My friend Jordan has a brutally honest flag hanging behind the squat rack in his home gym. It reads: Comfort is a Slow Death. The fabric of the flag is yellow, and the type is bold and blue – it arcs across the middle of the flag. I love seeing it every time he sends me a picture or video from his gym. It’s a potent reminder. Comfort, in any lane of life, rarely moves us forward.
We’re all human, we’ve all let comfortable negligence take something from us – or keep us from getting something that we wanted. Comfort leads to complacency. Complacency leads to loss or to never having.
It happens in relationships. Comfort causes us to settle in and assume the other person is getting what they need from us. We stop doing the little things that let them know we care. The connection dwindles. Sometimes it’s rebuilt, other times it fades away.
It happens with businesses. Owners and entrepreneurs get comfortable doing what they did to get themselves to a particular point. That comfort keeps them doing the same things over and over. Then they’re surprised when it stops working. The things that got them to the first level won’t get them to the second. But comfort blinded them to it.
It happens in training. People get comfortable with a training split and do it over and over for years on end. They make no changes, so they stop changing. Comfort stole their potential progress.
Comfort is a thief that steals from us a penny at a time when we aren’t looking.
Most of us know this. But we don’t embrace it.
That’s probably because it’s cliched. We’ve all seen a million memes and motivational videos demanding that we embrace discomfort – yelling in our faces that it’s the only way forward. All the drama and spit flying from screaming mouths blends into a droning white noise. And we return to our comfort – our complacency continues.
There’s another reason we fail to wrap our arms around discomfort. It often doesn’t look or feel like we expect it to look and feel. We think of burning muscles and lungs starved for oxygen. But the discomfort that does the most for us feels like slow, continuous movement. It’s not the high-heat sear on a steak. It’s setting the oven on low and letting the meat cook for hours.
Often, that doesn’t feel like anything; that’s why we fail to embrace it.
Other times it feels like longing. You want the thing – the strength, the relationship, the money – far faster than you’re getting it. The slowness eats at you and you go looking for a distraction, some kind of cheap dopamine hit to make you feel better. You jump programs because your deadlift isn’t moving “fast enough.” You try to get laid instead of staying the course with the connection you’re building. You waste time looking for easy income instead of devoting that time to building your business. The slow burn over-taxes your convictions, and you give in. Failing to embrace the uncomfortable pace robs you of the beauty that awaited you on the other side of your commitment.
I once quipped to Chris, “If it happens fast, it won’t last.” It just rolled out of my mouth, but it’s some real ass shit. True change, true growth, and true connection happen at their own pace. And most of the time that pace is much slower than we desire. It’s an unsettling truth, but it’s one we must accept – one we must embrace.
Comfort is a slow death. But embracing a slow discomfort keeps you living.
Embrace the uncomfortable pace.
(Hat tip to Coach Cory for coming up with and sharing Embrace the Uncomfortable Pace in a recent conversation with Chris about personal values.)
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