Monday Motivation – Get Uncomfortable

Change is good. Comfort is not.

At least not til you’ve earned it.

Unless you’re the best of the best and at the very top of your sport, class, profession or whatever endeavor consumes your life, you’d better not be comfortable. That means you’ve settled. That means you’re complacent. That means others are doing what you will not do. Those people who “get comfortable being uncomfortable,” as Zach Even-Esh puts it, are the ones who will leave you in the dust.

Often times, we trade immediate comfort for serious discomfort down the road. I present to you three scenarios…

Say for example, you’d rather eat pizza and ice cream now instead of organic fruits and vegetables because healthy food is too expensive and you’re comfortable with cheap, easy food with no nutritional value. But after years of being comfortable with poor nutrition, you end up overweight, sick and unhappy.

Let’s look at the training side of things. You want to get big and strong, so you go to the gym. You know you should be doing squats and deadlifts, but they’re uncomfortable. Not to mention difficult. I mean, these are whole body exercises. They put stress on your knees and lower back. Sounds like too much work. So you stick with stuff you’re comfortable with – the leg press, leg curls, calf raises (this is assuming you actually train your lower body, which is well outside the comfort zone of most gym-goers). And after months and months of cruising along cemented in your comfort zone, guess what? You’ve made no progress. The hours in the gym, the money for the membership, the cash shelled out for fancy supplements – all for nothing.

Now you’re in school or at work. You want to do well on final exams or a big business project. But both these things require long hours, late nights and social sacrifices. You’ll probably have to block out your weekends for studying or working. But that’s uncomfortable. Much easier to leave the work for later so you can do comfy things, like watch TV and go out with friends. But further down the line, maybe you failed that exam. Maybe you half-assed the project and missed out on a chance for a promotion. If only you had put in more time and effort. If only…

Wouldn’t you rather have traded a little discomfort in the short term for health and happiness in the long run?

This applies not only to comfort in the sense of a lack of effort, but comfort in the sense of being too scared to leave mediocrity behind in pursuit of something better.

Hate your job? Quit. Hate where you live? Move. Hate the way you feel? Stop eating crap. Hate the way you look? Pick up something heavy.

There is no way to make progress, in lifting or in life, without pushing yourself to the point of discomfort. If you want to lose 30 pounds, you’re going to have to suffer through hunger and cardio. If you want to gain 30 pounds of muscle, you’re going to have to lift heavy things and force-feed yourself even when you’re not hungry. Your body and mind may fight you the whole way, but adaptation must be forced.

The body is extremely resistant to change. It is always desperately scrambling to get back to homeostasis. The body doesn’t want to shed extra body fat because it serves as insulation and an easy source of reserved fuel. And the body certainly doesn’t want to pack on extra muscle unless it deems it absolutely necessary for survival. After hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, the human body knows what it wants – what are you willing to do to change it?

There is no reason to accept things that make you unhappy. Do not settle for the “comfort” of mediocrity. Take risks, make changes and get uncomfortable. Earn your comfort.