If comfort is our standard for behavior, we cannot grow.
The essence of evolution is adaptation as a means of overcoming difficulty.
If we spend all of our time and energy avoiding difficulty, we are simultaneously denying ourselves the opportunity to grow and to change.
By choosing comfort over challenges, we are also choosing stagnation and entropy over evolution.
In a way, this can be likened to stealing from ourselves.
When comfort is the standard upon which we make our decisions, we miss out on new experiences, opportunities, and perspectives.
We never get to see what is on the other side of the challenge, obstacle, or hardship.
Instead of being avoided at all costs, difficulty should be seen as a generous teacher, received like a precious gift, and embraced as we would a loving friend.
Without facing the resistance ahead of us, learning how to meet it and overcome it, we will never know what we are truly capable of accomplishing and who we are capable of becoming.
A life of comfort is a life denied of living itself.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.