Comfort is overvalued. With discomfort comes growth.

Recently I have become re-acquainted with a sentiment that has been expressed in many different ways over the years.  It has become a standard refrain of business coaches, self-help gurus, consultants and motivational speakers.  Countless articles have been written on the subject such as this one from Forbes magazine. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2015/02/11/why-getting-out-of-your-comfort-zone-is-the-best-thing-you-can-do-for-your-career/ 

It has become so ubiquitous that it is almost a cliché.  Like all clichés it has become a virtual proverb because of its innate truth.  It is a sentiment which, while articulated in ways which range from poetic and inspirational to coarse and gritty, comes down to the same thing:  Comfort is overvalued.  Sure, its nice,  its familiar, its safe.  But does it help us get anywhere, do anything, achieve anything? Probably not. 

 

The fact is that comfort is the hallmark of stagnation and stagnation is the harbinger of decay.  Nothing grows in stagnation except for weeds, mold and rot.  Growth, real transformative and  beneficial growth, happens in the realm of discomfort, the realm of pain, where unfamiliarity and risk lurk.  Growth is uncomfortable, it is painful – sometimes excruciatingly so,  but it is necessary.  Without growth we sink back into the stagnant mire and the rot slowly sets in.

Nike founder, Phil Knight, expressed the sentiment multiple times in his autobiographical book, Shoe Dog͟ through the phrase:   “You grow or you die.”  The bible puts it this way: “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arms to rest – then will poverty come upon you like a highwayman, and want, like an armed man.”  Proverbs 24, v. 33-34

Rest obviously has its place.  It is necessary to allow room to grow, but do not get too contented being at rest.  For, comfort leads to complacency and complacency to decay and death.   Challenge yourself to stretch your boundaries – move beyond where you are comfortable and into change and growth.  Personally, spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually and in your business, being too comfortable, for too long, can spell disaster.   

We only grow when we embrace change and the discomfort it requires.  This has been a particularly difficult lesson for me to learn.  I, by nature, seek stability and, as a lawyer, I am trained to manage and mitigate risk. To make it worse, in business, as in our personal lives, we are drawn to complacency and find comfort in doing what we did yesterday because we know how to do that.  We know that we are good at that,  and we know that it works- (well, at least we know that it worked  yesterday).  So, if we wish to de-emphasize comfort we must work at it and take intentional action.

The legal profession is particularly guilty of clinging to practices and mindsets which are comfortable.  It is an old fashioned industry which has long languished in comfort. Specifically in the realm of business, lawyers are comfortable with the billable hour model,  they are comfortable helping clients with one specific issue at a time and then closing the file until another issue arises.  They are comfortable  avoiding the discomfort that comes with truly integrating themselves into a client’s business, getting to know their core values and strategic mission so that they can help guide the client in that direction.  They are comfortable putting out fires for the client without seeing the strategic vision for the forest.   

In defense of the business lawyers’ comfort addiction, it must be noted that there has been little incentive to change and to grow.  The clients are also comfortable with the current arrangement.  They are comfortable either having a hugely expensive in-house legal department deal with the legal headaches, or they are comfortable trying to deal with the legal matters themselves using hit-or-miss on-line forms, or they are comfortable only hiring an attorney when there is a crisis and they are comfortable paying the high hourly rate billed in tenth of an hour increments.  They may not be happy with it, it may not be the best solution for their business, but it is the comfortable one.  After all, “that is the way it has always been done.”

Perhaps it is time for lawyers and their business clients to embrace a little discomfort, to consider new models of operation, to look at legal services not as a commodity to be used as the crisis demands but as an integral part of business planning.  Perhaps it is time to integrate legal advice and counseling as a tool that is always with you to help guide you toward your goals and to free you up to focus on growing your business.

At Maughan Law Group  LC we provide out-sourced general counsel services to small / medium sized businesses. Our mission is to provide custom legal advice, counseling and guidance which is integrated with our clients’ strategic business objectives.  This allows them focus on the why behind their decision to go into business for themselves.