Brenda

When being comfortable can be a bad thing

What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?

This WP prompt really caught my attention – but because I wonder if seeking to increase comfort in our daily life might actually be a bad thing.

I guess we start off by considering what we mean by comfortable. To me, it means making things easy for ourselves. So many of our daily chores can be automated or mechanised. We have machines to wash dishes, do the laundry. We even have robots that will clean the floors for us. We can buy ready-made meals or even order a delivery and get someone to cook it for us – our dinner is delivered to our door, piping hot. All we need to do is eat it.

We can take this into all aspects of our life and see how things can be made easier – even thinking about more recent developments. I can use AI to help out too – could I use AI to write my blog posts or provide some ideas/outline contents so that it facilitates my writing? AI is entering the workplace too, undertaking many routine tasks. How often do we deal with AI through chatbots etc? But would you be comfortable with an AI doctor?

My concern with seeking to make life ever more comfortable is that we become complacent, unable or unwilling to do things for ourselves and we lose the skills and knowledge of earlier generations.

Another consideration is that as we become less active we affect our health, fitness and wellbeing negatively. Becoming more comfortable and consequently potentially doing less, we could be sabotaging ourselves.

We are less active, travel by cars and eat less healthily, all in the name of convenience/comfort but we’re ruining ourselves so I think we should be exploring strategies to take ourselves out of our comfort zone and look to make our lives less comfortable.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my reflections, and that you will have your own ideas to share in the comments.

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59 comments

      • Sure it did. The more convenience we have the less we are physically active. I remember my grandmother grinding wheat to make porridge for my grandmother at a fairly old age. I can’t imagine doing that in my early 60s. Life should be just as comfortable as is necessary, but not to much. Thanks for this opportunity

      • Thats very true. I was thinking about how my grandmother, and mother in the early days, would wash laundry by hand, using a washing board and mangle … im happy with my washing machine, but it does mean I have time to be active, rather than vegetate in front of the TV or a computer

  3. Agree!! The less time working means more time to leisure exercise and stuff, doesn’t really work for a lot of people.

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  4. Thank you Brenda for your wise point of view on this topic.
    Especially poignant and resonating for me were your words:
    “My concern with seeking to make life ever more comfortable is that we become complacent…”
    – so true, I think.
    Thank you!

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  5. wonderful reflections and much for some of us to ponder, Brenda.
    “… we could be sabotaging ourselves.”… so true 🤍

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  6. I like the sense of accomplishment I get from doing a job myself, from taking on a task or problem and mastering it, or at least trying! I have no desire to sit back and let another person or tech device live my life for me, at least until I am physically unable to do so. If it comes to the extreme that a device is thinking for me as well- then I just want out- permanently. I totally agree with your POV on this topic Brenda 🙂

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  7. Thanks for all of this! My friend Linda is famous for saying a body needs to ‘use energy to get energy’ and she advocates for movement as much as possible for wellness, generally. It can be so counterintuitive…but it works. Cycles of energy replenishing. 😊

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    • It sounds like your friend Linda is a wise lady. I see this in action with my CFS. If I take days off and do nothing, it flares up and I end up with far less energy. It does seem counterintuitive, but it works.

      Hope you’re having a good Saturday, Vicki 😘

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      • She is a wise one! And yes — I bet you know all about this proactive movement business — CFS, I’ve heard, can become much more challenging with inactivity for some folks. And yes — happy Saturday to you, dear one! xoxoxo! 🥰

  8. I like how you phrase it, that our bodies become complacent. My mother used the describe it the same way when we were little. She told us, “use it or lose it.” And with that, I need to get up and go my walk now! 🤭🤭🤭😎

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  10. Hi Brenda,
    This blog post makes enough sense. Being too much comfortable can cause short time and longtime harms.

    I liked it that you have choosen the critical side of the promt instead of appreciating it.

    Being comfortable has different meanings from country to country.
    Country like ours, which is densely populated…our cities face large traffic problems…so wandering openly on the public sites…may cause harm.

    I come from the rural region of India, and I like many things about the cities but I would prefer to live at a ‘less busy’ place, close to nature.

    I’m certainly a kind of person, who’s thoughts flow endlessly…but moves quite less, in daily life.
    I enjoy doing regular cleaning… taking walks…joining classes…and making the short nearby visits.

    …was watching a yotube vlog last night, in which the youtube was visiting several parts of the world… participating in interesting challenges and observatory activities…
    found it interesting!😃

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    • The Youtube vlog sounds really interesting. I think you’re also right that our experiences are all different. Glasgow has been identified as having a pollution problem, but I think compared to other countries in the world its probably not too bad. I walk in the city, but given they’re making it difficult for cars to drive in the city centre, it does encourage public transport, cycling or walking.

      Thanks for sharing your experiences Lokesh.

      I hope everything is good with you 😁

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  11. I personally think that comfort many a times makes us lazy
    For example, there’s an elevator to my gym.
    My gym is at 4th floor
    So it’s not that high
    But people take elevator to reach there and return.

    Similarly at malls, people use escalators.

    Facilities made life smooth and convenient.
    But also made us lazy.

    A simple example is calculator.
    Nowdays people need a calculator to do simple calculation like 200+ 350+ 100 etc

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    • I agree. Calculators were something I thought about too. I remember our maths teacher at school wanting us to have calculators but my dad saying no until he was happy we knew how to count for ourselves first … you need to be able to recognise when something is wrong.

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  15. Definitely a fine balance, but losing the skills/ability to do things is very concerning. Part of the struggle I have is not enough hours in the day to do all I want and need to do…so shortcuts are made.

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    • I guess we decide what’s important and what sacrifices we’re willing to make. The problem comes when sacrifices are made without recognition or forethought

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  16. The daily improvement in technology slowly consumes our capabilities already the human society has lost against the technology it is obvious in few years to come we will be unrealized slaves to it

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  18. This is definitely something I’m afraid of. To find the balance between comfort and complacency, productivity and getting burnt out doing too much. Much yet for me to discover about myself I guess.

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    Reply

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  20. Maybe not all parts in our life. It depends on perspective and needs. At some parts being comfortable making us lazy to move on our own, but at some parts making us easier to do things

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    • That’s true and there are certain things I’m glad not to have to do manually – like laundry – I’m quite happy to pile clothes, towels etc into the washing machine – and I can’t imagine typing on a manual typewriter any more – although I’m still happy with pen and paper too 🙂

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  22. There is no need for any strategy to increase comforts in our life.
    We can be more comfortable with our routine.
    And who defines what comfort is? Is there any limit or Sky is the limit?
    A thought provoking post, Brenda.
    Thanks for keeping my brain active!

    Reply

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