It’s Sunday morning. You can sleep in, the rain is falling outside as you snuggle comfortably in your blankets knowing that you can stay here as long as you want. You feel relaxed and free. There is no effort, nothing needed of you. You could stay here forever, in this feeling of comfort...forever.
We all love these kind of moments where we feel completely comfortable and at ease. When life is good and everything feels effortless. But the reality is that we are not always in those states nor can we stay there even if we wanted to, in order to fully experience an extraordinary life.
Comfort is our safe space. The place we can go and know that everything is good and no hard work is required. It’s the place to fall back on when we need rest. Slipping into your pjs at night, having a conversation with your best friend over a glass of wine or engaging in one of your favourite activities are comfortable situations.
Putting on high heels to be at the office at 8am, having to engage in a difficult conversation with someone to tell them how you feel about something or going skydiving when you’re afraid of heights are not so comfortable situations and usually not our first choices. But there is so much to learn in those moments. Life is not about always being comfortable nor is it about always pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s about listening to know when it’s time to be where and do what. It’s what I call “The art of making things happen through Intention, Action & Letting Go”.
Ironically we are being taught most often in this generation to be present. To be here and now. Everyone is working so hard on presence by meditating, taking workshops, doing yoga and so on. What if I told you it’s not only about being here and now. It’s about being here and there. It’s about always gazing forward and simultaneously being here in the present moment. Because what’s happening right here, right now has key information to help you move forward. Our comfort zone is our resting place, somewhere to stop along the way on a regular basis and just be! To enjoy what we have before striving for the next thing. But human nature is set up for us to want the next thing, to be excited about the future and what we can achieve because we are constructed to evolve. We crave growth! That is our nature! And we all know when growth happens right? In difficult and often very uncomfortable situations. Think about one really challenging moment in your life and how it shifted your future and your way of thinking. It’s happened to all of us (unless you are resisting everything life sends your way). Even when we don’t want to accept to see the good that can come from something hard, we know inside that there is something to learn.
So the best way to go about this journey is to know when it’s time to get a little uncomfortable (or sometimes a lot) so that you can move into the next chapter of your life or tap into new potential without rushing to move forward. Because always rushing this journey to get to the next thing will only get you closer to the end. And we all know what the end is. Personally I’m not in a rush to get there. We all will unfortunately, as morbid as it sounds, but if we can at least learn as much as we can along the way, enjoy as much as we can when we have it and see everything that comes into our life as an opportunity to grow then we can balance being here and there so that we feel all at once grounded today and inspired for the next thing to come tomorrow.
To read more articles on this topic, head over to Mosaic Magazine, where this was originally published!