Change Is To Be Comfortable With Discomfort

Photo by @keankelly

“Comfort is overrated.”

In 2009, I paid a ridiculously handsome sum of money for three months of once weekly telephone coaching.

I won’t disclose the name of the company or the coach. Needless to say, it was useless, though you would have had to have me at gun point to admit that then. I was so blind, so hopelessly sold on the ideals of the personal development movement. I was a pathetic sheep. Baa!

I was going through my email archives today, looking for some old emails, when I came across an email I wrote to an old acquaintance. We were discussing the law of attraction and I quoted my coach, who had told me during my last coaching call, “Comfort is overrated.”

I no longer remember the context of the conversation, however I believe she meant that we, humans, almost always value comfort over change, and that we need to be aware of that propensity in order to overcome our almost ingrained inertia for change.

I don’t think I fully understood her back then. Then, I was still a comfort junkie. And deluded. Very. The towering adamantium walls of my comfort zones needed a lot more battering over the years to come, before I finally got the point.

The only way to embrace change is to embrace the discomfort of change.

Change is yours when you are comfortable with and in discomfort.

I’m not saying you’ll like it. Heck, I don’t. Just for the record, I react very, very badly to stress. I literally fall violently ill.

If I wanted an excuse to escape the pain of change, I have it right here in my currently weak state of health. I could say, “Oh I shouldn’t tax my immune system and body so much. I need to go easier on myself.”

But I don’t. I’m not saying I succeed all the time. In fact, I fail most of the time. That’s fact.

But’s not how often you succeed that matters. It is how often you keep trying when you would rather not.

I think that’s why I write this blog.

In this blog, I push everything, or at least, I intend to push everything. I labelled myself amoral for a good reason. I no longer believe in right or wrong. I simply refuse to, even if my years of social and cultural programming still kicks in when I least expect it.

I have seen what we do with the concepts of right and wrong. It is simply abusive. To others and to ourselves. And we call it good. Hah! Good!

I live by the following creed.

Life is for exploration, experimentation, experience and expression.

• Life is for you to explore all possibilities.
• Life is for you to experiment with anything, in order to know if it is for you.
• Life is, above all, for the experience of all, anything you choose to explore and experiment with.
• And finally, life is for you to contribute, to put out there, to share, to express yourself as you are in each new moment, for the world to experience in turn.

This creed is only possible when you realise that continual change or flux is the only constant and that you are different from moment to moment.

There is no fixed you. There is no fixed idea or attitude.

I used to be terrified of the question, “Who am I?” I had serious identity issues throughout my life. My identity was simultaneously my obsession and nemesis.

Now, I no longer care. Why? Because I know I cannot define it. I have to define some sort of idea on my blog, yes, but don’t expect it to be static. I expect that my About page will flux on an average of once a month.

Because I embody what I believe.

I believe that the only way to be alive to be in flux. All the time. No fixed form, no fixed state.

Admit it, it is a terrifying state to consider. I no longer think it is only because I’ve become inured to the discomfort of the concept through prolonged exposure.

I’ve gotten accustomed to the fear of discomfort and thus I am more able to act in spite of fear.

I think that’s what I’m talking about and I think that’s what I mean when I say that I want you to be able to be mutable, to be protean.

It is such a freeing, liberating state and experience.

There is such power in knowing that you do not fear fear itself.

It sounds weird for me, a self-proclaimed misanthropist, to write this but I think that’s what I want for all of humanity.

To not fear fear.

And being able to constantly and constantly challenge every single comfort zone that we hold about anything is the first place to start.