Today's Happiness Practice... Discomfort?

Okay. Truthfully (cause we're all about the truth in Happiness,) the practice will be more like meditating on comfort and discomfort - for the next few days.

The amazing woman who leads our writing group shared the message of a motivational video she saw (and I don't have the source yet; I'll add it when I do - if I remember.) And the message was, our brain wants us to be comfortable.

Yay! Good brain. Happy brain. Let's hear it for comfort!

Except, the message continues, this is not necessarily conducive to achieving our dreams. For example:

Being comfortable at six o'clock in the morning, for me, is being snuggled into bed. Even if I would really rather get out of bed so I can wake up gently before I face the world.

And since I really like having about 2 hours to wake up - so I can write and journal and connect and eat and not feel like I'm racing against time - on the days I don't have outside obligations, I take those two hours.

Or more, because it's so nice and comfortable to just sit and pet the cats, and maybe warm up my brain with a book, and I'm sure I'll get to the laundry in just a moment and that'll at least be productive right?

And because those two hours became a comfortable three or four, I don't really get started on my work until 1 or 2. And then I end up looking at all the stuff I really want to get done (like writing books and songs and paying bills and updating the web site and some contract work so it's not at the last minute) and I can't really decide which I should do first, since I want to do them all, and the most comfortable thing is to go sit somewhere else and breathe so I quit beating myself up for being unable to motivate myself and...


Yeah. She's right. Being comfortable is not actually (or not always) a very useful thing. And it's definitely not the same as being happy. Whatever my brain may think.

So this practice (like everything else) is going to be on how to change my brain's programming. I don't actually think of it as hacking; it's more like finding the right hex key - the one that unlocks the trigger that activates the happily productive part of my brain.

Because I do like to be productive. And organized. And the mistress of my own time. I can feel how amazing it will be to create and contribute all the ideas and chores running around in my brain - which happily means I am one step closer to achieving it.

I just have to make it out of the Comfort Trap.

So, this week, I will be practicing discomfort.

And the first task will be figuring out a better name for it!

I hope you have a great (and just comfortable enough) day!
-Lila