“The world offers you comfort.
But you were not made for comfort.
You were made for greatness.”
— Pope Benedict XVI
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Ooh! What a doozy, huh? And from the Pope no less.
It’s true – as it has been said, ships are safe in a harbour, but that’s not what ships are designed for.
We are designed for growth. We feel best when we know we’re moving forward; when we embrace a destination that is valuable and important to us, and get going on getting there.
Yet we’ve all been the opposite, when we’ve been too lax for too long, the cobwebs are starting to build up, and we know it because we just feel a bit yuck. That yuck is the opposite of what we feel when we’re really alive.
So if you want to feel more alive, you have to get going.
Where to?
Well, the personal nature of our aspirations is key – greatness needs to be of your choosing. Greatness is not about what other people are chasing. You get to define greatness for yourself; in fact, you need to. Success needs to be self-defined because only then is it truly motivating.
What’s important to you?
Is it losing weight? Starting your business? Writing your book? Being better as a parent or a partner? Making a difference in your world in some way?
What’s important to you?
OTHER PEOPLE DON’T MATTER AS MUCH AS WE THINK
The trouble with growth and moving towards that is it’s not comfortable. It’s hard. It’s easy to look foolish and to feel foolish. It’s easy to feel like you’re stupid and you don’t know anything; that everyone is laughing at you.
First thing:
No one’s laughing. If they are, they are so scared of seeming foolish, so afraid of being uncomfortable, they are not out there moving forward. They are the last people worth listening to, because they have no idea of what is involved in becoming better at anything.
As Theodore Roosevelt once said, and it’s worth quoting at length:
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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
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Don’t worry about what other people may think. Surround yourself with people who support you. Not “Yes” people, but people who genuinely want to see you grow and will support and challenge you to do just that.
THERE’S NO NEED FOR BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS
And if you’re worried about all this talk of striving and smashing and sweat and blood, don’t be. You don’t have to smash out of your comfort zone: a gentle extension is more than enough. Smashing and destroying so often leads to stress, threat and “too much”. We freak out and the whole project is lost.
You simply want to extend yourself a little more than yesterday.
That’s why Ernest Hemingway was so on the money when he wrote:
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self”.
Little by little, consistency, practice … these things are worth their weight in gold. Small steps done every day is so much better than huge leaps only attempted every now and then.
But there will always be uncertainty and discomfort. Expect excuses, all the excuses under the sun. Your ego wants you to be great, it wants you to be spectacular, but it doesn’t want you to pay the price.
Every single thing that we’ve ever done that has been worthwhile has involved moving out of our comfort zones. Every single thing.
So get going.
EVERYTHING IS MANAGEABLE. EVERYTHING.
The fact is everything is manageable when you’re present. It’s the mind wandering into the past and the future that really hurts and freaks us out. As Seneca once said, “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
This you can do. Here is manageable. Everything is manageable when you get here.
A spiritual path is a path of comfort in many ways … but it's true reward is finding inner comfort in the face of external uncertainty and discomfort.
A spiritual path gives you an anchor in unshakeable inner certainty, stability and ease. The only place it can ever be found in this world is when you align with your Self. When you get here, when you connect inwards, you are freed from the opinion of others, from needing anything to make you feel a certain way.
You enter a place of having nothing to prove and nothing to hide – an incredible absence from that more or less constant (and destructive) self-doubt, evaluation, criticism, management and editing we all can get stuck in.
You are set free to be who you are and to chase what you want to chase. You are free from thinking you have to prove your existence to anyone. You are driven by something so much deeper than your perceived failings or what other people think. You live and you work because you want to, in the direction you want to, for the only reason that you want to; and I can’t think of a better way to live life, or make a bigger difference to the world.
So – if you want more from life, regardless of what that may be for you, make sure you don’t neglect your inner path and practice. It’s everything.
Boosh. That’s me, thank you for reading.
Make a difference – to yourself, and your world. Keep going!
Go well,
Arjuna