No B.S Friday: Once life starts pushing you, it starts sucking you
You have to be constantly pushing at your comfort zones.
Like constantly. Because once you stop pushing they start contracting.
And once they start contracting, there’s no limit to that process, until your comfort zone is reduced to the 3sq feet of space under your doona.
Everything in this world seems to work on a use it or lose it basis.
Take the garden. Once you stop actively gardening a space, the grass and the weeds move in, and the daisies and zucchinis disappear.
Use it or lose it.
Or take your muscles. Exercise keeps them toned and operational. But stop moving and they quickly atrophy – as your biological resources get diverted elsewhere.
Use it or lose it.
Or courage. If you’re pushing on your edges on a regular basis, you start to feel comfortable in the uncomfortable. You learn to find ease in risk. You become chill in pressure.
But if you stop pushing on your edges – if you stop taking risks and putting yourself in foreign situations, you lose the ability to live outside your comfort zone.
Use it or lose it.
I think that’s why so many old people become conservative and fearful in their old age.
Partly there’s an insecurity that creeps in as your body starts to deteriorate. At a deep level, you know you not the match for wild wolves you used to be. So there’s an element of fearfulness that comes with that.
But more than that I think it’s just that old people have the time and resources to pillow-fort themselves into comfortable lifestyles.
They live in communities where wild things don’t happen. They haven’t missed a meal in 50 years. They know the TV shows they like, the news anchors they like, the breakfast cereal they like, and the best way to get down to the shops.
When you’re young, life just naturally gets you out of your comfort zone regularly. You have to rent in a dodgy part of town. You don’t know what music you like, so you have to get out there and explore. You’re still finding your tribe, so you’re out there meeting new people.
Its not that young people are naturally more adventurous.
It’s that life keeps them pushing on their comfort zones, and so it’s just a muscle that’s well used.
But as we get older, life stops pushing us as much, and we don’t need to draw on that muscle as regularly.
We begin to lose it.
And look, that’s ok. If you’re 95, its ok to have settled opinions about which brand of tea you prefer. There probably isn’t any real need to be out there experimenting with Amazonia toad-extracts.
But it’s about the life you want to live.
And for me, this is something I’m keen to lean into.
Particularly with the resources I have at my disposal. I have the ability to make my life very, very comfortable.
But I’m not going to let that happen because I like growth, and I don’t want to see the frontiers of my comfort zone retreating.
I’m going to keep using my courage before I lose it.
JG.