’t to stay out of this circle and torture ourselves.
It is to expand the circle — by “practicing” discomfort.
You don’t have to go Goggins-mode. You just have to swallow a small dose of discomfort on a daily:
- List out the things you (would) find uncomfortable and scary.
- Sort them in ascending order, from mildly tedious to outright heart-hammering scary.
- Pick the first one and repeat it until you get comfortable with it.
- Strike it off the list and repeat the process.
I used to be painfully shy. Forget talking, the prospect of even spelling out my name would intimidate me. Now? I can cold-approach a girl and hit a home run with her on the second date.
The path was paved with heartbreaks, embarrassments, rejections, creep-outs, and desperation-induced shameful acts. But was it all worth it?
Heck yes. If I had to rewind time and do it all over again, I gladly would.
The beauty of discomfort is it's uncomfortable only in the short term. Past that, it’s a rewarding breeze — nervousness morphs into excitement, and calm mastery sets in.
Getting started and wading through the initial murky waters is the hard part.
Once the momentum builds up, it’s an effortless downhill snowball.
Final Words
Life’s a set of games — be it status, wealth, dating, fitness, career, hobbies, or your inner life.
Each game is rather simple — pick the least uncomfortable thing, repeat it until it becomes comfortable, then pick the next. Rinse and repeat.
Short-term discomfort for long-term happiness. Or long-term discomfort for short-term happiness?
You choose.
“Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.”
— Jerzy Gregorek