891. Comfort Has Consequences, Here’s Why
24 May 2022 · 21 min
Lori and Chris Harder explain why comfort always costs you something. Choose intentional discomfort like workouts and hard conversations now, or face unintended discomfort later: burnout, health problems, broken relationships. Schedule the difficult stuff in advance and pick long-term happiness over short-term ease.
Questions this episode answers
891. Comfort Has Consequences, Here’s Why
May 24, 2022
Chapters
You're either choosing intentional discomfort or you're being dealt unintended discomfort. But then at the same time, you're always choosing between short term pleasure or long term happiness.
And we're back with another episode of He Said, she Said.
And I'm literally back. I was just gone for what, eight days?
Eight days. And before that you were home like three days and then you were gone.
I was home like two and a half days before that. And I was gone. Yeah, four or five days before. It's just been a whirlwind. I'm home for five days. Five calendar days total this month. Is that wild? Five days total this calendar month.
So now you're home for four or five nights. And then we are going to a wedding.
Yep.
And then we come home for one.
Night and we go straight to Italy.
And then we go straight to Italy.
That's wild.
I'm so excited. What are you most excited about in Italy?
Every time I get to Europe. I don't know how to describe it other than saying I have this weird sense that I'm home. I love. I mean, you see how much I geek out.
You do have European descent.
I do. Right. And almost like a weird past life, if someone dares to believe in that type of I had always lived there kind of home.
What do you think you were?
There's such a.
If you could just, like, comfort such a familiarity out of anything. If you believed in that, what do you think that you were?
I don't know, but I definitely lived in a castle.
A cobbler?
No, I definitely lived in a castle. In a castle, for sure. Without a doubt.
Okay. You definitely lived in a castle. You were not a cobbler.
I was not a cobbler.
You were a king.
I probably ate.
Did you wear jewels?
Isn't cobbler besides a shoemaker? Isn't it a type of pie? Cobbler. Pie.
No, cobble. Cobbler. I feel like it's making me hungry.
Whatever it is.
I ate the shit out of some cobbler, but I was not a cobbler. Wait, that sounds really bad, too. All right, let's talk about something intelligent.
You ate cobbler and you wore jewels.
Okay, talk about something to tell.
Anyway. Oh, I want to know what. So you just drove your mom home cross country. What was the best part of your trip? I know that you listened to, like, 437 podcasts.
The time spent to create a container that big to take five days of driving. And for context, guys, mom lives in Arizona in the winter, in Wisconsin in summer. And you know My brother and I are not gonna let a 73 year old woman and her goldendoodle drive back and forth by herself. And because her dog's so big, it's just too much of a hassle for them to fly. So we, it's tradition that Nick drives her out to Arizona and spends some time with her, and I drive her back to Wisconsin and spend some time with her. We did it last year in a motorhome. This year we just took her car. And the best part is you're given so much space, such a large container of space to have any conversations show up, you know, reminisce about the past. She's got an incredible memory, so, you know, she can bring up. Do you remember when this happened? Remember when that happened? And they're like gifts because I've literally forgotten a bunch of these.
You and I do not have that gift.
We have horrible memories when it comes to details. And she, she has like a. A steel trap. So just all the memories, all the great conversations, it's just really fun. And you know me, I love driving, I love road trips, and I did consume about 5,000 million trillion hours of podcast. Business wars, guys. Business wars. If you love, like, what highly produced stories where they act out two businesses that came up at the same time and they kind of pit their stories against each other. It's really awesome.
Okay, amazing. So today we are talking about the fact that comfort has consequences. Now, when I was thinking of this topic, I literally didn't want it to come across as that you can never be comfortable again.
I mean, you know, because I hate extremist views.
Yes. It's not gonna work. Like, if I didn't even have comforts, like, scheduled into my week every week, where there was something that I've bookended that I've enjoyed. You hit a wall, and that's called burnout. But when we look at the overall grand picture of our life, you should look at your calendar and see something that just about every day during the week or a few days out of the week, that you are uncomfortable or doing things that are very disciplined. And I think about this even in terms of daily comfort, Chris, because you and I do not get comfortable with our health. Like, every single day, we, for the majority of the day, eat healthy, and we always make sure that we're working out. So we don't put our comfort of our health first, ever. Because we know that foundationally, if we get too comfortable, that's when we're really uncomfortable. And I know that we've Even, you know, we had put on weight living this last year, and we were so uncomfortable that it affected everybody. Everything that we did, like in the back of our heads.
I feel like you bounced around there a little bit. So you're saying if you have too much comfort, you really end up inviting in unplanned discomfort. That's what you're saying, and that's what had happened. Here's my thought on this. There's a weird balance between having too comfortable of a life and having discomfort all the time. Right? You know, the extremists like 5 o' clock club and turns into 4 o', clock, 4am club and the workout extremists and the work till, you know, 18 hours a day you can. Or you sleep when you're dead. That's like a level of discomfort that I think is unnecessary. But you gotta be careful that you don't build a life of too much comfort. We have such a comfortable life that I'll speak for myself. It sneaks up on you. You don't realize how soft you've gotten, I guess literally and metaphorically, but you don't realize how soft you've gotten in terms of not handling as big of things on a regular basis. And you almost have to go seek out some small little patterns of doing uncomfortable things so that you can keep sharp, so you can keep those muscles going.
You know, I feel this way even about my podcast. Keeps me uncomfortable because I can't tell you how many conversations that I have where it's not the conversations that I have. It's like when I look at my schedule for the week, I don't necessarily want to have conversations with strangers, especially if they're people who intimidate me. And I kind of look at the week and dread my podcast. I'm just being honest. And then when I show up to them, I'm so happy that I did.
My God, me too.
Because it expands me. And you guys, Chris and I are like extremely introverted people. You probably would not know that, but we really enjoy alone time and just like being by ourselves. But what's so weird about that is that I enjoy that time, but if I do it too much or if I'm alone all week, I actually don't do well. So I have to go do things like schedule in these podcasts that expand me and make me talk to people who think bigger so it makes me think bigger. Or I'm not happy if I follow my comfort. I'm ultimately so uncomfortable. I thought that working at home was was my ultimate setup for my life. I thought this was gonna make me the happiest. And recently I have found that I am miserable when I stay at home all week working, because I just feel, like, lonely. Like, I didn't get out. Like, I have really stale ideas. Nothing new is coming in. So I've joined a CO working space, and I'm obsessed. Like, it always takes me a lot of effort to get there because I drive across town 15 minutes, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're used to working at home and not getting dressed and having your food and everything, you don't have to prep things. I prep my food. I get everything ready. I have to make sure that I don't have certain calls when I'm there. It's just a lot of organization in order for me to get there. But it's always, always worth it. And I think that if we don't make ourselves uncomfortable like this, we end up being miserable for a reason. We can't pinpoint that. We start blaming other things on, like, why am I not happy? Is it my relationship? Am I bored? Do I need to do something different? Or is it that you just need to switch up the energy and get uncomfortable and go do things that get you out of your comfort zone?
So I'm kind of categorizing this into two different types of discomfort. This just hit me. There's intentional discomfort. So intentional discomfort is, oh, I'm going to bite the bullet and get ready for the day instead of staying in my workout clothes and just working from home. Or intentional discomfort is I'm going to go have this conversation with this podcast guest that intimidates me. What if I don't do a good job? All that discomfort leading up to it, and then afterwards, you love it. Intentional discomfort is I'm going to hire a personal trainer who's really going to literally put me through physical pain. I think those are intentional discomforts, which are good things because those are what let you avoid the unintended discomfort. Unintended discomfort is being broke and being so damn miserable because of it. Unintended discomfort is, oh, I can't find a single outfit to wear because I feel gross in them all. Unintended discomfort is I tiptoe around my significant other all the time because there's so much tension, because I haven't made it a priority to stay on going on dates and be present with them.
Or have an uncomfortable conversation with someone.
Yeah. So the uncomfortable conversations with people in your life, that's intended Discomfort. Unintentional or unintended discomfort is if you don't have that tough conversation, then you're going to have a really bad relationship, whether it's a romantic one or a work one or a friendship or whatever it is. So there's. It really just falls into two categories. And you're choosing every day. Every day you're choosing. You can't have a discomfort free life. So every day you're choosing between intentional discomfort or unintended discomfort. And when you really let that sink in, then you get rid of this notion that it's supposed to feel good all the time, which is a trap which will sabotage your future.
Yeah. And it's the little things. You guys can even start with small things. If you're like, oh, what? You know, do I schedule in these big things? Do I need to go an event to an event or something to get myself out of my comfort zone? Yes, those are great things to have scattered throughout your year. But it's little things. Like, if I'm being totally honest for me right now, I am going to start to try to get ready most days of the week, like put makeup on, do my hair and get dressed, which, you guys, I have not done this for years. I've worked from home with no makeup on in my athleisure every single day. And the reason that I want to do this is I noticed that when I get ready, I do social media posts, I film reels.
You've been killing me.
I get things done. I literally get excited about getting social media done because I'm ready. I show up on my zoom calls a little bit, like, I don't know, spunkier. And it trickles into all of the things that you do. So even though, yes, I go and get ready for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and I feel like, what a fricking waste. Why am I getting ready? I get some amazing content from it, which changes my business and actually changes how I feel about myself. Because I'm proud I'm getting out there for my business, which if I really care about my business, the most important thing is to get eyes on light pink and eyes on myself so that when light pink comes out, we have an engaged audience. So it's little things like that that you can just start throughout the day. Like, okay, I'm just going to get ready three days a week. And then for me it's like, okay, I'm just going to film some content and get uncomfortable in that way to get out there because it's serving the bigger Picture. And when I don't do that, honestly I am so uncomfortable. Cause I'm so upset with myself for not doing something so little like posting content, like just fricking do it. And then you don't spend your day going, oh, another day went by where I didn't post the content that I actually wanted to. That is all the things that add up that either make you happy or super disappointed. Disappointed and not proud of yourself.
Boy, you just mentioned happy. So I had broken this down into you're either choosing intentional discomfort or you're being dealt unintended discomfort. But then at the same time, you're always choosing between short term pleasure or long term happiness. You really are. This trip you asked me about my trip with my mom going back, I chose long term happiness over short term pleasure. So what's short term pleasure on that trip? Oh, we could have had the best road trip food ever, right? Comfort food, good dinners every night, like drive through yummy food and made the excuse of, oh, come on, we're on a road trip, it's fun. But I also know that I'm going to Italy in a few days and I didn't want to look like an American slob. And then summer's coming up and I had some serious goals. So I forewent the short term pleasure, right? All the good yummy road trip food. And what I do, I brought my shakes and I ate like beef jerky when I wanted something, like really clean lean beef jerky when I wanted something healthy to eat in the car. That was easy. At night when we'd stopped for a dinner, I would order some boring ass chicken and some vegetables instead of something that would have been great. Let's experience this, right? And it was little decision after little decision after little decision. I came back from the trip feeling physically in better shape than when I left eight days prior.
And I wanna share, you guys, that he started setting that intention way beforehand, way before committed. He kept priming his brain and committing to that way before. And that is the place in your life where you have to realize, are you just like dabbling in your decisions? Because that is more painful than just frickin tearing off the band aid and committing. Because the dabble is you experience so much agony. And you know, I just watched you the week before, like, this is what's happening, okay? Now how do we plan for it? Like, where am I going to find that? I'm going to either sabotage myself or when am I going to feel weak? What am I going to need? How am I going to do this. And you know, we checked in every single day. You checked in with me like, what are you eating? What are you doing? Okay, you're getting your steps in. You walked the airport report yesterday. I just want you to share that.
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I got over 8 miles. So not in the airport. I got over 4 miles nearport and over 4 miles when I woke up. First thing around the airport. But that was part of the intention. I was like, damn it, I'm going to come back. Like everything was about long term happiness, not short term pleasure. So what could I have done yesterday? Oh, my God, I didn't tell you. So the Bucs playoff game was on, so I walked the airport looking for every single TV. You know how there's TVs still at the airport so I could watch the game from TV to TV to TV to tv, instead of sitting down in front of Bit and drinking and eating, like an incredible airport burger. Yeah, that was a real choice between short term joy.
Can you tell?
Chris likes happiness, likes fast food and burgers.
I mean, I love food and I love the Milwaukee Bucks. What more do you want out of me?
I don't.
What more do you want out of me?
That's all I want from you.
So that's a great example of just making those choices. You're either going to have intentional discomfort or you're going to have unintended discomfort. And, you know, a good life comes from the choosing the intentional. You know, we're coming up on a transitional economy right now, and a lot of people are about to experience a lot of unintended discomfort, unfortunately, because they haven't been choosing the intentional discomfort. Right. Creating a little side hustle, filling in a little bit income here, saving a little bit of money there. And what people realize is when you go through a transitional economy, it might be a recession, it might be deeper recession, might be one that we just skim over. It might not even classify as a recession. But everything's changing. Like the housing market is changing. The stock market's been crashing the last 10 days in a row. The crypto market is crashing the last 10 days in a row. So we're definitely heading into a period of a very tumultuous transitional economy. Now, some people, like I said, they're about to be very uncomfortable, but you can still do some things because it still is in the future. We don't know if this is a month away, six months away, 12 months away. So you can still do some things that are intended discomforts, like rolling up your sleeves, doing a little bit of extra work, stacking some cash, getting a side hustle going, as opposed to experiencing that really unintended discomfort. And I know that we said that we're just going to stop doing all forms of training and coaching and all these other things in order to grow our legacy businesses. But what I see coming up as an economy, I think it's time to finally launch the Be Online course that I worked my tail off a year ago building. And we just never released it. We only released it to a small beta group. And it's the best course in the world. It literally is what can help you quickly make an extra thousand a month or two thousand a month, or four or five thousand dollars a month, just monetizing your experience. So we're going to release that thing soon for anybody that wants to backfill and make sure that they have a cushion during this transitional economy coming up. And if you guys want the earliest access to it and if you want a price that is even less than what Early Bird's going to be. And by the way, we're just going to make this thing a bargain. We filmed and created this thing a year ago, and all of a sudden our goals change, so we put it on the shelf. But now I know the world needs it, so we're going to make it a freaking bargain for everyone. So if you guys want, like, early access and the best bargain ever on this thing, all you have to do is text me to get on the VIP early access list. Text me the word bulletproof. Bulletproof, right? You're going to make yourself bulletproof during this transition transitional economy. Text me the word bulletproof to 310-42-10416. Again, text me the word bulletproof to 310-42-102416. And we're going to get you this course so you can make sure you can make it through the transitional economy in a much more comfortable way.
You guys, we're so grateful for you.
We'd love to hear your biggest takeaway. Definitely. Go shoot Chris a text and we will see you next week. Bye, everyone.
Thanks, guys. Sam.
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