Don’t Let Comfort Interfere with Self-Betterment

All too often, our better angels are shouted down by the twin idols of Comfort and Laziness.

I’m sure you’ve encountered this. You start the day with the best of intentions — to read, to exercise, to work on that project you’ve been putting off — and, before you know what’s happening, you’re watching yet another episode of The Walking Dead on Netflix.

It makes sense. Growth only happens through challenge and resistance, things towards which we aren’t naturally inclined. It’s a lot easier to sit and watch something, or read another list on Buzzfeed, or upvote a few more things on Reddit, than to do something difficult. It doesn’t matter if that difficult thing is in our best interest.

In his speech The Strenuous Life, Teddy Roosevelt addresses the futility of chasing comfort as a goal:

A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.

Who among you would teach your [children] that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes — to be the ultimate goal after which they strive?

A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

Whatever it is you’ve been putting off until later — exercise, reading, a project — just get started. All you need is to build some momentum, to overcome the resting inertia that comfort and laziness create. A year from now, you’ll be grateful you did.

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