Our quest for comfort is something that allows us to find peace and survive all together as a species. But, like many things in life, too much comfort can also have detrimental effects on our well being in the long run. So, what is comfort exactly? Comfort is a state of physical ease and freedom from pain. This ease is what allows us to crave continual comfort, because why would I want it to be any other way, right?
However, when our comfort level is at our highest, our drive and motivation automatically reaches its lowest point. We don’t want to move forward, improve or even try something new. When promoting nothing but sameness and remaining in our comfort zone, we become stagnant and end up not pushing our own limits. In consequence, spending too much time in this zone can lead to anxiety, passivity, lack of growth and even regression. Let’s say someone has been completing the same task at work for over 10 years and suddenly, their boss asks them to do something new. This will evidently cause a rise in anxiety as it is completely outside of their comfort zone. When we constantly seek comfort, we tend to not take any risks which prevents the discovery of new possibilities! With this comes many other issues such as resentment and jealousy for not growing in life as their friends do.
This in of itself is the main problem. Choosing comfort will cause us to lose opportunities that could have otherwise presented themselves through calculated risks or just putting ourselves out there. When thinking of comfort in a psychological sense, it is similar to our physical definition. The same way that no one grows muscle, loses weight, or becomes fit by just being comfortable on the sofa; no one becomes psychologically fit by avoiding stress and staying in the comfort zone.
Of course it is good to sit on the couch, relax and just chill out! But we all know the pitfalls in doing this for an extended period of time. We may end up falling behind with other important tasks in our life, such as physical activity. The same can also be said with psychology! When engaging in excessive comfort, we end up slowly losing our cognitive fitness and stress tolerance. Simply put, when we don’t prepare ourselves for potential difficulties that life will imminently throw at us, we can end up experiencing high levels of anxiety or panic at the sign of the smallest stressor. Whether they are positive events, such as receiving a promotion or buying a house, or a negative one, we can begin to feel signs of stress due to these changes.
So, how do we build psychological fitness and prepare ourselves for whatever it is that may come our way? Well, let’s think about physical fitness. How do we become fit physically? Typically, we will intentionally put our bodies through physical stress by working out, doing weight training, aerobic exercises, or even beginning certain types of diets. With these in mind, we must ask the next question. What does it take to go through such physical stress? Well to name just a few, we definitely need stamina, endurance, and discipline. In other words, it takes psychological fitness to achieve physical fitness!
Building our stress tolerance means physically putting ourselves through certain levels of stress. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to go bungee jumping or cliff diving! However, we can try new challenges that we have an interest in. For someone who is passionate about swimming but fears social interactions, this could mean trying swimming lessons! Alternatively, when we feel that our job has become a comfortable routine, we can try taking on new tasks! Once done, we can identify other areas of our lives that are stressful or anxiety provoking. Slowly but surely, we will then be able to gradually increase the intensity as our tolerance is built.
However, this can’t be done without the most important factor: Mindset. When our mindset is rooted in the idea that life should be easy, then of course when difficulties arise, we will be extremely disappointed and unwell. On the other hand, let’s say you are faced with a stressful situation and take on the mindset that it is an opportunity for growth. You will now be more likely to be motivated and mobilize yourself to face the situation and find solutions. We can view stressors and problems as puzzles, or if you love math, we can view it as a math problem. This is called being solution-oriented rather than problem-focused. When we are more comfort-oriented, we will likely have a low tolerance for stress and in consequence, tend to be more problem-focused. This is completely normal since any problem, big or small, can be overwhelming at certain times. Our goal is to gradually become more solution-oriented by identifying the problem and asking ourselves: what can we do about it?
So, what does this all mean? Essentially, just like ingesting too much salt is bad for us, comfort is much the same. You, of course, need salt to be healthy, just like you do need comfort. However, an excess of anything can have negative effects on our health. We must learn to love stress and remain curious. Don’t let stress shut you down, but instead let it wake you up. When we come upon an obstacle in life, we can teach ourselves to reframe the situation as a learning opportunity. As mentioned, building your stress tolerance and overall physical and psychological fitness can be achieved by increasing your physical stress. Stress gets a bad rep, so let’s reframe it today!
