Growth Instigators Hotline
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Growth Instigators Hotline
#445 Charger. 1-3% battery life.
What if the charger on your desk could teach you how to grow? We take a familiar object and pull out unexpected lessons about energy, resilience, and the balance between effort and recovery. By pairing everyday battery habits with ideas from The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, we make a clear case for why deliberate discomfort, followed by real rest, is the shortest path to confidence and meaning.
We start with the myths around “overcharging” and why staying at 100 percent comfort slowly wears down your capacity. Then we connect the dots to human performance: pushing into a hard project, letting your batteries run low, and using deep sleep and mindful recovery to rebuild. You’ll hear how intentional strain unlocks adaptation, why predictability dulls purpose, and how to design your own charge-and-drain cycles without tipping into burnout.
Along the way, we share simple tools to track your energy, set recovery boundaries, and choose higher-quality inputs that actually recharge you—relationships, nature, movement, learning, and quiet. We wrap with practical prompts: where to lean into discomfort this week, when to slow down, and how to notice the moments that matter. The goal is a smarter rhythm that holds a charge longer, supports better sleep, and leaves you more present for the work and people you love.
Ready to look at your charger—and your day—with new eyes? Press play, then tell us the growth lesson you see in a charger. If this sparked something useful, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a recharge, and leave a quick review so others can find the show.
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Welcome to message 445 of the Growth Instigators Hotline. I'm Aaron Havens, your host and growth coach. This week we are talking about a charger, an everyday normal object that we can assign deeper meaning to, something that can remind us of a bigger truth. Welcome to part five of five as we dive into lessons we can learn from a charger. A number of you, a number of the callers, have left messages talking about optimal battery charging times. Did you know it's possible to overcharge batteries? And sometimes you need to drain them completely to extend the life of your battery. Huh. Did you hear that? Sometimes we need to drain our batteries completely to extend the life of the battery. In the book The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, the one big takeaway is that real growth only happens when you intentionally step outside your comfort zone. Easter's core message is that modern life is too easy, it's too convenient, too predictable, too cushioned. And because of that, we lose resilience, confidence, meaning, and even happiness. When you deliberately choose discomfort, physical, mental, and emotional, you reclaim those things. So comfort is the enemy of growth. Discomfort is the doorway to a better you. And oftentimes, when we get discomfortable, our batteries drain. I don't know how many times I've had to admit that I'm on 1 to 3% battery life as I get off a big job or a big project. That's signs that I was dedicated to what needed to be done, and I gave all I had. And guess what? As my good friend Jonathan would say, no sleep is better than after a long day's work. Because my battery was low, I slept really well as my battery recharged. Yep. What a balance to walk. So go for it. Or slow down this week. What areas of growth are apparent for you and your life? That, my friends, is how a common everyday object can instigate growth. Tune in tomorrow for the weekend edition of the Growth Instigator Hotline as we reveal what object we will be examining next week. I'd like to hear some more of your observations. What growth lessons can you apply to a charger? For those of you calling the Growth Instigator Hotline, I'd love to hear your thoughts or send me a message after the beep. And for those of you listening in on our podcast, visit growth instigators.com and send me your thoughts. Let's never see a charger the same.