Are you feeling comfortable? Relaxing? Vegging out? It’s a nice feeling, don’t you think? Just having the luxury of being able to spend a few hours or a day or two doing nothing. Letting your thoughts drift wherever they may go. It’s liberating, a true breath of pure freedom.
It’s a bad habit.
Taking a little time to feel comfortable and relish in your accomplishments is a good thing. But, if you do it too much, it is not a good habit. Feeling comfortable means that you are not growing, you are not challenging yourself. You are not expanding your horizons.
Are you feeling comfortable, or are you floating in dangerous waters?
Ever heard the saying, “No pain, no gain?” It doesn’t only apply to exercise, and the “pain” is not only physical pain. Feeling uncomfortable can be painful, but going to places (emotionally, or physically) helps you expand your horizons, makes you expand the number of situations that you feel comfortable in, and is generally a good thing for your personal development.
How about “thinking outside the box,” have you ever heard of that before? Most of us have. But, have you ever stopped to think about what it means? Your “box” consists of the situations that you are comfortable with. The things you know about. Sitting inside your box and looking out allows you to see other areas that are new to you, new situations that are different from what you have experienced. Now that you are looking over the edge of your box and seeing new worlds on the horizon it is your choice, do you jump out of your box and go explore? It might, probably will be uncomfortable, because you can’t be certain what to expect. But, if you don’t experience the discomfort of making that jump, you will never know for sure what awaits you. If you stay inside your box, you will never know what was waiting for you on the horizon. If you are a smart person, you will never be satisfied not knowing, you will always long for the knowledge that only can be gained by experiencing some discomfort.
Every time that you move into an area where you are even a little bit uncomfortable, you are growing. The first time that we do anything it is a somewhat uncomfortable experience, because we are venturing into the unknown. As we continue to do this new thing over and over again, we get comfortable with it, and we know what to expect in terms of outcome. If we continue only doing the things that we have done before, there is no personal growth there. So, if we are smart, we will venture out and do things that are new for us, and keep growing.
So, I probably overstated the fact at the beginning of this article. Being comfortable is not necessarily a bad habit. We should take the time to enjoy the rewards of our lives, no doubt. Spending time relaxing and being comfortable for a while is a chance to reap what we have sown. The habit that is a bad habit, though, is always being comfortable, and not moving beyond the sides of our box. Staying in the box is a waste of our intelligence and initiative. Staying comfortable is something you want to avoid at all costs.
Do you think that it’s possible that you will ever get to the point where you are comfortable with being uncomfortable? Thank about that!
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