What is comfort?

Is it good for you or bad for you? How much is enough? Is it the ultimate goal of life and work?

Comfort is a seductive drug disguised as candy.

We can never have enough. The law of diminishing returns never kicks in because after a certain point comfort is relative to your comparison group or pace setters. I believe a certain level of comfort is necessary to function authentically in the world.—we need a certain level of security so that every day isn’t a complete guessing game. In other words, up to a certain level comfort is a vitamin and healthy. After a certain level it is a virus and spreads.

We all have pace setters in life—they can be peers, parents, colleagues, classmates, or even celebrities—and we compare our level of comfort to theirs. The problem with this is that as our level of comfort changes, so do our pace setters. If we were to compare our level of comfort to where we were 5 years ago, relatively, we would be more comfortable. But instead, we tend to compare or level of comfort with those around us, so the moment we achieve another level of comfort we feel behind because we are at the lowest level within our new comparison group. It’s like a college football player winning the Heisman trophy and then becoming an average player in the NFL. Relatively, they are better than they were before, comparatively, they aren’t as good.

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Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
-Neale Donald Walsh
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It’s scary when one’s comfort is totally external. When this is the case,  one’s cost of living usually increases with their level of comfort and as a result they actually make themselves more uncomfortable because they’ve become accustomed to a higher cost of living in a time of economic uncertainty. For instance, a new banker may quickly realize that they hate their job within the first two years, but they fail to realize that by buying a house and a new car (sometimes to justify their unhappiness), they are actually trapping themselves in a job they hate because their purchases were based on their current high income versus the income from their desire job (which may or may not pay more).

Most people derive comfort from knowing or at least thinking they can accurately predict the future. For example, rather than going to medical school because you’re really passionate about healing, some medical students only go to medical school because their future, no matter how expensive, will be certain for the next few years of school and their entire life of practice. They don’t have to think. They just have to follow the steps. Unfortunately, even with rising health care costs, doctors aren’t making what they used to in part because their insurance is so high. But I say that to say that uncertainty and comfort are negatively correlated.

But who wants to live in a world of certainty? If you knew for certain how every day of your life was going to play out for the next 40, 50, or 60 years, would you choose that path or the path of not knowing? I’ve come to embrace a concept I call confident uncertainty. Confident uncertainty is the realization that I can predict or control the future, but I am confident that I will be able to navigate what the future holds. It’s a life of complete faith in the midst of uncomfortable situations.

One thing I’ve done that helps me have that confidence is challenge myself in areas where I am experiencing comfort. Through my Successaholics 30 Day Do It group, I set monthly goals (new month resolutions) that challenge me to expand who I am being in a certain area of my life so that I can grow instead of shrink. It’s assumed that human beings seek to get as much as they can with as little effort as possible. While I partially believe that, I also believe that we have a choice to proactively challenge ourselves in areas of comfort (personal, professional, social, financial, educational, spiritual, physical, etc) before life does it for us. When someone doesn’t choose to challenge themselves physically, life brings disease. When someone doesn’t choose to challenge themselves financially, life brings debt. We always have a choice.

I had a dog named Buddy. His entire world was a high school classroom-size backyard surrounded by a red wood fence. He had plenty of room to roam, so we never walked him. But one day we did. My dad and I found the leash buried in the garage and put it on him. When we opened the gate, Buddy started dragging us. Drool was coming out of his mouth in excitement. When we got back from our 30 minute walk to the top of the hill, we put Buddy back in the backyard. The next day, Buddy dug a hole under the fence and escaped. A neighbor found him and brought him back. We plugged the hole and put him back in. The day after that, Buddy jumped off the dog house over the fence and escaped again. This time he never came back.

Buddy was comfortable. He had a nice backyard, fully-equipped with a dog house, 3 meals a day, and good owners. But once he saw what was beyond the red fence, he couldn’t stay. He realized how limited he was and it’s not until you push something beyond it’s perceived limits that it realizes that it is limitless. Today I don’t know if Buddy is alive, but I do know that he lived.

Don’t get too comfortable!