The Myth of Comfort: Why Doing the Right Thing Can Feel Like The Wrong Thing

Hello and welcome to another episode of Words With Myself.

There seems to be a common misconception that the right thing will always feel right and the wrong thing will always feel wrong, or that doing something good will make you feel good and doing something bad will make you feel bad. And this kind of binary thinking gets people confused when they do things like go to the gym or exercise or set a boundary and doing so makes them feel bad.

So they immediately assume that what they are doing is wrong or bad and not that discomfort and pain and suffering is a natural byproduct of doing things that are good for you. It's not always going to be that doing the right thing for you will feel amazing, that it will be a joy to do. Oftentimes, doing what is right is the hardest thing to do at all. There is a reason why so many people find it easier to be bad or lazy or malicious or all of these kind of things.

It's not because they're strong people. Every strong person I know is a kind soul. They look out for people. They are warm and affirming. They're not soft, they're not weak, but they are somebody who is generous, someone who is loving, someone who is caring. These are qualities of strong people because it takes a lot of energy to be kind. It takes a lot of energy to be loving.

And yet we see those kind of attributes as weaker than someone who is aggressive, someone who is loud, or they put other people down. We see them as someone who is strong, but really that's the greatest weakness of all.

It's someone who is so weak, so compromised that they feel like they have to compromise the entire world to feel secure in themselves and that isn't strength and yet on the other side of that people who are kind are loving they tend to get trampled on or abused or used and they feel like they're doing what is right and yet they're being punished for that and it feels bad or wrong it's easy to look at people who do crime for instance and they're like yeah but look they've got

this house and they've got this money and they've got these clothes and they've got all of this stuff that I don't have that I'm struggling for and yet they're the people that are doing wrong and I'm doing what I think is right and this is where it all gets muddied up because there is a difference between somebody who is nice and somebody who is good. To be good, you must be strong. To be nice, you're allowed to be weak.

Because everything that you do, you can chalk down to, yeah, but I'm doing it for someone else, or I'm doing it to accommodate someone else's feelings. I'm doing it to look after other people. And that will always be available as an excuse.

There will always be someone to look after. there will always be a world to put before yourself but what is difficult what is hard is to allow yourself to make connections with people to have relationships to be friends and be nice to people but at the same time affirm boundaries and stick up for yourself and don't let people take advantage yet because that's so difficult people want one or the other they're Like I'm going to be nice or I'm going to be cruel. And it doesn't work like that.

It does work like that for a lot of people. They use this kind of extremism to justify their position. Well, I was nice for ages. You know, I did everything for everyone. But now, because I was taken advantage of, because I was abused and mocked, now I'm not going to do anything for anyone. I'm not going to be there for people. I'm not going to say nice things. I'm going to go completely the other way, either be horrible to people or isolate myself completely.

And both of those are positions of weakness it is because you do not have the strength to be in relationships with people and yet stick up for yourself so because you know that you are weak in that area because you know that you find it difficult to not argue with people but be assertive with people to stick up for yourself to say this is what is right this is what is good for me this is what hurts me.

I don't like this. I do like this. Because you are not able to do that in confidence and communicate in that way, you then take that position of weakness, which is instead isolation or revenge. And both of those are weak. It's weakness. It doesn't matter that on both sides of those extremes, you've got the overly nice people and you've got the overly horrible people and both of those are positions of weakness.

Strength comes in balance. It comes in being able to do difficult things because they are difficult and not resulting or leaning on extremism on one way or another. It involves being in the middle. If you imagine somebody who is very strong and. It's not that they're overly happy all the time or that they are overly aggressive when someone shouts at them. It's in fact the opposite. It's that they are stoic and they're not taking on the energy of other people.

They're not allowing others' emotions to rule them. Instead, they are making their own decisions. They are being present and they are living in a way where they're not taking on from other people.

They are just living and being present and going through their day doing what they want to do and not attaching to all of these other things and all of these other people because that is true strength that balance that presence that is strength but avoiding things because they make you uncomfortable or they bring up negative emotions and feelings that is not a position of strength at all. That's a position of cowardice.

So when it comes to doing things and you're making all of these excuses and you want to do things, but you say, well, I can't because of X. That is not a position of strength. That is a position of weakness. You are either decided in your resolve to do said thing. So you say, I want to do this. That's what I'm doing. There is no, I have to do this. There is no force. That is pretend. You are pretending like you are being cornered or forced to make a decision.

And strength involves accountability and ownership. And for someone who takes accountability and ownership and responsibility. They can't be forced to do something. They accept that they make a decision to do the things that they do, to say the things that they say. They can't be made to feel something. They can't be made to do something. They are able to operate and be without being controlled. And that doesn't mean that every time that something positive happens.

It means it's actually something negative or vice versa for the negative what it does mean though is that doing feeling something feeling something negative feeling uncomfortable feeling scared feeling lost or feeling confused like none of these things are bad things inherently it is just how you feel about something else if you allow those feelings to deter you then you're not going to do anything you're going to stay in your comfort zone because your immediate response to doing difficult

things or doing things that you want to do is going.

To be well I have a load of negative emotion I've got all of these fear and doubts I'm worried that I can't do it I'm worried that it won't make me happy if I do do it I'm worried that it won't be all these things that I've imagined it to be and all of that fear and doubt will just make you go well there's no point in doing it anyway you know it's making me miserable even thinking about doing it so what's the point I might as well just continue as I am and of course that is

the death of your life you have then resolved to stay where you are you've accepted who you are and where you're at and you're not willing to go the distance you're not willing to actually live you want to stay in your comfort zone for the rest of your life that's what you're basically accepting and this isn't because you're happy where you are it's because you're scared of where what it will take to get to where you want to go but you don't want to let fear rule every decision that you make

you don't want to be pushed around by the world and your emotions and be this victim of life and i didn't ask to come here and now i've got to deal with all of this stuff and all of these people and i don't like it and all of this kind of stuff, it's just a position of weakness.

And if you want to get out of it, if you seriously want to start making changes, if you have accepted that you are not where you want to be in life, that things don't feel like you want them to feel, like things aren't changing in the way that you want them to change, that you're not living the life that you want to live, it's your fault. You need to own it and take responsibility and say, you know what?

I need to make changes serious changes and to do it it's going to be uncomfortable it's going to be painful there's going to be a lot that I have to go through and deal with in myself I'm going to have to force myself to do things that I don't want to do that don't make me happy that don't make me feel all of these good things that actually make me feel the opposite and I need to do that because I know that is what is required and once you

have gotten used to doing that all of a sudden it doesn't feel so bad anymore it's like anyone who's tried to start running knows like for the first time unless you're an absolute natural the first time you go running you're like this is terrible oh my god everything's on fire my lungs i feel terrible my breathing everything.

Everything hurts and nothing is nice or pleasant about it and you think god why do people run but then if you stick at it for a little bit and you know you work up your endurance and you go daily and you build up your skills and your breathing and your endurance you then realize oh this is actually really nice like I'm running in places that are beautiful and I'm kind of just got my headphones on the music playing or maybe I'm just listening to the birds and I'm not

even concentrating on all that discomfort in my body instead I'm just present and I'm flowing and I'm free and you never get to that feeling unless you push through all of that negative stuff it is a mandatory requirement and everything in life is like that there is areas of discomfort there is areas of pain if you feel like you're scared to do something or that something is painful but you've got this pull you've got this itch you know that you need to do it you know

you need to take action and you know it's like blocking you you can feel it you can't really put it into words because that's scary as soon as you put it into words that means you have to do something about it but you do you have to do something about this you have to change you have to take action you have to stop allowing yourself to do the wrong thing you have to stop making excuses for yourself and saying well it's okay you know

it's just this or it's just that or this was happening and that was happening no.

Not anymore. You have to pick yourself up and say, this is not what I want anymore and make it like put it down on paper. Say what you really want. Put your goals out there. Well, not even just your goals, just like a general area of life that you want to improve or where you're not happy and then mark out how you can improve that. And then every decision you make, you need to have that in the back of your mind. Like, does this bring me closer to that? Is this in alignment with who I am.

Would I make this decision if I was my higher self? Like if I was watching you, if God was like here watching me make this decision, what would I do? Would I do this? If there was 24-7 cameras watching me make every decision I made, would I make the decisions that I'm making now? You have to start framing things in a way that forces you out of this comfort zone because that is the only way you are going to change. You have to be aggressive with it.

You have to see it as a problem and treat it with the respect it deserves to say, I'm actually not happy with where I'm at. I'm not happy with the decisions I'm making. I'm sick of keep going over the same lessons and not learning. I'm not actually taking on from my experiences. I'm not using them to change.

I'm not looking at life. I'm not being present. I'm not doing the things that I want to do. Change. You have to change. You can't let yourself just continue this cycle or you will end up going by your days until you have reached your deathbed and you go, how did that happen? Time went so quickly. You know, I thought I had time to change all this, but you don't. You have no idea when you're going to die. It could happen any time.

And there is no guaranteed tomorrow. The only guarantee is that you have today, this present moment, this moment, not even today, this moment. Every moment like that is the same. No matter how far it is into the future, you only have the present moment. So in that present moment, as long as your decisions align with who you want to be and what you know to be true and what you want to make happen, what you want to materialize, then of course you will change.

Of course these things will happen as a natural consequence of you doing what you need to do in this present moment. They say it's the journey, not the destination because it's the journey that's important. And of course you can enjoy this. This doesn't have to be that you live your life in constant pain or constant suffering, but it does mean that you do what is necessary in order to free yourself from your own fear, from your own weakness, from your own cowardice.

If you allow yourself to rule your own life through fear, through emotion, you will be a prisoner and you will never be free.

It doesn't matter what you have it doesn't matter what the situation is you might think that you will be better off if this changes or this changes but until you free yourself nothing changes so you must hunt your fears you must become somebody who pursues the uncomfortable who knows that is going to be difficult who has accepted the consequences of the life that they want or being the person that they want to be.

There will always be consequences. There will always be checks and balances. But you must decide what is worth it to you. And once you have accepted that, change. Thank you for listening.