Spend More Time with This Destructive Person

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By Craig Ballantyne

Time for a damaging admission...

Most people don't know this, but sometimes I harbor a deep, dark secret desire to simply get a mind-numbing factory job where I work 35 hours a week, allowing me to go home at 3 o'clock each day. I'd then play some golf and return home to sit in a chair and watch movies all night while eating chips and drinking soda.

That would be security. But it would also kill my soul. I'd spend too much time thinking about improving my life. I wouldn't be happy on the inside.

Staying in your comfort zone and seeking mindless security will never make you happy. That's the cold harsh truth about the comfort zone mentality.

Even today, with the responsibilities of running both Early to Rise and Turbulence Training, there are still comfort zone traps all around me. And left to my own weak devices, there's a part of me that would choose to not change, to not strive for improvement, to not learn, to not grow, to avoid risk and to cease building. This would, of course, not only lead to stagnation, but also my eventual decline.

Fortunately, there's a stronger voice inside of me that has sought knowledge and perhaps more importantly, has led me to spend time with those that my mentor, Mark Ford, calls, "comfort destroyers." 

Mark recently posted the following short passage on his blog.

"There are basically two sorts of people: those who find pleasure in comfort and those who find pleasure in disturbing comfortable notions. You cannot choose which kind of person you are. It is an essential component of individual temperament."

"I am a comfort-destroyer. And yet I have many friends who are comfort-seekers. But this is common. Relationships are often complementary."

"Ironically, comfort-destroyers eventually make life more comfortable for comfort-seekers because they lead them to products and practices that make life easier."

Think about that for a moment. 

Make a list of all the people that have had the greatest impact on the positive portions of your life. The great teachers of your past were surely comfort destroyers. Perhaps a mentor at work or sergeant in the army, someone that saw the potential in you and would not give up on you until you recognized it too.

Those are the people you need to spend more time with