The Anti-Complacent Life

Every choice we make in life can be placed on a scale. At one end is comfort and at the other end is growth.

When we choose comfort, we’re choosing what is safe, secure, and easy. And when we choose growth, we are moving toward what is risky, unknown, and challenging.

For most of us, comfort-seeking has become the default—even those of us who fancy ourselves adventurous people. But too much comfort ultimately leads to boredom and complacency. There’s got to be more to life than just feeling good, right?

Comfort Abundance

First, a confession: I’m not against comfort. I think comfort is a legitimate source of happiness in many seasons of life. It’s a gift that should be received with gratitude—especially considering how hard life can feel when creature comforts are unexpectedly or indefinitely taken away.

However, most of us living in modern, developed countries have a new problem on our hands. In the past, life often forced a degree of risk and uncertainty upon us, but that’s no longer universally true. For some of us, wealth and convenience allow us to meet our basic needs with relative ease, and we have ample resources for making our lives more and more comfortable.

I have a theory that we haven’t fully adjusted to living in this world of “comfort abundance” and many of us are struggling with a profound sense of restlessness. Does that seem hard to believe? Something similar has happened with the relationship between food and obesity. Either biologically or psychologically—or maybe in both ways—we simply aren’t thriving in a world where tasty food is affordable and abundant.

Breaking Out

Are you content with the status quo in your own life? Maybe not. Research from the 2019 World Happiness Report shows that today’s American adults are less happy and less satisfied with their lives than adults from previous generations.

Fortunately, there are ways to improve our lives beyond pulling harder and harder on the lever of comfort.

By moving in the opposite direction—adding back the right dose of uncertainty, challenge, and adventure—we can restore an equilibrium to our lives that’s likely essential to human flourishing.

Maybe that doesn’t sound appealing to you right now, but remember, comfort has a way of lulling us to sleep. We lose a sense of what’s possible and settle for what’s within reach. We replace a sense of purpose with the constant drip of pleasure.

It’s possible to break yourself out of your complacency and imagine new horizons of possibility for your own life. Not only is the journey more exciting, but it can be more rewarding, too.

Instead of passively watching movies about other people going on adventures and becoming heroes, you can make your own real-world life the kind of story that’s filled with possibility and intrigue.

The Anti-Complacent Life

If the kind of life I’m describing sounds desirable to you, it’s because we were made for more than the maximization of physical comfort and security. There’s a part of each of us that wants to fling off the complacency of modernity and do hard things just to know we can.

How do we get started? The key ingredients are uncertainty, challenge, and adventure in doses as large as you can handle. In every way you can imagine, just start pushing back against the status quo in your life and attempt to discover new and better ways of living.

In a future article, I’ll go into even more detail about how to live an anti-complacent life. But for now, I’ll leave you with a short list of places to begin. Each of these changes on their own might be small, but collectively, they represent an entirely new mindset. They are the seeds of a whole new way of being.

Respond with urgency. Find a problem you’ve been avoiding and attack it with an unusual sense of urgency and determination. Demonstrate to the world and to yourself that you can leave a mark.

Resist the algorithm. Algorithms give us more of what we want or have already seen. Instead, seek out a wider variety of inputs to your life. Read unusual novels, get your news from diverse sources, pick up a new magazine—you never know what you may discover.

Explore faith. The modern age is increasingly one of unbelief. Re-enchant your world by taking a new look at faith. If you’re already a believer, explore another tradition within your own religion and incorporate new insights into your own belief.

Talk to more people. Complacency pushes us to hang out with the people we already know or who are most like us. But an exciting world of new possibilities emerges when people with different worldviews begin exchanging ideas. Put yourself in places where you can meet new people, and be bold in striking up conversations when the opportunity arises.

Travel widely. Taking a vacation off the beaten path or striking out on a road trip are timeless ways to shake up the status quo in your life. Not only will you be challenged physically, but you will also be exposing yourself to new ideas, customs, and perspectives—far more vividly than if you had read about them in a book.

Shape your physical environment. Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” It’s a powerful reminder that we aren’t stuck with the world we inherit, but rather can form it into something new. Start with a single room in your house and make it as beautiful or as striking as you can.

Get physically fit. High rates of obesity and sedentary lifestyles are perhaps the most obvious evidence of complacency in our society. Push back against the status quo and become strong and aerobically fit. This is something like a super power in our modern age.

Try new foods. One simple way to fight the status quo is to experiment with new cuisines. When you’re out to eat, try a dish that’s unlike anything you’d normally order. Use this as a launching point to learn about a different culture.

Say ‘yes’ more often. I’ve noticed that comfortable people cling to their comfort and are more likely to turn down new opportunities. It’s as if being open to new experiences is a skill that atrophies without practice. At least for a season, let your default answer become yes and see what happens.

Embrace serendipity. So many of our experiences are now planned or tailored to our preferences. This means a smoother, more predictable ride through life, but it also removes some of the wonder and mystery that can infuse the ordinary with meaning. Try traveling with only very broad plans. You might even experiment with making more life decisions by the flip of a coin.

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Mike (and his wife, Mollie) blog at This Evergreen Home where they share their experience with living simply, intentionally, and relationally in this modern world. You can follow along by subscribing to their twice-weekly newsletter.