Comfortable Now, Uncomfortable
Later?
Are you living a life that is
deceptively comfortable?
Grace and I went
to a local school the other day to fly her new kite and a guy there and his
daughter caught my eye. He was half my age but he had a big gut. His daughter
was trying to learn how to ride her bike and he was trying to steady it for
her. He was obviously out of shape and he was struggling to keep up with her as
she began to pedal. It would appear that he felt way more comfortable on a
couch playing video games, watching TV or celebrating his favorite sports teams
with a few beers and snacks to accompany them, but here he was trying to be a
good dad and looking as if he felt pretty uncomfortable.
In
The Slight Edge by
Jeff Olson, he talks about just that - being comfortable now.
He says, "Those
two Slight Edge curves, the success curve and the failure curve, run parallel
to each other for a long time. The two paths may be so close together that it's
almost impossible for most people even to see the distinction between them.
Then, all of a sudden, they veer away from each other, the success curve
shooting up like an eagle and the failure curve plummeting downward like a
stock market crash.
The people living on top, who take responsibility,
live a life that is in some ways uncomfortable. Successful people do what
unsuccessful people are not willing to do, and that often means living outside
the limits of one's comfort zone. When you're one out of twenty, you're always
going to be going in the opposite direction from the other nineteen.
The people on the other side are comfortable; they're with the masses.
Their lives are more comfortable early onbut become more uncomfortable later
on. Suddenly, late in life, they find they don't have the finances, don't have
the health, no longer have the relationships, and their lives become very
uncomfortable.
Those on the success curve, by contrast, end up far
more comfortable later on, because they have the finances, the health, the
relationships, the successes.
This means changing your thinking about
the comfort zone. It's a change in philosophy. It means embracing living
uncomfortably in order to attain a life that is genuinely comfortable not
deceptively comfortable."
The guy at the
school playground is living a life that is deceptively comfortable and later it
will become uncomfortable. Health problems, physical problems, physical
limitations. Your body doesn't get better with age unless you work at it and do
what it takes to stay strong, fit, flexible and mobile.
In Closing...
Do you want to be
comfortable now, eating whatever and whenever, letting your body go and making
bad choices or do you want to be uncomfortable now - working out, fueling your
body properly, making good lifestyle choices - so that you can be comfortable
later? I could run circles around that guy have my age. When he is my age,
he'll just be an old man watching life from the sidelines. What are you going
to choose now to be then? |
