Do Some Hard S*** Today

Does it make sense to constantly search for more ease and convenience in our lives?

We wake up after sleeping on a 10 inch thick luxury mattress, stumble into the bathroom to get a shower with hot water that just magically appears when we turn a lever, and clean and groom ourselves with soaps and lotions that people have spent years perfecting. Then we wander to our fridge and find food that has been sourced from farms and factories throughout the country, waiting and ready for our consumption. 

After our grooming and feeding practices are complete, we leave our 72 degree house to get into our 72 degree armchair on wheels for the purpose of traveling to our 72 degree office building. Once we get there, we will sit and move our fingers as we type stuff into a computer for 8 hours. 

Dave Ramsey gives us the analogy of “killing something and dragging it home,” but can we really feel like we killed anything when we are sitting in our climate controlled armchair on the way home from the office? 

Pete Adeney, aka Mr. Money Mustache, likens our never ending pursuit of comfort to eventually having complete and total “relaxation” while lying in bed all day hooked up to a catheter and watching TV.

Are we comfortable enough? Are our lives simple enough? Is our never ending pursuit of comfort, ease, and convenience causing our lives to be better … or happier … or more successful? 

Or perhaps do our lives (which often seem to be dominated by trying to find a good show to watch on Netflix) need a bit of discomfort in them?

Would we be happier if we were a little less comfortable?

Now I’m not talking about the always present discomfort felt by people who truly don’t have enough to eat, or a warm place to live, or somewhere to live in general. I’m also not talking about the discomfort felt by those who lived hundreds of years ago or the level of misery felt by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant. 

I’m just saying that we might be a little happier if we planned some trips outside of our comfort zone. 

Would taking a cold shower in the morning cause us to appreciate getting a warm shower the next day?

Would going for a run during the hot part of the day make us love a cool run in the evening? 

Would biking to work help us to really appreciate the comfort of our motorized, climate controlled armchair that we drive to work in? 

And even more dramatically, is there some really hard and epic shit that we can do to dramatically change our lives and help us to truly appreciate the huge amounts of comfort that we have everywhere around us? 

If we are creating something, can we work through the night to make it a masterpiece? This will make working 2-3 hours per day on our creation seem easy. 

If we are an athlete, can we sign up for a 50 mile running race, a 100 mile bike ride, or just go so hard in the weight room that we feel like we can’t move? 

If we are paying down our debt, can we take on 2 or 3 jobs and kill that debt within 18 months?

Former Navy SEAL, David Goggins, finished SEAL training on two partially broken legs. He could barely walk, much less run. Do you think that he drew on this experience throughout his life as he worked to be stronger, faster, and better? 

Is there something hard that you could do today to amp up and supercharge your life? 

Be sure to let us know all of the hard stuff that you plan to do in the next few weeks by hitting up the comments.

And thanks for reading.

~Nathan

Let’s keep living a great life … with the help of money. So what’s next?

• You can travel for free by using rewards credit cards.
• You can get motivated and get out of debt.
• You can check out the next post or the previous post and continue to learn.

But no matter what you decide to do, let’s leave the ordinary behind and take action today!