Get Uncomfortable For Your Success

There is a stretch of life, often somewhere between thirty and fifty, where things start to work. You have figured some things out, made some good decisions and your life has some structure. Income is a bit more predictable, you have a house and a mortgage, possibly a family. People depend on you and from the outside you look like you have found your rhythm.

And yet, there are moments, when you feel something is not quite where it needs to be. Not wrong or broken just a sense that the days are starting to repeat. You can see how next week will go, maybe even next month and the rest of the year. You may feel just about comfortable but also that your old notion of comfort is not quite enough.

What tends to have happened is a slow erosion of enthusiasm, positivity and possibility. You start choosing the known option, the safer path at work, the familiar routine at home and plans that are easiest to manage. None of these choices are bad and may even seem sensible but over time, they add up to a life that is almost acceptable albeit shrinking.

A useful way to understand this is to picture your life as an orchestra. Not the polished version on a stage, but something more local. A mix of instruments, people who know their parts well enough to keep things moving. “Comfort” is the steady section, the rhythm that joins everything together. Providing and maintaining your everyday needs, routines and income. Without it, your life loses foundation which matters to you and everyone who relies on you.

But if that steady section is all you hear, the music starts to lose its shape. It keeps going, but without intermittent intensity there is nothing to bring the music to life. It is the part that adds the interest, unexpected, something that is not guaranteed and proven.

In your twenties, intensity is often a norm where everything is new you are used to the possibility of things being less predictable. A decade later, intensity becomes a choice and the stakes feel higher with more to lose. The consequences affect more people and so it is more comfortable to stay with what works.

The problem is not that comfort is wrong, it is just not enough to keep a life that feels alive. This is where balance comes in, but not as a neat split between the two. Balance is the conductor who decides when the steady section plays and when something else is needed to lift the interest. It allows for periods where you focus on the status quo, paying the mortgage, showing up for family and doing your job well.

It must also allow for moments where you add pressure on purpose. That might be doing something that feels slightly out of reach, starting a new project or upping a goal, a change that disrupts the routine, even if only a little. Not reckless moves, chosen and considered ones but new for you.

Balance needs to shift with life, sometimes in comfort because it has to, but as important are the moments that are challenging to keep you growing where you want. Without this there is a quiet drift, days feel efficient but forgettable. We just need to periodically ask where in my life have things got so comfortable that I have stopped moving? The answer is normally small and might be in your work, in your home life or out of work interests, where your behaviour is so routine that very little effort is required from you.

In the beginning choose something with a small bit of discomfort that is just enough to change the sound of things. The goal at this stage is not to give up the comfort you and the people around you need but rather make sure there are some new things that are being noticed.

If your life has started to feel a little too predictable, that is not failure but rather a sign that things are stable enough for you to step forward again. That step does not have to be big but it just must be yours and it must be on going.