--Comfort: The Devil in disguise--
Run from comfort. Run like your life depends on it. Run like Hell.
There's no other way to put it. If you're on the way to achieve your personal legend, you must avoid being comfortable. While the saying 'Success is just outside your comfort zone' has become fairly popular, what many persons don't realise is you can actually create a new comfort zone away from the first. How often have you realised you're now used to a situation that seemed so strange just a little while ago?
For most persons who give up on achieving their personal legends, comfort is usually found as a cause... if not the main cause itself! They say 'Why should I keep struggling for a roomful of gold when the small pot I have is enough'? Or more commonly, 'I'm used to struggling each month for my daily bread, and I'm sure I'll get that, at least for the time being. Struggling for a lifetime of certain security is just too much work'.
In our book 'The Alchemist' by Pablo Coelho, we meet both sides of this coin in the shepherd boy Santiago and the crystal merchant. Santiago was never afraid of letting go of comfort --leaving his long life as a shepherd, leaving his country for the unknown, and later, leaving the known dealings in crystal at the shop and opening a tea-shop extension on the hill. The merchant, on the other hand, preferred to leave things the way they were. He preferred to merely dream about Mecca than actually go there, preferred to leave his crystals inside his shop than build a display outside, preferred to leave the shop the way it was rather than open the tea centre and run the risk of it expanding. Yet every time Santiago had his way, they both experienced more success than they dreamed.
Santiago himself very nearly fell prey to this. After a year of selling crystal and tea, he became comfortable and almost abandoned the journey he had already begun towards his personal legend. He even sought to return to his country without achieving it! However, after leaving the shop he regained his former self and was forcefully reminded of his dreams and all he had learnt. After leaving comfort, he was able to get back on track and achieve his legend.
In whatever it is you are doing to achieve your dreams, make yourself uncomfortable, until that destination is reached at last. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable --this is the only way to avoid that killer of dreams, and go on to your legend.
With stories and lessons culled from Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist'
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