Your Comfort Is the Enemy’s Greatest Weapon — Why Easy Is Destroying You

Well, hello there, my friend.

My name is Jonathan Doyle, and you have, by the grace of God, just ended up

pressing play on the Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle I'm taking this as an

auspicious moment in your life and mine.

Why in mine?

Because it is a joy and a privilege, and doing this gives me joy and

hopefully makes me a better human, and hopefully it's auspicious for you

because something that we're gonna share together in this very short space

of time is gonna be a blessing to you.

I wanna talk to you about today's episode title.

I have called this Your Comfort is the Enemy's Greatest Weapon.

There is a lot to cover there.

W- who's the enemy?

Uh, depending on your faith tradition, depending on your life experience,

you can conceptualize this in the most effective way that is useful for you.

For me, I… The way I say it to people, there are two spirits

moving through this world.

There is the Holy Spirit.

There is God's presence in this great, big, expansive, beautiful, magnificent

cosmos, and there is another spirit moving through the world, and that

spirit is a spirit of fear and atrophy and smallness and vindictiveness

and shrinking and small stories.

And you can probably guess by my tonality which side I would like

you to join and which side I think is telling the much better story.

And we're gonna talk about comfort and why comfort is an enemy's weapon, because

the comfort, the experience of comfort and staying small has robbed more people of

potential than just about anything else.

Why?

Because failure, you can fail at things, and that's not necessarily

gonna rob you of your potential.

What it is gonna do is teach you if you're awake and alert, but

comfort's gonna do something else.

Comfort lulls you to sleep.

And what I wanna share with you in this message is something I shared

two episodes ago, is around about how our culture is around consumption,

addiction, and distraction.

But I didn't talk much about comfort.

Comfort is the thing that lulls you to sleep.

It's the idea that everything's fine, just you need to be comfortable.

Everything from your slippers to your heating or air conditioning to your car.

I think one of the interesting inventions in cars in recent years is how you

can remotely turn on the heating or cooling before you get in the car.

I remember years ago, my brother turned up with a car like that,

and I'm like, "Dude, your car's running." And he's going, "Yeah,

yeah, no, I just… It, it turns on.

I, I have this button and it sets the heating on before I get in

it." And I'm like, "Okay, I get it.

I get it, but come on, seriously?

Like, you need that?" And again, hey, I'm all for innovation.

I'm all for entrepreneurship.

I'm not saying it's a terrible thing.

I'm just saying it's a culture that's optimized for comfort.

There's a lot of great things about comfort, except if it becomes

a modality of our existence and it slowly lulls us to sleep.

Because here is, I guess, the central thesis of what I want to share with

you today, and it's, it's this, and it's the idea that I did not

design the laws of the universe.

That was so far above my pay grade.

I didn't get to design them.

But by the grace of God, over time, I've learned to recognize a significant

number of them, as you probably have too.

And one of the lessons that we probably don't pay much attention to and we

don't like that much is the truth that comfort really doesn't teach

us much and doesn't help us to grow.

What does is difficulty, hardship, and deliberately doing

difficult, unpleasant things.

And the good news is that you have come to the right place because I, by the

grace of God, am really good at this.

I have learned through many great teachers and, and living a long time

and making a bunch of decisions, I've got pretty good at this.

I've actually got pretty good at doing difficult, hard things, and for me, it's

mostly come through training, through a lot of very hard training over many years.

And, you know, today on Instagram, I, I constantly say to people that,

"Don't negotiate with yourself." This is one of the big principles that

I'm teaching at the moment, is that you never negotiate with yourself.

When it's time to do something difficult or hard, the second

you negotiate, it's over.

It took me years to figure this out.

I used to stand in my garage, it'd be minus seven or minus

eight degrees Celsius, and I'd be like, "Should I get on the bike?

Should I?

Should I really get on the bike?

Should I?" And I, I'm a-- Look, so many people that know me know

that I say this thing all the time.

If you ask your brain A dumb question.

Your brain is faithful.

It is a loyal and faithful servant, and if you give it a dumb question, it will

graciously serve you a dumb answer.

So if you say to your brain, "Should I get on the bike?" Well, my brain's

like, "Hmm, why would you do that?

You, you could have cake.

You could have cake.

In fact, you could have a hot shower and then cake." And then I'm like, "But

it's, it's 5:00 in the morning." And my brain's like, "Well, Jonathan, there's,

there's no, there's no rule that you can't have cake." And see what I mean?

Once the negotiation starts, it's all over.

But the ability to make yourself do something difficult is so

darn transformative over time.

I can promise you I've experienced this.

So today, um, you, you can see this on Instagram, some of it, but not all.

You'll, you'll understand why not all of it in a second.

But like today, I just was like, "You know what? I'm doing cold

showers." So it's winter here.

It's minus two this morning.

And I'm like, "I'm just doing it.

I'm just doing cold showers from now on." So I-- this morning, I have a cold

shower, and it was it was horrendous. It was like and it was the best thing

at the same time 'cause I'm going to war with myself. My brain's going,

"Jonathan, come on, a little comfort.

Just a little comfort.

We just want a little bit.

We don't even have to have hot.

We'll have lukewarm.

Just give us lukewarm.

We'll settle for that.

We-- Why are we doing this?" And at the end of it, and I keep saying this

to people, the minute you push through something hard, on the way into it, your

brain will be like, "What are you doing?

You're an idiot." And the minute you do that difficult, hard thing,

you know what happens afterwards?

Your brain goes, "You're such a genius.

You are, you are just remarkable." And I would stand back and say to

my brain, "Whose side are you on?

Like, which, which message was true?

A minute ago, you're telling me if I did this, I'd die and I needed cake, and

then I do this thing, and you're like, 'I'm a genius.'" So friends, there's

this weird thing about being human that sometimes we are not on our own side.

So this message today is I wanna ask you, are you living a very comfortable life?

You might say, "Well, I've got financial stress, and I've got this,

and I've got that." Yeah, I get it.

But, you know, is there a lot of comfort in your life?

Do you gravitate to it?

Because what I wanna sell you on is this idea, is that the people who have uncommon

lives, the people who have interesting, passionate, successful, big story lives,

are often people that make a decision to embrace, encounter, and even seek

out difficult, uncomfortable things.

So it's, you know, look, on the platitudinal level, on the level

of, you know, Instagram quotes, you know, everything you want is

on the other side of fear is one of the famous ones, and everything you

want is outside your comfort zone.

It's just true.

It's just true.

You know, one of the important things that I've been thinking about and

teaching people is around this, the thing about evidence, like if you

wanna transform a belief system in your life, one of the things you have to do

is look at the evidence that it's not true or the evidence that it is true.

So if you think you're a terrible person, one of the things you need

is evidence that you're not, and it's, and your brain goes, "Well,

hang on, I think I'm terrible.

I think I'm a terrible person," but then you realize there's not really

much evidence for it, and your brain starts to go, "That's curious." But

the thing about doing difficult things is as you do them, you get more and

more evidence that you're that kind of person And I said this in a message

last week on the podcast that, that you have to move from habits to identity.

Like if you try and force yourself to do a habit, it's, it's a, it's a good start,

but eventually habits become replaced by identity, that you do something for

long enough, you go, "This is who I am. This is what I do. I'm the kind of person

that does these sorts of things." So what I'm trying to suggest to you today is

maybe something no one's really told you before, that you're not made for comfort.

It's just not how you're designed.

You're made for rest.

And again, I train a lot, but one of the things that I've had to learn in my

current program is learning very much about rest and how… So I'm all for

rest, but I'm not really big for comfort.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'll enjoy occasional things, but the discipline that

comes from my life at the moment and doing these difficult things is pretty cool.

And one of the things I've noticed is, and I'm not, no, I'm definitely not telling

you to do this, but, so with my training, I have a very calibrated diet, right?

It's very specific.

I, I track macros and kilojoules all day.

I actually weigh just about everything.

I'm not telling you to do that.

It's what I do because of the particular focus and interest that I have.

But one of the things I noticed the other day was last Saturday, I, I do

most of the cooking in our family because I love to cook, but Karen said, "Hey,

I'm gonna cook tonight." And I'm like, "Cool." So she makes this really awesome,

I don't know if this will sound good to you or not, but tuna pasta thing.

It was great.

Loved it.

And then she made this cornbread, which she made it from scratch

with like polenta or something.

It was magnificent.

And she's made it previously, but because I'm on this

program, I had to weigh it all.

And I've only got a certain amount of kilojoules allocated for the

day, and I've got a certain amount of macros that I've got to reach.

So I'm, I'm weighing this thing up, and I end up with like a kinda small

bowl of this pasta because it was later in the day, and I'd already used up a

fair bit of k- of kilojoules and macros and, and I got this slice of cornbread

and, uh, and, and it's just one there.

And I ate it, and it was magnificent.

I was very grateful for it.

It was f- so good.

But I remember thinking straight afterwards, like, before I was

on this program, I would have had no stress, at least two, if not

three bowls of that tuna pasta.

I just would have powered through that sucker because it was a,

it was late Saturday evening.

There was a game on the TV I was watching with the family.

I was gonna… A- and you know, when you get distracted, you're

watching a game and you're hungry and you just power through it.

And I can promise you, I would have done some serious damage to that cornbread.

I would have like hit four or five pieces of it.

It's just like so good.

And what struck me was that the discipline, in the past,

I would have gone for comfort.

I g- Let me explain it like this.

Like I, I realized that I ate enough food that night to really target what I

was trying to do And it made me realize that all the other times I'd had that

kind of food, I was eating for comfort.

I was, like, just powering through it 'cause it was pleasurable,

and I wanted to have the comfort of it, but I didn't need it.

And the discipline of not needing it was quite powerful

and moves me towards my goals.

Now, I'm not telling any of you to do that.

I'm not saying I don't know what your situation is.

I'm just telling you that it, it just woke me up to the default that

we have towards comfort unless we're switched on, dialed in, focused on

the outcomes that we actually want.

So I don't know who I'm talking to here.

Y- y- let me, let me start you with this.

If, if you're new to this, just do something uncomfortable.

Just, just something.

Send an email, make a phone call, do some exercise that you don't normally wanna do.

Do something that's just, just slightly difficult.

And if you're like me, just keep doing crazier and crazier things until

eventually, I don't know, you're like, "Uh, just, yeah, just keep going.

Just keep going." Because it's a big world with so much to experience, and

comfort's gonna put you to sleep And discipline will bring you to life.

Do you think it's a coincidence that just about every one of the

world's major faith traditions has a focus on self-denial, fasting,

abstinence, discipline, sacrifice?

Do you notice that most of the world's religions have like Lent or

other series of fasts and things?

Do you notice that even in the, in the Bible, Jesus goes into the

desert for 40 days with no comfort to fast and to prepare himself for the

incredible things ahead of him, right?

So you can see that wherev- whatever your faith perspective is, you can see that in

the human story, in the human spiritual existential story, there's always

been this focus on avoiding too much comfort and pursuing difficult things.

I've always had a great interest in the monastic tradition.

Uh, it's just something that's always occupied my time and I've, uh, and

my mind, and I've visited some of the world's great monasteries, and I

even lived in one for a little while.

And you see this rhythm of life that people take on.

Now, they're not, they're not like punishing themselves, but they're

living a discipline, a kind of…

And, and the reason they do it is they understand that if they avoid

too much unnecessary comfort, then they move into this freedom that comes

from being in control and disciplined.

And even today with that cold shower, I was like, there's a level that people

talk about, which is like you're showing your brain who's, who's in charge.

That 'cause your body's going, "What are we doing this for?

Someone stop him." And it's like, but your brain goes, "No, I, I run this story.

I, I make the decisions here, and this is where we're going and this is why,

'cause there's benefits to this and it's just difficult, and we're gonna do it."

So you need to be the captain of your own ship, not distraction and comfort.

And I think, look, I'll wrap up, but I think the first thing you really

wanna do is just pay attention.

Just pay attention.

Just look in your life and go, "Where am I pursuing comfort all the time?"

You know, in other podcasts, I talk a lot about addiction, and my thesis on

addiction, if you haven't heard it, and maybe it's wrong, is that addiction

for me is, is a way of avoiding unpleasant and difficult emotions.

If you think about really what drives an addiction engine, whether it's internet,

alcohol, something else, it'll always be because there's something going on in

our life that is unpleasant or painful.

And it could be a real thing, like something's happened, or it could

just be that we're miserable and we're settling and we're beneath

our potential and we know it and we're just miserable, so we distract

ourselves with some form of addiction.

But see, that's where comfort's dangerous because comfort's gonna

keep pulling you into that behavior.

"Now, come over here.

Come on, come on.

You, you know, you do so much.

You, you work so hard.

Just, just come and have a little bit of comfort." But there's another

story, right? There's another story that goes, "No, I'm not gonna go

and have some comfort right now.

I'm gonna actually sit with my difficult emotions, and I'm going

to deny myself this entire packet of Tim Tams." For my American listeners,

if you haven't had one, your life has almost no meaning because Tim

Tam's the most magnificent things.

And don't get me wrong, a couple of weeks ago, my daughter, she found these

double salted caramel Tim Tams, and she brought them home, and I jumped on

my app and looked how many kilojoules I had left and I was like, "Olivia."

I went, "Yes, I can have a salted caramel Tim Tam." And

I did, and it was magnificent.

So can you hear me?

Am I doing this right?

I'm trying to be balanced.

There are things that I enjoy.

You know, last night… I gotta finish, but I'll wrap up.

Last night, you know, uh, I, I'd hit most of my targets for the day diet-wise, and

I had this little band left and it was-- and I didn't really need dinner 'cause

I'd trained early in the day and I'd eaten a lot throughout the day to fuel that.

But there was this little thing left, and then Karen was gonna get the

kids some dinner, and she said, "Do you want anything?" And I said, "No,

I'm good." And then I jumped on my program and I'm like, "Can I have a

cheeseburger?" One little cheeseburger.

In the past, I would have had like more than that.

Let's just say more than that.

But I had one, and it was great.

So I'm not saying that we don't enjoy things.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy certain things.

Like, you know, once I leave the studio today, it's Friday, my friends

come over in, in the afternoon.

We light a big fire and, uh, I don't drink, but I have a thing for cigars.

And, uh, my…

and so Fridays is cigar day, so I'm gonna enjoy a cigar.

So don't get me wrong.

I enjoy some of these good things, but I don't let comfort be my master.

All right, that's it.

I want you to think about that.

Look for the comfort, look for what you may be avoiding, and ask yourself,

is there something you could start doing that will test you a little bit?

It'll be a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit unpleasant.

Get after it.

Okay, so come and follow me on Instagram, jdoylespeaks.

Uh, YouTube, Jonathan Doyle Speaks.

Website,

jonathandoyle.co.

And please subscribe to this podcast, share it with people.

My name's Jonathan Doyle.

You and I are gonna talk again tomorrow