Personal comfort is not the only thing worth seeking

"Personal comfort is not the only thing worth seeking," so says Lance Armstrong in his book, "Every Second Counts". The context with which he spoke about was on moving out of the comfort zone. You see, when things around us no longer challenge us the way it used to, we tend to either rest on our laurels or stop expanding our inner capabilities. When this happens, we become at the mercy of circumstances.

"Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment."
— H. Ross Perot

I once mentioned to a friend that I'll want to be more productive in how I use my time. As time is the golden moment that we sometimes take for granted, we end up feeling lousy at the end of the day about how we've used it. Sometimes this could go on and on until the day of reckoning arrives. And this day of reckoning can be the day we lose our job, all of our savings, or it can be the day that we find out we are diagnosed with some nasty disease, or when our family and loved ones start losing faith in us, or when we are about to meet our maker.

By then, we suffer too hard a fall that some of us fail to pick ourselves up. For those of us who do, we will always remember the circumstances we were in and silently tell ourselves we will not go down that road again. But then again, we can promise not to harbour another idle thought, or not to overeat, or not to smoke another cigarette, or not to drink another beer. However we end up doing it once again. It seems like once the pain is over, when we get comfortable, we start indulging in lousy patterns all over again and self-sabotage.

It was once said to me that everyone should be motivated towards something BIG, so that the internal engine will hum and work all the time. I believe not. Instead, we must understand that we need a balance of both; motivated away and towards, and how much of which will depend on our circumstances. For instance, when I have a huge debt to service, I become really motivated to work on it so that I pay down my debts. However when it starts coming down, I become comfortable and say that maybe I could use a new watch or glasses or shoes. Don't get me wrong, it is not wrong to spend. But to spend without taking into account your current situation will lead you back where you came from.

So then what's the deal here? Again, it leads us back to how we make our choices, what our target is, and how we plan to get there. You see, some of us are motivated but only to a certain point, as described above. By understanding how we make our choices and combining it with a balance of motivation towards and away will ensure that we keep on the path. So let's say you want to quit smoking. We need to understand first how we make our choice to pick up a cigarette. Once we understand that, we now know what are the trigger points. What are the things or emotion we link to it.

So let's say you link smoking with pleasure, to relaxation, to taking a break. Then you need to know what are some of the signs that will trigger these. Perhaps whenever you feel like you've work too hard, you need break, so you reach for a smoke. So the next time you recognise that trigger, you first link it to all the unpleasantness you have identified; like you became a slave to the cancer stick, like you see yourself being shortchanged of an opportunity because of the lack of funds to invest in a hot stock, like you lose control over yourself, like your mate hates you when you smoke, like you become branded as indulgence in an increasingly anti-social behaviour, like you become sick and short of breadth, like you stink and become undesirable, like your prospect can't stand the stench and hence can't wait for the meeting to be over. Then the next step is to identify what you replace it with and how that will change the way you feel and all the good things that come with it. So, essentially, we are using a balance of both towards and away motivation to drive us towards our goal of not smoking.

The next is when you need a plan. For instance, challenge yourself that for the next 30 day on, you will stay off smoking and reward yourself with a variety of the towards motivation to reinforce the feel good factor. Once you start doing this, and for 30 days you will then find that its a lot easier to stick to your plan. And as we all have times when we need a little motivation towards, thats when our brain will start to want more of. And thats when we will be advancing faster towards our goal.

So bottomline is this, personal comfort will lead you to emptiness; as when you achieve it, you'll start wondering, what's next. But when you have a plan and that plan dovetail with your bigger plan, thats when we can drive ourselves to our ultimate goal.