Comfort vs. Security

One of the most mind expanding concepts I learned years ago came from a book by Tony Robbins called Awaken the Giant Within. The concept is that we are hard wired to avoid pain and obtain pleasure. Most of the time we spend more energy avoiding pain or the potential for pain than we try to obtain pleasure. This is even when the small short term pain will help us avoid the greater long term pain or the greatest long term pleasure (being able to deal with the short term pain for long term pleasure is one of the markers that successful people have).

Comfort and security are both versions of avoiding pain but they are different. We hate change because change takes work and change disrupts our comfort. Security is like comfort but is based on your assumption that you will be safe and taken care of.

The problem with these concepts is that we have comfort in our current life position and we have misinterpreted it as security. We are too comfortable and do not want to change even as the walls of our situation are crumbling around us.

As an example consider the current situation where India and China are taking our jobs. We have gotten so comfortable over the last 60 years because we have not had to compete economically with any other countries. Now India and China are working hard because they see what they can have if they work hard. Many of us see this happen and start complaining that it is not fair etc. We spend so much time complaining but spend little time actually doing something to fix the situation. We are so comfortable not competing that we are unwilling to work to keep our security.

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