Growth and Comfort Do Not Coexist

Lately I have been wrestling with a concept that is near and dear to my heart…literally. It is a giant tattoo on my thigh:

Growth and Comfort Do Not Coexist.

It is a motto I embrace and try to live by on a daily basis. But it has meant slightly different things to me as I have changed and evolved as a person.

In my younger, slightly more naive and agro years, I interpreted it pretty literally. Discomfort was the point. It was a driving force to gut through things other people didn’t want to do, usually with no real end or goal in sight other than earning the chance to do it all over again the next day.

I’m not saying I’m going to renounce the concept and remove the tattoo. That would certainly be uncomfortable…but to what end?

Instead, I’ve been exploring the nuance behind it. What does it actually mean for growth and comfort not to coexist?

I used to think discomfort meant:

• Getting out of bed before the sun was up.
• Torturous workouts. Hundreds of burpees, pushups, pullups.
• Long miles, preferably in shitty conditions. Freezing rain, snow, whatever.
• Hours-long training sessions, putting my body through the wringer.
• And then getting up and doing it all over again.

I’ve since adopted new uncomfortable rituals like cold plunges and long sauna sessions. At least these are in service of something more deliberate, like greater mental fortitude, but for a while I was still treating discomfort like a no-win proposition.

Hard because it was hard. But lately, I’ve started asking a different question:

Where do I actually want to grow? And then: What discomfort does that growth require?

That distinction matters.

I’ve realized the growth I am after is more holistic than getting more jacked, increasing my cardio capacity, or developing an even greater ability to suffer (no matter how often I do them, 4:45 a.m. cold plunges still suck). But simply getting better at doing things that suck isn’t necessarily growth.

To frame it in an analogy, a lion does not constantly hunt and eat, hunt and eat. It isn’t sustainable, nor is it how the natural world works. But similarly, a lion does not adopt a constant state of rest to the point of atrophy and death

There is a rhythm between discomfort and comfort and a balance of growth. Nature tends toward homeostasis. The right amount of discomfort pointed in the right direction.

This is the distinction I was missing when I was younger. The goal isn’t maximum discomfort. It’s the right discomfort, in service of the right growth. 

Over a long enough time horizon, growth is less about any single peak along that horizon but rather the perpetual forward motion and direction of the line itself. The goal is to keep that line always moving up and towards the right. After each peak, or success, we must remain focused on what's ahead, on the continued set of uphill challenges to confront next. The trajectory will not always be smooth and steady. There will be periods of intense ascents, plateaus, slow growth, and even dips as a result of setbacks. But the danger comes when a past achievement becomes the high-water mark. 

The marathon, the competition, the summit, the career milestone, whatever it was, slowly becomes a story told about a former version of yourself. And then we rest on the laurels of our past self; we get stuck in the glory days. This is the comfort we must rebel against. Otherwise, regret will replace nostalgia: regret that you stagnated, regret that you did not continue to grow. 

Continued growth requires eventually leaving it behind and finding the next uphill stretch. Not because the previous achievement wasn’t enough, and not because life needs to be an endless exercise in suffering, but because forward motion requires friction. Momentum can either be carried into whatever comes next or surrendered to nostalgia.

I am not the athlete I was at my “peak.” I can admit that. I’m not as fast, and I certainly don’t recover the same way. But I think I am an improved version.

There is more intention behind the forward motion now. I have a better understanding of where I want to go, why I want to go there, and what discomfort is actually worth accepting along the way.

Maybe that has been the larger growth hidden inside the motto all along.

Not an ever-increasing capacity to suffer. But the ability to continually assess who you are, internally and externally, decide who you are trying to become, and willingly leave enough comfort behind to keep moving in that direction.

Growth and comfort do not coexist.

But discomfort alone does not create growth either. It has to be with intention. Towards growth that matters.