3607: The Quiet Power of Rejecting "Comfort Creep" by Charlie Brown of Simple And Straight Forward

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[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_04] This is Optimal Living Daily. The Quiet Power of Rejecting Comfort Creep. By Charlie Brown of SimpleAndStraightforward.substack.com. And I'm Justin Malek. This is the award-winning podcast where I read articles to you to add a little bit of inspiration, motivation, or happiness to your day. A short daily practice really does go a long way. This is all with permission from the authors or websites, just so you know. But with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_04] The Quiet Power of Rejecting Comfort Creep. By Charlie Brown of SimpleAndStraightforward.substack.com. OMG, this bed has a full-size duvet and a supportive mattress. There is an oven. Sam, there is an oven. It really doesn't take much to make me happy these days. I've spent two and a half years living in a short-term accommodation of wildly differing quality,

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_04] and I can tell you, you notice when your comfort is taken away. The unsupportive double bed with a duvet barely bigger than a single. The mini fridge that can't hold even a day's worth of food. No heating. No curtains. And there's nothing quite like getting that comfort back. Suddenly, a comfy bed isn't just a comfy bed. It's the best bed you've ever slept on.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_04] A radiator isn't just a radiator. It's something you're so happy to see you could kiss it if that wasn't so ouchy. I've said it a hundred times before to my husband Sam, and I'm saying it to you lovely lot now. If you want to level up your contentment and happiness, reset your comfort levels and lower your expectations. It's only then you can resist the lull of what I call comfort creep.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_04] Comfort creep is like lifestyle creep. We need far more now than we used to in order to be quote-unquote comfortable. It's insidious and has quietly happened to us while we weren't paying attention. While once you would have been content with a black and white TV, now it has to be a 60-inch TV with surround sound in every single movie at your fingertips. While once a car was a metal bucket on wheels and you loved it for that,

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_04] now it has to have a dashboard that looks like a spaceship and does everything except drive the thing for you, yet. Companies know this, and they plan on it. The amount of stuff out there designed to enhance your comfort just a little bit more is staggering, from smart fridges that play your Spotify playlist, to lighting you can control from your phone. Call me curmudgeonly, but I don't buy it.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_04] I worry we'll all end up like those dudes on Wall-E floating around on our do-everything-for-us beds. Comfort is a human need, but modern life takes it too far. Our expectations of what we want from our home, our car, and our stuff is sky-high exactly because of comfort creep. And I'm not convinced it does any of us any good. There's plenty of research to suggest that I'm right. Here's one such example.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_04] In his new book, The Comfort Crisis, Easter makes the case that modern life may be too cushy for our emotional and psychological well-being. When all of our most fundamental needs, like food, warmth, and safety, are so thoroughly and perpetually satisfied, he says we not only lose our appreciation for what we have, but we also move the goalposts and fixate on social comparisons that make us miserable.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_04] In other words, we look to comfort creep in order to find happiness and contentment. What I've noticed is how few people realize that this is a never-ending cycle of misery. As the quote says, we move the goalposts. It's only once we realize we're doing this that we can stop equating insane levels of comfort with happiness and contentment. It's only then we can kick comfort creep to the curb once and for all.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_04] It turns out that discomfort is not as bad for you as you might expect. A 2016 study in the Journal of Adolescents found that young people who spent eight or nine days roughing it in the wilderness enjoyed numerous mental health benefits, including reduced stress and improvements in mindfulness, happiness, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction. I'm not suggesting we all rough it for a few days to make us appreciate what we have,

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_04] but I am suggesting that we could reset what we truly need in order to be comfortable. Right this second, I'm sat outside a coffee shop in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. There's no room inside, and I'm typing away in a not-so-balmy zero degrees Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit. You know what I really, truly want right now? Warm hands. That's it. I know that once I head home, sooner rather than later, I will appreciate the warmth of my apartment so much more

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_04] than if I had been able to sit inside this coffee shop. It's a small thing, but by being mindful of it, I can supercharge my happiness this afternoon. Of course, all of this is easier said than done precisely because of those moving goalposts. Once I'm warm again, I won't think about it. As I continue to live my life on the road, I can say that I'll never take a good bed and oven and a warm apartment for granted ever again,

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_04] but if I ever stop traveling, I probably will. I'll get used to it all again. The comfort creep will return. If I'm not careful, I could descend into the depths of comfort. Soon, I too could be the owner of a music-playing fridge and wonder how I ever lived without one. There are ways to combat this. Some people swear by gratitude journaling, documenting what they're grateful for every day. It's often small things like a compliment or a good night's sleep

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_04] or what would be, in my case today, a warm apartment. I've tried gratitude journaling, but it never worked for me. Unless you're part of a select few who makes it a habit, it's all too easy to stop doing it, leaving the door open for comfort creep to once again take over. What is needed instead is a fundamental shift in what you think you need in life in order to be happy and comfortable. It's about knowing in your heart of hearts that it's not going to be found in a slightly bigger car

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_04] or a slightly more complex bottle of wine or a slightly bigger home. It's about lowering your expectations. Once you do that, your happiness and contentment levels will go through the roof. And once that happens, life gets very, very good. It's not easy to lower one's expectations. In places like North America, much of Europe and Australia, we're conditioned to believe that bigger is better, that we deserve more and more.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_04] All I can say to this is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Look at Veruca Salt. She wants everything and expects it now and doesn't have a single jot of gratitude or happiness in her. Although Veruca is a bit of a ridiculous character, she is indicative of what an overblown consumerist society expects us to be. Demanding high expectations, spoiled with the riches of an overworked credit card. No one wants to be Veruca Salt. We want to be Charlie,

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_04] the boy whose expectations were low and gratitude was high. He was the one having all the fun in that factory because he didn't expect that much. Unlike Veruca, he wasn't a victim of comfort creep. Lowering expectations goes against everything we're taught and yet it is one of the most effective ways to experience contentment, happiness, and gratitude. It's an amazing way to combat comfort creep because we're no longer looking to move those goalposts.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_04] They can stay exactly where they are and we can get on the business of living a good life with less and be all the happier for it. You just listened to the post titled, The Quiet Power of Rejecting Comfort Creep by Charlie Brown of simpleandstraightforward.substack.com and I'll be right back with my commentary. The origins of this podcast were once just a dream. That dream turned into the podcast and business you're listening to today.

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[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_04] That's P-E-S-T-I-E dot com slash O-L-D for an extra 10% off. Thank you to Charlie. I can definitely relate to this. I too have gone through different phases, living with family, friends, alone, and so on. It's really interesting how quickly my perspective shifts and I get used to how I'm living. I mean, when I was volunteering way up in the Rocky Mountains for a month, I was living in a small tent with a stranger

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_04] and all we had were two tiny beds. But it felt normal after maybe a week or so. Coming back to a bigger bed with a decent mattress felt like the greatest luxury ever. But same thing within, I don't know, maybe a week, maybe even less. It felt normal and I could be thinking about needing a bigger TV or something else. But I think Charlie's right in that it's about resetting what we think we need to be happy.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_04] Maybe we don't need to sit outside in freezing weather like Charlie did or volunteer in the Rocky Mountains like I did, but we could definitely use a little perspective shift now and then. And hopefully something like this, a short daily podcast, can work as a daily reminder. So with that, thank you for being here with me every day for this daily reminder. That's how I'm able to keep going is you coming back to listen every day. Have a great rest of your day and I'll be back tomorrow as usual where your optimal life awaits.