Episode 34: The Comfort Crisis - Has Modern Life Become Too Comfortable?

Life has never been more convenient, yet many of us feel more overwhelmed, anxious, and disconnected than ever before.
In this episode, Stephanie and Michael explore the fascinating idea behind the book, The Comfort Crisis, by Michael Easter, and ask whether our pursuit of comfort has quietly cost us something essential. From parenting and leadership to AI and everyday life, they wrestle with a question that feels more relevant than ever: Is struggle something to avoid—or something we actually need?

Mixed & Edited by Next Day Podcast

info@nextdaypodcast.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to the Become Unshaken Podcast, where we journey through the hard together. We're so glad you're here. Welcome back to the Become Unshaken Podcast. My name is Stephanie Rodriguez.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

And I am Michael Rodriguez.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

And today we're talking about a book that has come across my desk, The Comfort Crisis. And I want us to start in kind of a different place today. I want us to reflect on this. There are certain moments where an idea stops you in your tracks, not because it's complicated, but because it suddenly helps you make sense of things you've been seeing all around you. This week that happened to me. I came across a question that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. What if we've spent so much time making life easier that we've accidentally made it harder to become who we're meant to be? Think about it, right? Food arrives without us leaving the house now. We rarely have to wait for anything. Artificial intelligence can think through problems with us. GPS has replaced getting lost. We don't even get lost anymore. Streaming has replaced boredom. We can stream anything now. Texting has replaced difficult conversations. Convenience has become the expectation, not the exception. And yet burnout hasn't disappeared. Loneliness remains a challenge. We're exhausted. Something just doesn't add up for me. So I learned about author Michael Easter, and he intentionally left behind every modern convenience. He spent 33 days in the Arctic with a group of hunters, no phone, no warm bed, no grocery store. Every meal had to be earned. Every decision mattered. When he returned home, though, the surprising thing wasn't that he appreciated comfort more. It was the opposite. It was that he missed the clarity that came from living with purpose instead of that convenience. That experience became the foundation for his book, The Comfort Crisis, and it's the conversation we're having today. So, Michael, I'm so curious. Have we confused comfort with flourishing?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I think, you know, we've touched on it, hinted at it in the conversations that we have with people within our tribe. I think it's no secret to them, or it'd be no secret to them, that I completely understand, I think, where this author is coming from with regards to his experience. And yes, you know, we just did a keynote two weeks ago where I mentioned the fact that we as a culture and as a country, and you know, quite possibly as the human race have begun to buy this idea that comfort is what we want and it is what we deserve. And if if we just make things easier, then we'll feel one happier, right? Which is, again, not the joy that we are actually seeking, which comes from purposeful living and having purpose. But yes, one one million percent. We are constantly being bombarded with marketing dollars, I mean billions and marketing spend on how we can make your life easier, because that's what you deserve. And none of us should work hard to get literally anything. Just pick up your phone and do what you want. And so, you know, I think technology, you you mentioned in the opening artificial intelligence, AI, all of these conveniences that lead to ease of life, I believe remove a very important aspect of life, and that is accomplishment and hard work and purpose.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah. Earning it, right? There goes, there goes the satisfaction when you haven't earned it. You know, do you really want a medal? Do you want to stand on the podium if you haven't earned that medal? So I think I think the question is interesting, right? Because confusing comfort with flourishing. There's nothing wrong with comfort. It sounds great right now. It's late at night. We're, we have had a long day, we're ready for a show and a and a and a seat on the couch, but that that's comfort that we feel like we've earned. But is comfort flourishing? I think we should explore it further. And I'm having a hard time saying that it is. I do think that we confuse the two because flourishing means you're growing, you're doing more, you're earning things, and you're proud. Pride does not come from being handed things or things coming too easily. Feels good in the moment, but darn, do I really want to go out and earn something?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Well, absolutely. And listen, we again, life is hard, and I get it. People are hard, you know, life isn't fair. All of the adages ring true. And so because we look at it holistically at how difficult so many things are, and you know, it really is, it's at times disappointing, at times frustrating, at times it's unfair as to how hard things are. And so, what do we tell ourselves? I want it to be easier. Well, here's the thing: we then throw that comfort blanket on every aspect of our life, and then we expect one, if we can make it easier, we expect us to then be fulfilled, right? I think when it comes to flourishing, I hear progress, right? And we don't actually progress, right? Progress is moving forward, it is developing, it is building. Sure. It's not, we actually are doing less of that because technology and comforts and companies actually make it so that we don't have to. Yeah. And here's the problem we then don't build the muscle of resilience, we don't build the necessary character traits, the mindset necessary to then overcome and actually progress and actually flourish when an app can't do it for us. Yeah. Right. And so life hits you, and all of a sudden now we have built our life around ease and comfort, to the point that what we talk about classic conditioning of the mind, when you overcome over and over and over again, you become more resilient, more capable, more willing to oppose that difficulty, get to that mountaintop, get to that goal, overcome that adversity, and we feel fulfillment. Well, when comfort is our number one goal, all of a sudden now we are actually training our minds to not work hard and not try to the point that we're like, you know what? Going to the grocery store is too hard. Let me just order Subway from the app and someone will deliver it because I don't even want to get in the car to go there anymore. Now that's too hard, right? And it's a small thing and it is a convenience. But when we live our lives and build our lives in the most convenient way possible, I believe the very real threat is we are then basically teaching our minds to be incapable of, again, overcoming the difficult when we need to.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Here's the point I would argue, though. I would I would actually offer that comfort, and I don't think you're you're saying this at all, but comfort isn't bad. And Michael Easter says comfort isn't bad. It's that growth requires friction. So it's almost just choose your comfort, right? So where can I afford to be more comfortable and leverage all the conveniences of modern life? I'm absolutely happy to have food delivered to the house. I'm absolutely happy to, you know, chat with my my AI agent and and and spar and have questions, you know, uh delivered to me and me to deliver it questions. That is interesting and efficient to me. Now, what I what I don't want to replace is my ability to think through complex problems myself to try new things. I think I said, gosh, maybe two episodes ago I wanted to run a marathon. Not really sure. I'm still into that, but but challenges like that, right? Can I stay consistent with pushing my body to its to its limit and to its max, you know, from a physical standpoint? Am I going to challenge myself to learn a new skill, you know, learn a new, you know, way of doing something? That level of growth only comes from, and satisfaction only comes from willingness to try hard things. It's what we teach our kids, and it's what we need to continue to do as humans. So the question really isn't whether we should seek hardship, it's whether we've unintentionally eliminated the kinds of struggle that help us grow.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Sure. No, I'm a bit more old school in my mentality. But for me, it's just such a slippery slope. When when our kids tell us that they have autopilot or whatever that that helps them, you know, correct their sentences, right? Or they have spell check because everything now is done on a computer. So, okay, write it on a piece of paper, and they're seeking spell check. That is a fundamental skill to have the capacity to read and write that we are removing for comfort and convenience. When I have employees who can't use a chalk pen because all they use are devices in school. They can't write. They write letters that are three inches high because they can't possibly write within a college-ruled piece of paper, right? Yes. Technology is great, innovation is phenomenal, and there are many things that that we utilize every single day that make our lives more convenient. But I think what what I always worry about, especially as a dad, what I have fear of as an employer, is that our I mean our our entire country, our entire everybody from ages of five to ninety-five, are using so much tech and relying so much on convenience and expect almost demand so much comfort that they truly cannot deal with anything difficult. Now, you know, everyone's on different parts of the spectrum for that. But when absolutely everybody has access to everything, it becomes a large problem. Now, you talked about this book. This individual went with a group of hunters to the most unforgiving or one of the most unforgiving environments on the entire planet and removed all comfort. Quite honestly, uh listen, I I don't even like to go, you know, walking through the woods practically for 30 minutes, let alone go hunting out in the Arctic where I'm, you know, in sub-zero weather and all kinds of things. But I digress. He gave up all comfort for more than a month. What I hear in the opening, what I gather from your explanation of the book was he had a lot of time in silence. He anchored to purpose, and everything that he experienced in thirty-three days in this you know, wilderness hike and hunting trip, everything was earned. And when he came back to the world is that we live in, that we know, he didn't miss the way things were in the comfortable world. Yeah. He missed the clarity and the purpose that he felt in earning everything he had for more than a month. Now, should we all go hiking in the Arctic for 33 days? Uh no, and I will not be leading that train. But the principles I think mirror so much of what we talk about, and and honestly, so much of what we talk about when we talk about parenting, in that we cannot seek comfort and ease in everything, or we will be incapable of overcoming the realities of life that DoorDash and Amazon and AI cannot fix.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Right. And I think that's the point. Maybe comfort isn't the problem in its proper place, right? It's living only for comfort. That's the problem, right? When we try to remove literally every obstacle, and you just mentioned parenting. So it's a it's a good, it's a good segue to that, that part of the conversation because we can't really expect that our kids are going to grow into resilient, amazing, capable human beings, ready to change the world as as as that as however they were made to, if everything has been handed to them, if everything has been easy, if everything has been at their fingertips. And so I think again, the suggestion isn't that comfort is bad. We all enjoy a bit of comfort and likely work hard to earn it. It's when it's the goal and the only thing we're living for.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Absolutely. And, you know, we did a lot of talk about tech right there, right? As parents, you know, if your kid doesn't get a good grade, a way that we can maybe inadvertently make it more comfortable is to blame the teacher. It's to blame the school system, is to blame how much sleep they got, right? To to begin to make excuses. You don't make the team, it's the coach's fault, or the teammates' fault, or the kids didn't do this, or there's a million excuses that we can make to make it more comfortable. Someone on the playground is mean. Okay. One, let's let's talk about what was said and what happened. Let's be a little empathetic and consider, you know, maybe Jimmy, we had a bad day or was having a tough life, and we need to be a little empathetic, but also let's communicate. Let's stand up for ourselves the right way. Let's have difficult conversations as opposed to ignoring it, right? There are so many decisions that we make out of comfort. So many options to make things easier. What we talk about with regards to parenting is let's not always make the most comfortable decision. When we talk about parenting and it's 10 minutes before bedtime, and a kiddo did not clean their room or did not clean the playroom, we have a choice. We can say, man, it's really late and I'm ready for this night to be over. Go to bed, or we can say, you did not do your job, you did not meet these expectations. Get up out of bed and go do your job. We got to make those choices. Yeah. It is not the most comfortable thing, but you do it for no one in the world. For nobody. Uh it it hurts us the most. Uh quite honestly, maybe it's a strategy for them to stay up later.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yeah. I think you're also speaking to this idea of choosing tomorrow over today, right? Because again, it's so easy to choose the moment right in front of you to say, I'm I'm done with this day. I want to go relax. And I bet they are too. I bet they're they're tired done. It's long summer days out here. But I will, I will say the harder choice always is the one we try to make because it's teaching the greater lesson, right? So you don't get a pass, you don't get to just not do your job. You have to then now pay for what you chose to do earlier. And that choice, we hope and we intend is to make them stronger and more capable. Because number one, they're proving to themselves they can get up and do it. And also they're learning, I don't get a pass, right? And and in five, five years, 10 years, 15 years, I'm not going to get a pass then either. So learn that skill now.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Yeah, and I'm glad you touched on that because the other place that I believe that I see a lot of individuals choosing comfort is in work, in their employment. It has become an epidemic. You don't like your job? Just go somewhere else. You don't like the expectations. You're being held accountable and you don't like that. Just keep jumping jobs until you find someone that will not hold you accountable, until you can find a place that allows you to do whatever you want, that is so big that you get overseen or so small they can't afford to lose you, and then you can just do whatever you want. The workforce is brutally clear as to what the expectation and the demands are for every employee. Post-COVID, every employee. Okay, I'm every I'm getting traumatic.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

You said every.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Many employees believe they are now the boss. They are the ones in control. It will be their way or they're gone. And they are willing to bet that you are so desperate that it doesn't matter what they do, as long as they show up. That is the only requirement of most jobs. Now, this is also maybe industry specific. This could be very industry-specific.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

So I have a different experience with work.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

And I want to hear that in a second for sure. We in my industry are seeing turnover rates, you know, it's above 90% every 45 days. That is insane. And knowing so many business owners within my industry, yes, but even other businesses. Everyone is so desperate for quality employees. And the second you get one, I mean, it really is like writing a check, and yet you still can't find them. People are being paid more than they've ever been paid. Now I know that also life is costing more than it's ever cost. But again, there is such a lack of resolve and resilience in so many places, and we are seeing it in the workforce across many places and many industries, turnover, silent quitting, really only, you know, time theft, at home work, a million things are being done because 40 hours a week is too tough.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

It's so interesting because we're experiencing kind of this reality of comfort, whether it's the goal or not, in different ways. Because I think what you just expressed was this, you know, sought-after goal of finding comfort, finding ease. Um, and that's tragic because that is exhausting, number one, for the employer, for you and for them. And it serves no purpose. Ultimately, you're gonna end up somewhere and you're you're gonna have to do the job eventually. So comfort is not the goal. And if it is the goal, good luck. That's that's tough. For me, I find it to be actually more of the argument of I think what Michael Easter was trying to prove, which is growth comes from discomfort. And I find a lot of people seeking purpose and clarity in their roles and opportunities to grow and develop. That's one of the reasons I would say people seek opportunities beyond their current role and look for stretch opportunities, look for opportunities to be mentored by others, earning sponsors in their career so that their journey is one that unfolds, you know, successfully over time. And so I'm I'm excited about that, that idea that I I see it, I see it more validated from my seat that people seek opportunity to be better and to reach their full potential. I think it's actually it's actually kind of a sign of a lack of hope, in my opinion, when you when you're seeking comfort and comfort only, then you're losing that hope in yourself to do what you're here to do, whatever that purpose is.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Or you're banking your hope that life will just continue to stay comfortable and easy, which we know isn't true.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

It's not possible.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Right. So so then if if you're also sitting there and going, man, I just wish I had a button to make my rent go away. Well, man, there's no button for that. Right? There's no app for pay my rent or put gas in my car. So Right. You need to think about this.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

AI can now write, plan, brainstorm, and solve problems. So what happens if thinking itself becomes more convenient? That would be amazing. Because quite frankly, sometimes I can solve problems a lot faster myself. I mean, if we just rely on AI and just rely on technology, that itself is uncomfortable. I actually think it's a it's it's the argument, it's opposite of comfort, is relying so much on AI.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah, I mean, you're gonna say, oh, my six-year-old bumped his head. What should I do, AI? Tell me what to do. Yeah. Tell me how to figure this out. Hey, I need to get to work. I've never been to work. Tell me how to get there. I can't go anywhere without my phone. I can't respond to anyone. Hey, chat. Tell me how to respond to my friend who just texted me about hanging out tomorrow. What should I say? I mean, listen, the options are there. That's and the options are there. The question is this eventually, you are going to need to be yourself, a human, a person. You can't lead a team at work using tech. It is interaction, human interaction. It requires empathy. It requires conversations. It requires looking someone in the eye when you speak to them, shaking their hand, giving them a hug, showing them that you care. Again, maybe this is getting a little off course for comfort. But we have to make sure that at the end of the day, we are living our life. That we are anchored to our purpose. And if our purpose is comfort, you are not going to achieve that. No amount of bubble living, I don't care how rich you are, joy does not come from simply getting everything you want. And so we must have enough courage to stand up and face life and endure life and overcome difficulty and do hard things. Yeah. If we want to have joy.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

I will say, you know, in reflecting on everything we've talked about so far and even the introduction of AI, I think any app or or even use of AI, whether it's for personal or professional use, it is convenient. It is helpful. It is a time saver in a lot of ways. But too much of anything is a bad thing, in my opinion. And if I had to look back at my most proud moments, it was absolutely before I had any use of some of these really amazing, comfortable, convenient tools. It was when I struggled to find my way through a job that I wasn't even sure I was right for. It was when I first became a leader of people and had to stop thinking only for myself and had to think about the people that were relying on me for vision and direction and for a clear future. Figuring that out, asking the tough questions, getting it wrong. I absolutely look back at the most proud moments of my life and have to say, oh, it was when I was wrong and learned how to make it right. That's gotta be how we kind of prioritize our future, whether we have amazing AI agents or apps or amazing technology or DoorDash or anything, right? Anything, grocery delivery. I can go on Target or Amazon and I can get anything I want in 24 hours or same day. I went and got a rug for our patio. Same day delivery in two hours, it was at the door. It's amazing, but it has its place. Everything has its place. And I think that's as I as I talk through this with you, I think that's what I'm taking away. And it's it's definitely the message I want to share with friends, family, kids, everyone that that I talk to about the comfort crisis. It's it's not that comfort is bad. It just has its place. And if it's if it's overused or over-indexed for, then it does stifle our ability to grow.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, please, I don't want anyone to hear, oh my gosh, don't use Amazon. Right to me, you know, I I like Amazon or I like being able to order things online because what does that do? It saves me from mindless time in the car away from my purpose.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

If it saves me three hours from not being at home with you, exactly so that I could go get a rug, not worth it, right? So, hey, so great. Thanks, convenience. You know, we just did a podcast, I don't know, last one, last couple, about earning your trophy, right? The trophy's the last thing that you earn. Fulfillment comes from earning something through effort, hard work. Anything that comes easily does not feel that good. It's convenient, it's easy. I'm telling myself that this is exactly what I want. I want to do nothing. I want to be able to sit on my couch and live my life perfectly and everything. Fulfillment does not come out of ease. Fulfillment comes from hard work and earning something that you worked so hard for. That is fulfillment. We are chasing the opposite of fulfillment. Why is depression and hopelessness and despair and mental health and the you know doubting of the goodness of life? Why is it increasing as life becomes easier and easier and easier? More and more people have access. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or if you're making 1050 an hour. You have almost every convenience that no one 10 years ago had. And yet we're all still upset. We are chasing happy, we are chasing comfort, and we are buying the lie, the belief that comfort and ease is going to make us feel good. It does not.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah. Okay, so we're gonna do something that we don't usually do, something a little different. We're gonna, we're gonna kind of flip the argument on its head a bit. You ready?

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Okay, this is fun. It's been a while since you've thrown a curveball, actually. So what are we doing?

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Okay, so before we wrap up, let's let's just challenge this idea. So I want us to consider is all discomfort good? Or are there struggles we absolutely should eliminate? Right. So how do we distinguish between hardship that grows us and hardship that simply harms us? Right. So we're we're kind of we don't mean to, but we're we're kind of glorifying discomfort a bit. And I want us to think, is there some struggle we really shouldn't endure?

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Well, so so when I tend to think of difficulty and hardship, really the things that I consider difficult and hard are the things that I have no control over. The things that no matter what you're enduring. You are sick, you are injured, you are broke, you are mourning the loss of somebody. You know, a kiddo is struggling. Work gets incredibly stressful and it's very hard, right? Like I don't want to make those things any worse, right? So, so maybe in that way, but I yeah, I I don't want to glorify struggle. Struggle is very hard and you know, brings a lot of pain and a lot of sorrow and discomfort. So I don't want to promote that. I don't want I don't want anyone to hear this and hear me say, make your life really hard. But I do believe in at times just simply making the more difficult choice. And it can be something mundane, you know, but it's like we don't want to go, listen, we just said if today was a brutal day. We don't want to go to the gym, we don't want to go over there and do that and then what kick dinner back 50 minutes, kick back our podcast 50 minutes, right? Sitting here, lights are out. I mean, it's it's super late. You do it, you make the hard decision. We did not sacrifice our desire to, you know, work on our health, our physical health, our mental health by going to the gym. We made a difficult choice. Just like I said, we do with parenting late at night, all those things. There is value, there is a point to that difficult.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Yeah, that's where I was going.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Right. We we strategize often within our for ourselves, for our family, and we know the lessons that we want to teach, and we know what we're willing to allow to be uncomfortable. Now we're not sitting here and throwing the kids' toys on the floor and saying, hey, go pick it up because you got to learn how to deal with discomfort. No, we're just saying you're gonna be held accountable. There are all of us have roles and jobs and expectations in this house and in this family, and therefore you must meet those expectations because that is life. And when it's not convenient, you still got to do it. So, so I think that I don't we don't want people to make their lives harder on purpose. And we've already talked about the merits of the convenience factor, right? It is more about not making everything so easy that we forget how to work hard, how to stay disciplined, how to remain patient and grow in that weight, and to persevere, because life and the difficulties that we have no control over will not stop. And the more comfortable we are, and the more, you know, the lower our threshold for discomfort becomes, the harder it is, which then does what? Steals hope, steals joy, brings despair. We want to oppose that.

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Yeah. I'm gonna give some some pretty tangible examples because as I think about the question, struggles that we should eliminate. And I think you were you were touching on this a moment ago, which is what is the ultimate outcome? So the struggle that you're going through or that you even intentionally place in your in your life, is it for good? Right? Are you struggling for a purpose? And I think that's something to kind of ask yourself in terms of what to distinguish what you should eliminate, what to keep hold of and what to eliminate. And here's a here's a really good example, and I'll speak to women specifically. We we tend to put a lot of people first in our lives, especially if you have a house that you're trying to to kind of run and manage and and do a lot as you're as you're as you're kind of facing your day and you're you're you know heading to work or maybe your home, whatever it is, but you take a lot on your shoulders as a mom and as a and as a wife, and and you tend to in that struggle, in that effort, put other people's needs ahead of your own. So I would actually already say, if you are struggling to please the needs of others around you, and that is harming you in some way, causing undue stress or pressure, what can you eliminate? What can you take off your plate? What can you share with your tribe, with your partner? What can you do to serve yourself better? That's one thing I would say. And I'm speaking specifically to women, men, of course, but I I know a lot of women that I talk to that that struggle with this in particular because they lack balance and they lack perspective that that struggle that they're enduring is for no good purpose. Nobody wants to see them struggle and nobody expects it of them. We sometimes put it on ourselves. That's one thing I would say. I think the other is this idea that again, you make your or you're kind of enduring and you haven't really evaluated why. So if there's if there's something, if you look at kind of your day-to-day and you're thinking, oh man, like this particular thing, I dread it. I don't want to do it, and it provides me no value. And then when you really think about it, it's just because you've always done it that way or you've always endured it. And so, do you really need to, right? Is it something that can change? And so I think that's the question, the the one I posed right at the start is if it's for no real purpose or good outcome, does it does it really require struggle? I don't know. And that's a question to ask yourself.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Yeah. Time and silence will bring so much clarity. You gotta look inside yourself, you gotta ask the hard questions, you've gotta analyze, you know, let me just look at my life for a week. Where am I making decisions, you know, that that aren't building towards a purpose? Where am I kind of running from discomfort as opposed to maybe standing strong and pushing through? Where am I making my life more difficult unnecessarily for no reason? What is building towards that purpose? What is a distraction? What is something that I really want? What is something that is my purpose or supports my purpose? Or what is something that someone or some company or some product or some convenience is telling me I want? We must always check in. I don't care how often you're in silence, I'm in silence daily. I always need to re-anchor. I always need to re-reassess my life and the decisions I make. And listen, convenience is real easy to adopt. And sometimes we do things that are convenient without even thinking, and then it becomes a habit, and then it just becomes something that spirals out of control. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Time and silence. This this author, 33 days in the wilderness, no tech, no distractions, just miserable conditions, difficult living, brought peace and silence and clarity and purpose. We've got to get into that. We've got to anchor in. We've got to assess our life. Nothing is wrong with comfort. Don't make your life or the lives of the people around you more difficult on purpose, but also have a strategy. Also protect yourself from becoming so comfortable we can't overcome.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

So I don't think today's conversation is really about sleeping on the ground or climbing mountains or spending even 33 days in the Arctic.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

I hope not.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

They're just examples. And the real question is this: where have we started believing that a comfortable life is the same as a meaningful one? Because when I think about the moments that have shaped me most, they weren't easy. They were conversations I didn't want to have, seasons that stretched me, parenting moments that forced me to let go, leadership decisions that kept me up at night, the dreams that required persistence long before they produced results. And trust me, there were many of them. Looking back, I wouldn't choose those moments because they were comfortable. I'd choose them again because they changed me. Maybe becoming unshaken isn't about avoiding discomfort. Maybe it's it's about learning to recognize the difference between discomfort that diminishes us and discomfort that develops us. So this week's question is simple. We'd love for you all to ask this of yourself, either right here and right now, and consider and reflect, or come back to this question later. But either way, do yourself this great service and ask yourself this. Where might choosing what's easy today be keeping you from becoming who you're capable of being tomorrow? So until we speak again, visit us on social. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know if this conversation resonated with you. If it did, please do share it with a friend, download it and share it with all those that you love and care about. And continue to tune in. We can't wait to talk to you again.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Everybody, have a great week.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

We're so glad you joined us today. If you found inspiration through today's episode, share it with a friend and make sure to follow so you don't miss what's ahead. Until next time, choose joy, regardless, in whatever comes your way. See you next week.