My comfort is important. Much more important than learning something new, most of the time. I would much rather sit and watch episodes of The Simpsons that I’ve seen a thousand times than watch something new. I have to force myself to step outside of my comfort zone constantly to keep improving on my situation.

Of course, watching a TV show I’ve never watched is a damn poor example of stepping outside my comfort zone. I’ve got something better.

Recently, due to panic attacks (actually, they ought to be called Holy-Shit-I’m-Dying!-I’m-Dying! Attacks), I forced myself to give a go at quitting smoking. I’ve never in my life been so afraid for my health that I was willing to give quitting smoking a try, but either I let my quality of life slip through my fingers or spend some time in discomfort.

Immediately, my brain piped up with the old excuses. Wait. Wait. I mean, you don’t really need to do this, do you? We don’t really like this feeling. You should stop quitting – now. It won’t hurt you. We promise. No!

For the first little while, I didn’t pay attention. I’ve gone back and forth a few times since quitting, but the lesson was clear. Discomfort caused by something new won’t kill me. It won’t. As much as my brain believes it will instantly explode and be splattered against the wall, discomfort will never do that.

Days go by and it gets easier. That’s for sure. My brain has given up slightly on bombarding me with reasons to murder my lungs, and when it does pipe up, I can exert my mastery over it a little easier. A little. It still yells pretty loud.

My First Lesson in Discomfort

There are moments in life you know you’re about to walk into a hurricane of discomfort and there’s not a thing you can do but continue. Death is one of those things. Once you start crossing that threshold, you can’t turn back to put underpants on.

The first time I experienced non-choice related discomfort, I was walking through the doors of prison. I was terrified, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I walked through those doors, the guards greeted me with a hearty, “Hey fuckface! Step behind the yellow line!”

And a ‘good morning’ to you, too, officer. That was just the beginning of my concrete vacation. The deal is this. I survived prison. I’ll survive most of the other discomfort of the experience in my life. If I can just use that same tolerance of discomfort I used during the time I was in prison, I’ll be a rockstar before I’m dead.

Habit, Habit, Habit

We have this strange sense of doing something just because we’ve made a habit of it. Our beings believe that because we’ve done something for so long, the only way to continue is to keep doing it. This is nonsense.

The longer a person remains in bad habits, the more they get reinforced. So the simple answer is to just start reinforcing good habits.

Photo credit: © Kirill Zdorov – Fotolia.com