Everyone has different goals in life. Some people want to be right in the middle of the action, so they might aspire to own a luxury apartment in the heart of midtown Manhattan. Other people prefer the quiet and solitude of the country, so they may yearn for a cabin in the woods. One goal is not objectively any better or worse than the other. It’s simply a matter of personal preference.
At the end of the day, though, just about all of these goals can be summarized quite simply. We want to be happy, whatever that means for each of us on an individual basis. And some people may equate happiness with a certain level of comfort, but I’d argue that it is actually against your best interest to allow yourself to get comfortable. Let me explain. And I’ll relate this back to the world of blogging and Internet marketing, don’t you worry.
Think about what it really means to be comfortable. It means that all of your basic human needs are being met and you don’t have any real source of stress in your life. One day just coasts into the other without a worry in the world. That sounds awfully pleasant, doesn’t it? The problem is that it hides a very real threat that could ultimately cost you your happiness and your sense of self-worth.
When you get comfortable, you lull yourself in a state of complacency. You have no real drive to accomplish anything with your life anymore, because you don’t feel the burning desire or motivation to do anything. You just sit there, lounging on the couch, reading a magazine.
And you get bored.
And you get lazy.
And you set yourself on a path that can only lead to mediocrity at best.
I don’t think you want to be mediocre. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. The thing that gets you off your butt and kicks you into action is a sense of discomfort. You have to feel uncomfortable, if only just a little bit, because that is what will drive you to change the situation.
It’s that discomfort that will compel you to quit your day job, so that you can pursue blogging and Internet marketing full-time. It’s that boredom and complacency that will compel you to go beyond just basic text-based blog posts to pursue podcasts or vlogging or ebooks or any number of other possible ventures. That’s what will drive you to create and to wake up tomorrow a better person than you were today. A more successful person that you were today.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t strive for some level of financial stability. You don’t want to have to worry about where your next meal will come from or whether you’ll be able to afford rent (or your mortgage payment) at the end of the month. What it is to say is that you shouldn’t allow yourself to fall into a comfortable routine with no aspiration to do more, to be more, to strive for greater things.
Comedian Ricky Gervais once said, “It’s better to create something that others criticize than to create nothing and criticize others.”
And you’ll never know what you are capable of doing until you do it and put it out there into the world for everyone to scrutinize. Maybe they’ll hate it. Maybe they’ll love it. Maybe they won’t care. It ultimately doesn’t matter, so long as you keep putting out something new.
Because the greatest comfort is knowing that, on your deathbed, you won’t look back at your life and wonder “what if.”