"Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?”
Seek discomfort, not comfort, says Oliver Burkeman. Heart Leap Writing Hour starts at 9am. Zoom link below
At Heart Leap, I explore how to build a happy, creative, and simple life. At 9 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, I host ‘happy writing hours’ for paid subscribers (Zoom link below). It’s for anyone who is trying to write a book, start a Substack, or just have a little accountability for their writing practice. We chat for 5 minutes or so, and then we write quietly together for the rest of the hour. It’s strangely comforting and motivational to have a cohort of writers to support you and write alongside you. I also run monthly master classes on motivation and inspiration.
“Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort?”
― Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
I feel like I don’t ever make any progress in my life without getting uncomfortable.
I don’t always like it. But that’s Ok, says Oliver Burkeman, author of the Sunday Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks.
I had the pleasure of working with Oliver when he was our ‘productivity expert’ at Psychologies magazine for four years. Here’s some of his best advice I live by.
“Pursuing the life projects that matter to you the most will almost always entail not feeling fully in control of your time, immune to the painful assaults of reality, or confident about the future. It means embarking on ventures that might fail, perhaps because you’ll find you lacked sufficient talent; it means risking embarrassment, holding difficult conversations, disappointing others, and getting so deep into relationships that additional suffering—when bad things happen to those you care about—is all but guaranteed. And so we naturally tend to make decisions about our daily use of time that prioritize anxiety-avoidance instead. Procrastination, distraction, commitment-phobia, clearing the decks, and taking on too many projects at once are all ways of trying to maintain the illusion that you’re in charge of things. In a subtler way, so too is compulsive worrying, which offers its own gloomy but comforting sense that you’re doing something constructive to try to stay in control. James Hollis recommends asking of every significant decision in life: “Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?” The question circumvents the urge to make decisions in the service of alleviating anxiety and instead helps you make contact with your deeper intentions for your time. If you’re trying to decide whether to leave a given job or relationship, say, or to redouble your commitment to it, asking what would make you happiest is likely to lure you toward the most comfortable option, or else leave you paralyzed by indecision. But you usually know, intuitively, whether remaining in a relationship or job would present the kind of challenges that will help you grow as a person (enlargement) or the kind that will cause your soul to shrivel with every passing week (diminishment). Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.”
What does comfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment look like for you?
What does your comfort zone look and feel like?
How much time do you spend time there?
What makes you uncomfortable and why?
Do you believe you need to step out of your comfort zone to make progress in your life- why?
When have you been most uncomfortable in your life? Did you help or hinder you?
Is it true that growth lies just outside your comfort zone?
When is seeking comfort a good idea?
The Heart Leap Writing Hour starts at 9am. Zoom link below
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