Why Comfort is Keeping You from Achieving your Dreams

Let’s talk about comfort. You know the kind that comes in soothing flavors of sweet vanilla and melted chocolate. The caramels and the soft crunches of pecan that swirl over your tastebuds and whisper to you that everything is ok. Or it could be the sounds of waves crashing, kissing your toes under a sunset that feels just right all over your skin, a golden hour that makes you feel like every hour of your life can feel that way. Comfort is a warm blanket in the freezing cold, and lilac colored mug of hot chocolate that has “Just Breathe” written on it in classy gold.

Comfort is appealing, it is the snuggle and not the nudge. Comfort is the tap on your shoulder by a loving friend and not a shake by a stranger telling you that your train has stopped. The crimson blush of a beautiful person staring at you like you are magic is comfort embodied. So let’s talk about that beautiful comfort that we seek endlessly every waking hour. Let’s wonder about how far we go to be comfortable. You see, comfort evolves in its nature, it learns and provides us a space to just be.

Now, let’s think about the end of comfort, the break in its seemingly recurrent consistency.

What happens if we never leave that comfort?

Comfort becomes external. You will no longer be able to experience comfort in anything but a tub of ice cream, a warm blanket and an ocean breeze. The easiness of our well cushioned caves removes any need to seek wonder elsewhere. You will lose your imagination and the urge to experience the world. You slowly befriend fear, and the thought of losing that comfort could tear you to pieces. Don’t get me wrong comfort is a beautiful feeling, but that’s all it is, a Feeling. If we hang on to how things make us feel for too long, we become incapable of living without them. Mind you, wanting to live with some things is not crazy, it does not determine how good or bad you are at life. Though the fear of loss limits your ability to experience having things, losing things, and creating and transforming your life based on purpose and genuine happiness, and not based on material, or feelings of attachment or responsibility.

We learn ever since we are kids that we must have things to make us happy; that without things we are nothing. The distance between who we are and what we have becomes so minimal that we can no longer tell the difference. I am not saying that we must give up our “things” but that we must understand that we are not a sum of what we buy or what we can make a month. Having a lot of money is awesome, no body would be bothered by that, but having a lot of money is unnecessary, seeking a lot of money is toxic if not done out of a deep understanding of your true worth with or without it.

The deep secret is that comfort is tricky. It takes years out of your life making you believe something that isn’t real. Being comfortable with misery, or ordinariness, or poor health, or laziness or abuse or over eating, blinds us from what discomfort really means. Discomfort is not always bad, it sometimes is the only way out of toxic habits of comfort. Our brains have not evolved to tell us to leave that camp fire and walk out of the cave to seek shelter elsewhere. We instinctively stay away from discomfort and unknown feelings and experiences because we think it terms self preservation. Habits can be changed, our life is prone to complete dismantlement and rebuilding and transformation if we allow ourselves a peek every once in a while outside of the cave.

This is not about dissatisfaction with status quo, but its about creating space for our happiness to manifest itself in the craziest of ways. How many times have you heard someone say : I WOULD NEVER LEAVE MY JOB FOR THE UNKNOWN, I WOULD NEVER SPEAK TO THAT PERSON, I WOULD NEVER DO/GO… ETC… We all have our comfortable thoughts, convictions, places and people. Going beyond them is unthinkable to most of us. There is no need to put ourselves out there, there is no point in experiencing a possible let down when we can clearly avoid it. I GET THAT.

Then again, what if you do?

What if you let yourself off the hook? What if you allow yourself out of that comfort whatever shape or form it has? If looking outside is so painful, then that says something. If for example, your relationship has gotten too comfortable, and you catch yourself watching other couples, that says something. It does not deem failure or defeat, it is a nudge. A NUDGE TO TAKE THE CHALLENGE, MAKE THE EFFORT. A Nudge that you have become so unfamiliar with, because you’re so used to the soft love taps. Notice the Nudge, go for it and create new comfort wherever you go; because it rarely is the people, the places and the things you have, it’s mostly how you decide to see things.

So my friends, comfort will always be there; rest assured! You can even take parts of it with you. Leaving what we perceive to be easy shouldn’t be a threat, it can be an adventure, it can be the only way to live our best lives.