A Life Of Comfortable Complacency

Life never ends, until it ends.

This may sound corny or redundant, but think about it. You can keep on developing yourself, growing yourself, until you die.

In fact, you have to keep living until you die. There's not some pause button you can press when you don't feel like living for a while.

You can keep on exploring, discovering and developing yourself. You can go as far with this as you want. There is not a single law that states that you have to stop growing.

But when you look around, you start to think that there's a death penalty on personal development. Your parents, your friends, your co-workers, they all have stopped growing.

Go to work, eat, watch TV, sleep. Repeat. Get a nice job. Get a partner. Get a mortgage. Pay the bills. Completely stuck in the same loop over and over again for the rest of your life.

The biggest problem with this: you know exactly how the rest of your life will be. Get two kids when you're 35. One holiday a year. Retire at 70. Die at 80. No surprises at all. No challenges at all.

I'm from a traditional, old fashioned village. It's custom to get a girlfriend/boyfriend when you are 20, get a mortgage at 25, have children at 30. It scares the shit out of me.

And no one else in my environment seems to have a problem with it.

Life in Limbo

This life that I pictured is how 95% of society lives, without even thinking about it. It's such a numbing, yet comfortable lifestyle that they never second-guess it.

It's a life in limbo: Limbo is a situation in which nothing happens or changes for an extended period of time.

If this is your life, it's the same week over and over again. With distractions nowadays like social media and Netflix, everybody falls into this trap.

Thinking you are comfortable and happy, but you numbed yourself with cheap dopamine.

There is no discovering in your life whatsoever. No growth, no challenge to overcome. No achievement. That's not a life you want to live. Life's too precious for that.

Living a life in limbo will have you waking up 30 years from now and wondering where the time went. Where your life went. And now you're too old to do something with your life. You've wasted it.

This should scare the shit out of you. It does to me at least.

Numbing yourself with cheap dopamine hits from Insta Reels and TikTok, while watching a show on Netflix. This will have your dopamine resources so empty that you are too lazy to think about your life and goals.

Your weeks fly past you, while you are stuck on your phone. The flame inside you slowly burns out. You start to accept that you are an NPC. A mere character in the game of life.

Chasm of Comfortable Complacency

Chasm of Comfortable Complacency means:

Being ‘comfortably numb’ to your present situation because it’s neither horrific nor amazing. Forcing you to just coast along on autopilot without having any real ambition or drive to change the situational dynamic.

This is how most people live their lifes. It's meh. That's the biggest trap in life. To live a life of comfortable complacency.

You have to wake up. There's greatness inside you.

It's time to wake up

It's not too late. Yet.

You can turn your life around. You first have to acknowledge that you are in Limbo. That you are sleeping. That you are distracting yourself. You can only cure yourself when you realize you are sick.

As you are reading this, I assume you realize this by now. You realize something must change. This means that you are already further than 95% of society.

There are 5 steps you have to take in order to break out of Limbo:

1. Stop the distraction.

Your mind is lazy. It doesn't want to think. That's why it's constantly trying to distract you. With Social Media, TV, parties, drinking and porn.

Cut this shit out off your life. I'm logged off of all my social media apps and log in once a day. I scroll, click everything and log off again. I'm 10 minutes on social media, max. And it's more than enough. You have to try it for a week.

Instead of streaming a show at night, or jerking off, read a book. Listen to an informational podcast. As long as you are learning something. I can assure you that you won't be having breakthrough ideas and insights by watching a TV show.

2. Find your zest

We are all gifted and talented in some way. This includes you. Because of your family, teachers, friends you might have forgotten these, but you have natural preferences.

Grab a notebook and write everything down that you liked as a child. Wether it's drawing, reading, writing, painting, singing. It does not matter.

As you grew older you were polluted by negative thoughts and influences of the outside world. But deep inside of you there is still this child that likes to draw or sing or dance, or whatever.

Start practicing again. No matter how much you suck at it. Just start.

I remember telling bedtime stories to my little brother involving meatballs and sausages. It was only until I tried to find my zest in life again when I realized this.

3. Work at your thing

I block out 1 hour every day writing (kids) stories. It makes me forgot about all the problems in the world. That 1 hour I am one with my story. It's the best feeling in the world.

I urge you to experience this feeling. Let go of all your expectations. You can suck. You must suck. That means you are trying. No matter what your thing is, nobody has to know about it if you don't want to.

Practice without any timeframe in mind. Don't tell yourself: "I have to be perfect in 3 months or else I'll quit". That's not how this works. See this as something that you are willing to do for free for the rest of your life. If you aren't willing to do that, it's probably not your zest.

4. Have something greater in mind

As a kid you are a creative being. The world made you forget that with its rules and regulations, but you are a creative being. Your zest is a creative expression of yourself.

Instead of monetizing this, have something greater in mind (and then monetize).

This is a lifelong process. You might as well change the world for the better with it.

In the stories I write, there's always a 'higher' lesson in it about hope, belief and good morals and values. Because I belief that that's what children need these days. They certainly won't learn it from their parents who are glued to their phone.

I encourage you to try this. How can you make the world a better place with your thing. No matter how small the change is. You never know what might grow out of it.

5. Make it your lifestyle

When you have found your zest, practiced and took action on it, it's time to make it your lifestyle. Quit your soulless job. The job where you wait for it to be friday 5 PM. That's no way to life.

As a kid nobody dreamed of being an accountant, an investment banker or insurance agent. As a kid you dreamed of being an actor, a singer or a dancer. As a kid, all you wanted to be was creative.

Let the soul drenching jobs for the slackers of the world. You have the world something to offer. Find a way to monetize your skill. Whether it being in a job, or being a business.

Life is too precious to hate monday morning. You only get one shot at this thing called life. Grab it. In the absolute worst case scenario you fail. And then you can always go back to your old profession. But chances are that you will be much better at your zest than at the job your parents told you to get.

Passion

You create your own passion. Your mind can be your best friend or your greatest enemy. You can decide to pursue your goals with passion or with indifference.

It's cool nowadays to be indifferent. Nonchalant. Not caring about feelings and the world. But that's a soulless life. That's a dull, boring and destructive way to live.

Truly care about your interests. Care about your zest, about the things that make your heart beat and your interest spike. There's a reason why I get excited while writing and you get excited when drawing, for example.

We all have this inner passion. This is put in us with a reason. Pursue it. Go after it relentlessly. Fuck what other people think or say about you. This is your life, and you only get one shot as far as I know.

Block out time, say no to people, to things that don't serve you. While writing this, my friends asked me to go to a bar and watch football. It's tempting to go, but it will be another regular friday night in which you don't progress.

Learning to say no is a must in this life if you wish to accomplish great things and live a life of passion.

Your why

I can hear you think. Why would I want to do all that? It sounds like a lot of work? It is a lot of work. It is the hardest work you'll ever do!

But it's your own life you are talking about. It's literally the only think you got. When you strip everything away, your possessions, your degrees, your relationships, all that's left is your life. Nobody can take your life.

That's why you want to do all this work. That's why you want to work on your passions at night instead of watching TV. Because it's a celebration of your life. Choosing to work on your goals instead of scrolling social media is the biggest act of self-love.

Choosing your future self over your present self is the greatest act of love there is. Imagine what your life will look like in 1 year from now if you watch TV every night. OR work towards your goals every night for 1 hour.

In the first scenario your life will be exactly the same as now. You have made no progress.

In the second scenario you can be in a completely different life. Or not. But the excitement you get from the possibility should be enough.

The choice is yours.

There are 2 ways to live your life.

 1. Passively, where everything happens to you and you react to it. A life where you do what you are told and never think for yourself.

2. Actively, where you make things happen for yourself. A life where you think for yourself and put yourself in the driver's seat.

The first way is how 99% of society lives. They live this way because this is the default. Living an active life costs time and effort. And most people are not willing to pay this price. Later in life they will pay the price of regret though.

Block your distractions, ditch the phone. Turn inward. What sparks your interest? Find it as if your life depends on it, because it does.

Start practicing. Get better every day. Even if it's just 1% better. Even if it's just 0.1% better. Put the time and effort in that other people are not willing to put into.

Eventually, make it your lifestyle. Life's to short to live someone else's life. A path and a life that was created by your parents, your friends, your teachers, society.

Be the weird one. Be the one who thinks for himself. Be the one who has passion in life. Be the one who wakes up happy on Monday morning.

Now what?

I want you to take a piece of paper and write down everything you enjoyed when you were a kid. Even ask your parents what you liked when you were young. This is most likely where your real passions are.

Write it all down, and next try it all. Liked to draw? Start drawing. Liked to play with LEGO's? Start playing with LEGO's! It doesn't matter what it was. You've got to get the sparkle back in your eyes.

Life's too short to live another way.