Why Do You Push Everyone Away?

If you're wondering why you push everyone away, it boils down to this:

You've chosen comfort over growth.

You’ve picked instant gratification over long term gain. You're addicted to comfort, it’s not your fault, we all are, but it is killing your friendships, your romantic relationships, your career network and your social life. It's taking away everything you could be.

You have to save yourself from comfort.

How is Comfort Related to Pushing People Away?

It's directly related. You’re pushing people away because you think your prehistoric brain is going to help you make it in life and other people aren’t important.

But they are.

Your brain doesn't care about your social life, friendships and romantic relationships. It just wants to keep you alive and safe.

Great, but if you hid under a rock and ate only cheese sandwiches in the dark and warm it would be happy because this is safe, predictable behaviour.

Other people are random entities; they can hurt you emotionally and physically. Romantic relationships mean being vulnerable. Work relationships can be awkward. Friends mean having to leave the house to meet them.

Avoiding people is avoiding discomfort.

If you want to achieve anything worthwhile in life, you’re going to have to tune out the thoughts that want you to be comfortable.

The brain’s desire to seek out comfort is a universal dream killer.

The brain is a comfort-seeking machine. This worked well thousands of years ago but it hasn’t updated its hardware since then. So the brain sees danger in everything. It wants to avoid risk at all costs. It's a risk-spotting machine.

Your brain is dragging you away from anything in life that’s hard, difficult or takes effort and that shit don't wash in the 21st century.

Nothing in life worth having comes easy and comfort means you won't get anything good in life. It's simple mathematics.

Life today can be very comfortable if you want it to be. Why bother with friends, family, relationships when you can have Netflix, Twitter, Instagram?

“There’s a strange lack of discipline if it’s not necessary. All you have to do is show up to your job, put in the least amount of effort and you can without being fired and you can exist." – Joe Rogan

In the wild world when people were hunters and gatherers, if you didn’t put 100% effort in, you didn’t make it. If you didn't foster alliances, friendships, nurture family bonds, there was a real risk you'd be kicked out of your tribe and then you'd end up being eaten by a lion or starving to death.

Today you can choose comfort, today you can push people away and not get eaten so it doesn't seem like a terrible choice. But it still has significant, detrimental effects on your life, but they show up slower and more insidiously than before.

Comfort kills. From the instant buzz of a sugary treat to lying in bed on your phone, plundering Netflix every night, avoiding social situations and not making yourself emotionally available, this is all the pursuit of comfort.

Comfort feels like your friend but it's your nemesis. It steals your time, motivation, friendships, relationships and life as you slide into entropy.

Each and every microscopic moment you choose comfort instead of progress, you lose out.

Default is a Bitch

There’s a great quote that reads “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”

But really, that’s only one slice of the truth. It should read;

“Everything you want is on the other side of effort.”

Sometimes fear isn’t holding you back, comfort is.

Nothing will take away your time, opportunity, health, wealth, friends, partners and happiness like falling back to your default.

Default is a bitch.

Unless you reframe comfort as something bad and wasteful, you'll never become who you want to be, have the friends you want, foster the relationships you dream about.

Instead, you watched Netflix.

How much does your stomach tighten thinking about that trade-off?

At the end of a comfortable road is bitterness.

Being uncomfortable is where life is. Pema Chödrön writes in 'When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times':

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” – Pema Chödrön

Comfort will bury you. In each moment comfort accumulates is another shovel of dirt on your head.

Watching a box set? A shovel of dirt. Eating a sugary snack? Another shovel. Skipping the gym because you’re tired? Another shovel. Not being social, making room for colleagues, friends, family, not actively looking for love? All shovels of dirt.

You’ll be dead and gone and it was nothing but a waste because comfort won you over.

You’re at risk of being a byline of someone else’s story who didn’t give into comfort. And do you know who reads bylines?

No-one.

Don't be a nobody who wasted their one chance at existence. Get uncomfortable. Seek discomfort. Extend out to other people.

"The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships." ― Esther Perel

A life of discomfort and effort sounds daunting.

But I ask you, why play it small when you can be everything?

Do you want to be comfortable or do you want to be great?

Fuck Your Feelings

Does it matter if you feel a bit tired, stressed or scared a day here, a day there? Everyday ups and downs don’t matter in the long run because they're temporary and you don’t remember them.

Do you remember how you felt last Thursday? Exactly.

As spiritual teacher Mooji said:

"Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go." – Mooji

Emotions fluctuate, anxiety rears its head, sad feelings pop up, we get colds, flus, occasionally life is overwhelming. Often though, everything is fine.

Whatever the case, you will seldom remember those feelings in a week or a month, so do they matter?

On the flip side, we remember what we've achieved, the friends we have, the people we've met, the places we've been.

Choose Your Suffering

Discomfort is growing pain. It means you're going in the right direction. Attach your ego to being the type of person who learns and takes chances, who forges themselves in the fires of discomfort.

Discomfort will never go away. Either you embrace it and get what you want or avoid it and get double later in terms of regret, status anxiety, shame and bitterness.

Choose your suffering because there is no other game in town.

Be wise to all the ways comfort masquerades. Be wary of pushing people away because it's easy. Avoiding difficult conversations isn't agreeable, it’s comfort. Deciding not to make room for friendships isn't prudent, it's comfort. Choosing not to date isn't practical, it's closed off.

Chasing comfort is killing your future, your friendships, your bank account, your health, your relationships and your creativity. It’s destroying your entire legacy.

If you spent 12 months avoiding the intoxicating lure of comfort you could see your life grow in ways you thought impossible.

Comfort kills. Effort saves.

Open yourself up to discomfort, to people, to society and save yourself.