Today’s Comfort Is Going To Be Tomorrow’s Discomfort

I was listening to an older episode of the Rich Roll podcast recently with Michael Easter, author of the excellent bestselling book The Comfort Crisis (<–affiliate link). Early in the podcast Easter said something that resonated with me in many ways. Here’s the short clip: 

Easter and Roll were discussing this in the broader context of “doing hard things”, which regular readers of my blog know I’m 110% all about.  As Roll says early in that clip, we’re evolutionarily wired for a world that looks nothing like todays world, and our instincts nowadays usually only manifest to do us harm.  “Eat all that sugar and fat, we may not get any more for weeks!” says your early hominid brain that had to forage for food. 

But I though about the phrase Easter said from a more direct financial perspective – “Today’s comfort is going to be tomorrow’s discomfort”. 

As of the third quarter of 2023, the average American consumer’s credit card debt came in at a whopping $6,501, which is a 10% increase from 2022.  People are buying things they can’t afford, and then paying more for them as they have to pay interest. 

We all know that a very large portion of this debt is for wants, not needs.  In other words, comfort. Be it door dash because they’re too lazy to cook or even go out themselves to get food, or “nice” clothes, iphones, and video games, Americans want and generally have ‘all the things’. 

But todays comfort will become tomorrows discomfort as they find themselves still going to work everyday at the age of 70 with a bad back because they didn’t save money for retirement. 

Wise Words

If you work out regularly and take care of your body but then skip a day or two because you just don’t feel like it, you’re choosing comfort.  Is that comfort for a few days gonna kill you and create discomfort down the road? 

Probably not.  Just get back on the wagon, we’re all human.  This “comfort creates discomfort” idea is not an acute thing, it’s a chronic thing.  If you skip working out for 2 years and become overweight with atrophied muscles, then you’re setting yourself up for mucho discomfort down the road.

In so many aspects of life, chronically choosing comfort is a recipe for future discomfort.