Last week, I was talking to a friend on gchat about a mutual friend of ours. It wasn’t a shady behind the back type of conversation. All very much positive. Essentially, we felt as though his life was too comfortable, which has been inhibiting his professional growth as well as his growth as an artist.
Then it hit me that I too suffer from the same flaw. It’s funny how some things we discover in others, we find in ourselves (for better and worse). Simply put, the more comfortable we get, the more extreme measures we’ll take to maintain that false sense of reality. In a lot of case, comfort is an illusion.
Beyond the obvious comfort of money, it’s a lack of taking chances, trying new things, meeting new people, and more importantly, failing. There’s this common thought process in our society that links risk to failure and failure to shame when the exact opposite is the case. Granted, you shouldn’t spend all your money on lottery tickets. That’d be preeeeeeetty preeeeetty moronic. However, to my initial point, growth can only happen when you step away from what you know and from what you are accustomed.
As I was opening up to friend about all of this a few days ago, he pointed me to a quote from Fred Wilson’s keynote last week at 99% Conference:
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
It gets you thinking, doesn’t it.
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