We all take things for granted. It’s only after we lose them, we realize about it’s presence and impact on us. Look at your body, you have eyes, ears, hands, fingers, legs, and almost everything you need to survive comfortably in this planet.
You take all your body parts for granted. Handicapped people only realize how lucky you are and how unfortunate they were to lose a part of their body. You never realize that. If you do realize, it’s only when you lose or hurt it really bad.
How would you feel if you were to lose some of your body part?
If you were to lose your eye sight, you wouldn’t be able to view this wonderful world. But do you view it when you have? Of course you do, but you don’t view it to embrace it’s beauty.
You probably have lots of other things that you need to work on. If it doesn’t go according to your plan, you get angry. But you have everything necessary to live comfortably in this planet. Why do you long for more and get sad or angry during the limited time you live on earth?
I guess it’s human nature to long for more after you are comfortable with your present situation. But you don’t realize how lucky you are or how unfortunate you’d be if you were to lose them.
So, one of the ways to make yourself aware of how lucky you are strip off your comfort.
Which means, leave without something which you already own. For example: I have been riding bike for a long time. I don’t know how it feels to ride public transportation anymore. Before I owned a bike, I used to think everyone who owns bike were pretty lucky and living their life in comfort because they could travel whenever and wherever they wished.
I was really happy when I first owned a bike. But after some years, I forgot about it. I was unhappy over other stuff. I was in the point where I had stopped feeling fortunate or happy that I owned a bike. I needed something else to elevate my level of happiness.
Yesterday, I thought of leaving my bike at home and experiencing the old transportation mode — which made me realize at once — how lucky I was to own and ride a bike. I could go anywhere I want without having to rely on mediocre public transportation services.
Live a day without internet and you’ll feel fortunate the next day that you have internet.
In retrospect, strip off anything that’s comfortable (voluntary discomfort). It’s not to beat yourself, but to feel gratitude over things you already own.
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Almost 99% of the time, I write posts from my home. I basically never wrote a post from outside my home. I’m comfortable writing from my home and that’s where I produce the best writing.
However, there’s a massive downside for being comfortable only in one place. I’m not flexible enough to produce good writing or work from other workplace.
Today morning I showed up at Code Pixelz Media for WordCamp speaker selection. I gave my presentation and got some feedbacks regarding my speech. However, after the selection, instead of moving home I stayed here to write this blog post.
Why?
Because I want to get comfortable at writing in different environments. Being able get into creative workflow quickly anywhere is a very huge advantage. It makes you more flexible to get your work done faster.
If you’re aware that you can only get into creative workflow in certain set of environments, you need to quickly act on it. My typical advice would be to move to a different set of environment and try to work from there.
That’s what I’m doing write this very minute. I’m in totally different environment from what I am comfortable with and writing this. This expands my comfort zone, thus enabling me to have huge advantage over anyone who cannot adopt to various environment.
Just some weeks ago, I felt extremely difficult to write a blog post in a coffee shop because I wasn’t used to writing from other environments than my own. But now that I’m doing this, I feel like I can get at least some work done through coffee shops as well.
It’s all about increasing your comfort zone. If you’re too comfortable in one place, quickly change it. However, if you’re in the middle of an important project, you don’t want to do that.
Your efficiency will decrease once you start to change environment when you’re not ready for it. So, lookout for opportunities to expand your comfort zone when you’re not in middle of a big project.
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