You Forgot Your Common Sense

ah comfort! That thing that puts us at ease, that thing we are used to, that makes us feel good. I was recently asked, “Do you think fear stops you sometimes from moving forward?” my answer was simple “of course!”. Fear is just the presence of the unknown. You have no idea if what’s ahead will cause pain, threaten you or your life(style) in any way, or be dangerous.  Moving forward creates an expectation, results, the higher up you climb the more the reality sets in you could fall. Moving forward means change, uncomfortable change since you don’t really have an idea what’s ahead or how to prepare for it. If you knew what was ahead would you have the same fear to move towards it?

My conversation was followed up by “why don’t we ever think of standing still as scary”. My answer was simple again, “comfort”. Standing still means we are okay where we are if you weren’t comfortable you wouldn’t be standing there.  It becomes easy to deal with the day to day you’re accustomed and familiar with. Because we know this space, what’s around it, how to manipulate its situations, the demons it comes with and how to take them down. In comfort we know what to expect, what works vs what doesn’t, how far we can stretch before things get uncomfortable, how to bounce back, we don’t fear anything around where we are standing, there are no threats we haven’t already figured a solution for, nothing about this space is dangerous so long as it’s under our control.

One must also accept with comfort, you will watch other people strive for and achieve the life and dreams you wanted but were too afraid to reach for. You’ll accept every excuse (lie) you tell yourself as to why the decision your chose to make to stay within the comfort were better. You’ll accept treatment that you feel you don’t deserve because you’re “used” to it.

Comfort is a choice, a safe, predictable, controllable choice- nothing wrong with that. Many people don’t want to be seen uncomfortable, failing, lost, looking like they don’t know what they’re doing, actually don’t know what they’re doing, so they become masters of repetition. Comfort is a battle between you and you.  YOU decide what the level is, YOU decide to stay there or not. YOU decide what is and is not a threat or makes you uncomfortable.

Failure is proof you tried something outside of your comfort zone.