The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

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Apparently, even the government and military believe so because challenging our military and police with progressively more stress is how they test their stress management and resiliency as I’ve recently learned through a podcast. I can still remember the first time I ate a low-grade steak over a campfire after working 16 hours, it was the most delicious meal I’ve ever had.

Interestingly, I had put off cleaning the cars because I hate auto detailing and I keep telling myself I should outsource since I don’t get any enjoyment from it. It’s definitely not for everyone, and I don’t know if I would recommend it for a long career as the schedule doesn’t lend itself to a very balanced lifestyle. Everything we need, and much we don’t, is at our fingertips: food, soft beds, temperature-controlled shelter. Rather than letting them derail your grand plan to live out your values and become the person you want to be, you have to master them.

It was hard to keep my tools, and my food supply in the cooler, and myself protected from the scorching sun (and a strange neverending blizzard of tree pollen) while still getting the job done.

But I still knew that in the bigger picture, they are good for me if I accept them as the lessons they are rather than choosing to continue to worry about them. Meanwhile, hundreds of others get in the oversized, motorized, climate-controlled wheelchairs to further clog the very same roads that they endlessly whine are "a nightmare", "traffic-choked", etc. From my personal experience, and I agree with author/blogger Mark Manson on this, living in an attention economy with modern technology makes it hard to focus and requires an “attention diet” to improve mental health (much like people require a nutritional diet to improve physical health).

Those in the study who had faced adversity reported higher life satisfaction and fewer psychological and physical symptoms compared to those who’d spent their life sheltered. In a world dominated by technology, which allows us to stay in contact with each other at all times, nearly 50% of Americans claim that they feel lonely. Discover the evolutionary mind and body benefits of living at the edges of your comfort zone and reconne But I think his history with overindulgence in the hollow comforts of alcohol also gives him an edge on writing about the battle between comfort and hardship on the bigger stage of life in general. We may not enjoy whatever discomfort we expose ourselves to in the moment—be it a physical, mental, or spiritual hardship—but doing so is key to personal growth and even just plain contentment.

One day I was sprinting up and down a firearms range while wearing 30 pounds of kit and instructing tactical shooting in 90 degree heat. We all need to be grateful for this privilege and remember it when we are in the dumps over our first-world problems.When I run up against something that is annoying because it’s not perfect/easy/comfortable, I ask myself, Why is that important? However, if we’re to take that first step outside of our comfort zone, we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Only then, once you reach these minimum basic things for human survival, should you expect that more exotic and niche medicines and treatments are the only course of action.

So the human animal has to consciously make the decision to do that which goes against his/her basic instincts. If few or none of them apply, there is still good news: there are lots of jobs that DO offer these things. The most useful comments are those written with the goal of learning from or helping out other readers – after reading the whole article and all the earlier comments. As the trip went on, more things happened, almost as if The Comfort Crisis book were trying to prove a point. Thinking about death and impermanence can make us happier, and help us to live more meaningful lives.Early humans used to regularly face potentially lethal danger from hungry predators and venomous snakes, members of other tribes, violent weather and treacherous landscapes, loss of social status, and so on.