For me, nothing equals the temptation to hit the snooze button in the morning.
I hate waking up early in the morning, I really really really do. I honestly wish I can just submerge myself forever under those fluffy blankets and pillows while hugging my ducks. I keep reminiscing the time as a kid when I don’t have to worry too much about what time I should wake up. And here I am today, forcing myself to wake up early even on the weekend.
What’s funny is that most of my stress does not come from being up and sleepy by my alarm’s yell, but from failing to keep up with the plan. Nothing is a worse morning horror to me than finding myself up at 10 or 11 AM, realizing that I have to come up with a decent plan to cram ALL of my schedules—including breakfast, morning workout, early assignment submission (due to difference in time-zones), and whatever crap that follows after—in a smaller time window.
But perhaps there is something more to this matter than my heavy sigh in the bedroom. Perhaps it shares a lot in common with other activities we have to force ourselves to perform. That awkward meeting with a foreigner we barely know; that project on a new subject we have little expertise in; that speech on a boring topic we have to deliver to an audience; that jogging routine in the aftern . . . well pretty much every jogging, or exercising, or getting sweaty for that matter.
And whatever may lie on the other side—things we wish we could have done instead: sleeping, going on a trip, hanging out, or continuing to work on the same familiar albeit boring routines—all of them belong to this large category we name our Comfort Zone.
But there might be something quite not so comfortable in Comfort Zone. As in the barrier of safety and familiarity, it only makes sense that very little risk is involved. In fact, the only risk we may encounter is the risk of losing out on many opportunities and new excitements, accessible only through perpetual state of being challenged.
Perhaps today’s current state of discomfort is where we would find ourselves as an expert tomorrow.
I remember being asked to translate theses on law about two years ago by a certain Law Faculty. It honestly made me very nervous, and how could I not? I am a literature student, I barely knew anything about Law, I did not even enjoy Translation classes that much, and then some people came out of nowhere asking me to translate academic documents on . . . Law, of all things.
It might have seemed like a very sane, careful, and safe choice back then to just back out and say “sorry, I lack the expertise for this.” Instead, out of being a very stubborn idiot, I gave it a shot, desperately tried at least not to suck horribly the first time around, and within a year I was able to return quality work.
Funny thing is, that was the entry point of my current profession (and primary source of income) today. That one ballsy leap has enabled me to attain some references and a bagful of experience in the field.
My take-home from that experience is to acknowledge that perhaps the best opportunities in life might not come with a well-laid out diagram or instruction, heck it might not even come with privilege—perhaps we have to give up our 1 PM in the afternoon wake-up time, perhaps we’d risk putting our poor introverted soul on a stage for public speaking, perhaps it is bed and TV in exchange for that torture on a treadmill.
Venturing into the new and unknown can be very scary when staying where we are might seem all the more stable, more comfortable. But if we’re very comfortable in all aspects of life at the moment, it might be a tell-tale sign that something is wrong.
JC
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