Uncomfortable Won’t Kill You.

We all have better things to do than sit around reading about productivity on the web, right?

So let’s make this one short, sweet, and to the freakin’ point. A veritable bitch-slap of a wake-up call. A font-lette of pajama-clad wisdom, if you will.

’Cause we all have much better things to be doing today, right?

(Bingewatching season 2 of Sense8 and pretend-decorating my new beach pretend-mansion. Thanks for asking! You?)

We’re flawed human beings. Flawed and fabulous.

One of our most commonly shared flaws is that we hate being uncomfortable.

Seriously, think about it. How much energy and time do we spend trying to avoid situations outside our own strictly defined comfort zones?

We don’t lose weight, even though we know what we have to do to lose it — for most of us, eat less crap and make better choices.

Why? Because not eating the crap we love and making better choices means making different choices — which makes us uncomfortable.

We don’t quit smoking, even though it’s terrible for us, dangerous to our health, and devastating to our finances.

Why, for the love of God and — y’know, breathing?

Because going through the process of quitting makes us uncomfortable. Even the thought of quitting makes habitual smokers squirm!

We don’t work hard/long enough on writing our novels or screenplays — or, we do, but then when we’re finished, we endlessly revise and never actually send them out into the world.

For the love of Spielberg, whyyyyyy? Because putting our work out there makes us uncomfortable. We might get turned down! We might even get — quelle horreur! — criticized by others.

We stay stuck because for whatever reason — even for reasons that don’t stand up to logic and critical thought — we feel more comfortable in the stuck place than in the unstuck place.

So what’s the answer?

Simple: We have to map out our specific comfort boundaries. We need to know exactly where our borders between “I’m OK with this” and “I’m so not OK with this” lie, so we can figure out whether we need to step over them.

Where are you stuck?

What’s feeling stagnant in your life? Where are you not making progress towards your goals? Where are you not being productive, or at least as productive as you’d like to be?

Got the answer?

Great. Now: Find the comfort in it.

Something in there feels good, and something in what you need to do is feeling awfully not-good. You need to pinpoint it. Define it. Yes, put it into specific, clear, concise words. Write it down.

For example:

“Finishing my novel feels uncomfortable because _______________.”

Now, all you have to do is convince yourself of the truth: It may be uncomfortable to move out of it, but uncomfortable won’t kill you. And what’s on the other side is so. Much. Better.

When you believe that the pain of not-achieving exceeds the pain of doing-different, you will succeed.

It’s as simple — and as complex — as that.

photo credit: OakleyOriginals Sleepy Time via photopin (license)