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Conquer Your Comfort Zone

Discomfort is the gatekeeper to a better life

Brian Relay
5 min readSep 4, 2019
Photo by sue hughes on Unsplash

I was at a local diner the other day getting some take-out. While taking my order, the lady behind the counter stopped, pondered, then looked up at me and said, “I’ll need to ask someone else to help you. She feels more comfortable doing this than I do.”

As she walked away, I promptly pulled out my phone, opened Medium, and drafted the title of this article to take note of the moment.

I got to thinking about our relationship to discomfort. My personal experiences have taught me that it’s absolutely crucial to do things that are uncomfortable. It’s the only way to truly grow as a person.

If we shy away from difficulties, we stagnate. There’s a funny thing about stagnation; it’s not a neutral state like we popularly believe. When water stagnates, a layer of dust and grime forms on top. Mosquitos lay eggs along the surface. Mold accumulates.

It’s not pretty.

We tend to think that we can stay fixed in a particular state. But this just isn’t true.

If you’re not going forward, you’re going backwards.

Even if you do nothing, life continues on. The natural processes of the universe keep rolling forward.

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Brian Relay
Brian Relay

Written by Brian Relay

Aspiring novelist/director/podcaster/spiritual guru/normal person

Responses (2)

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Resistance is this mystical force that aims to keep us average and prevent us from becoming the person we long to be.

It also causes unnecessary suffering. :/

1

I write run and meditate. However, I don’t seem to ever actually do these two critical things that I know I need to do.

You’re SO not alone in this!🤣