Psychological Comfort: an Underestimated Superpower
When I was young(er), I spent about 2 years on the road. I only carried one big backpack, always impressing people by how little I had, always wishing I had way less every time I had to move to the next place. I did odd little jobs and I tried to always have the next one in line ready, to be forced to leave regularly, in case I got too comfortable. I needed to keep moving, to see everything. One of the things I was not prepared for in the psychological discomfort of it all.
Of course, there’s the physical discomfort. You wear the same old jeans for one year in a row. Your clothes are never really clean, always crumpled. After a while, somehow, there’s sand everywhere. The beds are uncomfortable, everything is itchy, your clothes are too big or too small and you always have at least one open wound. But this is Adventure. This was expected. It was Anthony Bourdain who said “If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel — as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to”. And that was fine with me. I derived a sort of pride after a while. Sending pictures of my scars and bruises back home to my sister as some badges of honor.
What I didn’t foresee was the psychological discomfort of the never-ending moving. It’s not as apparent as jeans that don’t fit and tiny cuts uncomfortably infected. And it’s not right away, it kinds of takes you by surprise.
I remember clearly the first time I realized I was missing it. I was working in a small town outside of Melbourne. It was my weekend off, and one of the guys drove me into town. I was meeting some friends that I’ve met in the city before starting a new job. And when he dropped me off in the center, and I was working towards the meeting point, I hit me. How nice it was, to walk in a city to MEET someone. Someone that you already know, even if it’s just from a short while ago. To have a conversation where you won’t need to explain first where you come from where you’re heading what’s your name. Just jump right in. How long it had been since I didn’t go somewhere to meet someone. Always new people. Arriving at a new hostel room. Talking to whoever’s there. Going into the kitchen with a pack of beer to offer to someone there. Make plans for that very night. Stay 3 days, leave again. And yes, undeniably, the people you meet on the road are amazing. The friendships you create in 3 days are surprisingly strong, born out of an extraordinary context. And sometimes those people will have an influence on you years after, without ever seeing them again. They open your mind to horizons you never knew existed. They teach you, about the world and about yourself, how you react to them, how you react to this foreign environment.
But after a while, you just get exhausted. After a while you get bored. It feels like you’ve met every “type” of person you could possibly ever meet in a hostel. People start to blur together. You long for home. You long for home in a way I never thought I would. I longed for normality. For the comfort of a discussion with my friends. I wanted to talk with someone who knew me. To whom I wouldn’t have to prove myself. Because when you meet new people, you have to be ON all the time. Be funny, be alive, tell good stories, be cool, be likable. With your friends, you can just sit back. They already know you, they already love you. You can complain, you can wonder, you can just relax in the conversation. The psychological fuzziness of talking to an old friend is underrated.
And as we grow older, these people who give us psychological comfort should be cherished beyond anything else. As we face new challenges and big life decisions, the comfort and the ease of old friends are invaluable. Those are the people that can check you, that can stop you. Your oldest friends give you something that no one else can, not even your partner: unconditional love. They have and they will love you through all your phases, through all your goals, through all your locations. They will love you when you change jobs when you change objectives when you change your partner. They will love you when you’ll want the big office just as much as when you’ll want a dog and a garden. They know who you are, at your very chore, because you had too many late at night, unfiltered, drunk conversations. They will accept your changes as long as you don’t change your core. And having people like that around you, in your thirties, when you’ll make those life-changing decisions when you’ll shed what your parents wanted for you and go for what you wanted in the first place, is invaluable. They will never lose sight of who you are, even if you do. Those kinds of friends for me are very few and pure gold. They are making me safe.
It is for me one of the pillars of “psychological safety”. One of those safety nets that makes me feel like I can try anything because I have safety.
Just as having a job that you know, that you are good at, is making you feel safe. It’s making you feel confident, self-assured. It’s making daily life comfortable. But in truth, it’s more than just the job in particular. It’s more than just a building where you enter every morning, a coffee machine where you’ll see with familiar faces. It’s even more than a paycheck at the end of the day, and some good years on the resume. Sometimes people lose perspective of this, in their daily routine, in their comfort zone. Because sometimes, what is making you feel comfortable is different than what is making you feel safe. The psychological comfort of your job goes beyond the daily exercise of it. It is the knowledge of a set of skills that you acquired, through studies or through experiences, and that you are now mastering. And this set of skills is making you safe. Because no one can take it away. It doesn’t matter if you lose your job, if you change your industry, even if you reorientate. This set of skills is yours. It is making you valuable. It is making you knowledgeable, and it gives you value, self-confidence, and purpose.
A lot of people are thinking of psychological comfort as a set of outside conditions, reunited to give you a sense of safety. They think of it as societal and physical conditions. To have a job where you know what you are doing, in a city that you know, with people and friends that are making you feel safe.
And sometimes that is true. Sometimes you need to get home, to those comforts. But I think it is a mistake to think of those safeguards as psychological comfort. This is your comfort zone. A comfort zone is good. A place to take refuge. A place for a break. But you can not stay there if you want to grow, evolve, and reach your goals. You need to get out there to reach. And for me, it is made possible by those things giving me psychological comfort. Non Material things. Like my oldest friends. No matter where I am in the world, I know they are there, in my pocket, just one phone call away. And sure, after two years, you might need a break, meet them, breathe in the comfort zone. But it’s only to better launch.
My degrees and my experiences are giving me psychological comfort. Accomplishments are something that no one will ever be able to take away from you. It is something that you have done, that you have acquired, that gives you value. No matter what happens next, I will have spent two years traveling the world by myself. That gives me safety and comfort.
The savings that I laboriously managed to accumulate on my account are giving me psychological comfort. I won’t use them (one can hope), I don’t need them but knowing they are there, just in case, makes me comfortable.
The mere fact that I have a sister, out there, even if I don’t see her as often as I would like, is giving me a great deal of psychological comfort. She’s the one person I call with any problem and any decision.
Psychological comfort is made of a lot of pillars, different to every individual. It is the things that you patiently accumulated in life. From the studies, you validated to friendship you worked at, a family that you can count on, tough but successful experiences, money, skills, personality traits. It is immaterial things surrounding you all the time, everywhere you might venture. They quietly create safety nets all around you. Those things allow you to take the next big step, to take a chance. They allow you to leave for a new city, to quit your job, to change your career. Because no matter how scary that is, no matter how many things you might lose in the process, you have those safety nets. Those psychological comforts that will always be there.
And those assurances should be strong enough to allow you to try out new things. Paradoxically, this psychological comfort that you’ve created should let you leave your comfort zone armed for whatever is out there. It is the base of an empire that you will enlarge but putting yourself in uncomfortable positions. Because you can.
