Getting Comfortably Uncomfortable

Usually, we keep hearing that we should get out of our comfort zones. Real success is out of your comfort zone. The growth is where your comfort ends. However, no one tells us how to do it.

I have been trying to get out of my comfort zone for many years and it has not been working for me.

When we listen to so many motivational speeches and are bombarded with so many motivational stories on Insta, we get pumped up and start to change everything drastically, and then we fail.

Why Do We Fail?

This sudden change in our habits and things we do is not sustainable because we are comfort-seeking people as a species.

If you look around closely, everything we have is designed to bring comfort to our lives. From the AC to TV to nice shoes to big cars, the 24/7 water in the tap, one tap food delivery, and whatnot. We are the most abundant generation in terms of comfort. So, it’s really hard to get out of my comfort zone.

“Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream.”

Peter McWilliams

Many people keep doing the same job for years, even if they hate doing it because they are comfortable with it.

Many people choose to stay in a toxic relationship for years because they are comfortable with the toxicity.

We are afraid of new things or uncertainty.

So, the question comes back again.

What Do We Do?

How do we approach individual growth? How do we get out of our comfort zone?

We all have heard the story of that hacker who hacked Rs.10 from millions of people’s accounts and nobody noticed and even if some people noticed no one cared enough to go report it.

I am not sure how much truth, there is in that story and I don’t even care, but what I am actually interested in is the process of Rs.10 for each account.

• We don’t have to go and read the whole book in one day (I tried it and failed miserably).
• We don’t have to go and do all the exercises in one day (I tried this too and failed miserably)
• We don’t have to go full-day fasting all of sudden.
• We don’t have to write the whole novel in one day.

We all have Rs. 1440 (1440 minutes per day) in our accounts every day. We don’t have to steal the whole account in one go, instead, we have to steal Rs.10 worth of effort every day from our account (routine), and by the end of the year, we will have Rs 3650 worth of collective effort. Even if we have skipped a few days (Let’s be honest and realistic, we would skip a few days), we will still be left with more than 3000+ minutes.

These 10 minutes everyday thing is for starts. Once you are comfortable with these 10 minutes of discomfort every day, it will become your new comfort zone.

Now, you can add another 10 minutes of discomfort every day very comfortably.

That’s Exactly What We Need to Do.

Open your phone’s video, read 2 pages of any book on camera, record it and keep it in a folder. Just do it every day.

In 7 days, you will see a tremendous change in the way you read, your confidence on camera, and most probably you will have completed one book in the next 7 days.

Moreover, it will slowly get into your habit which will compound in a year or so and give you significant visible results.

Of course, there are people who are book lovers who can read a book in one go and absorb all the information in it as well.

However, we are not talking about those people. We are talking about average people like me who struggle with the change or who do not have time or patience or interest to read the whole book in one go.

The same theory can be replicated for all other things in life as well.

So, yeah. 10 minutes every day which lasts, instead of 100 minutes a day, and then never again.

Let’s add 10 minutes of discomfort every day in our comfort zone and get comfortably uncomfortable.

Cheers,

Rahul Sudha

Getting Comfortably Uncomfortable,

29/11/2021