We have two kids and we both still work. Once you consider driving to and from work, the kid’s schools, the kid’s activities like swimming lessons, instruments, and sports, your own downtime, trying to squeeze in some fitness or yoga, waking the dog, maintaining your home, visiting friends and family, appointments, grocery shopping, etc. It all starts to fill your life up and all of a sudden you find you have no bandwidth for anything else. It turns out that there’s a scientific explanation for these unfortunate people, along with most of our other problems:

By doing so, one will discover new emotions and build strength from the core. Studies suggest that going through such experiences can enhance health as well. The key is to find a balance between comfort and challenging situations. If you leave your shelter, you’ll find that life isn’t always pink. You will also learn to appreciate everything you have. Lesson 2: Being by yourself in nature can help you connect with yourself and feel less lonely. Madison Avenue knows this well and markets products to capitalize on the slothfulness and gluttony. If you’ve been looking for something different to level up your health, fitness, and personal growth, this is it.”—Melissa Urban, Whole30 CEO and New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Boundaries For me, the questions that help me decide which “jobs” are worth doing for life include these ones:In other words, even when our lives are virtually problem free, instead of appreciating our good fortune we just start making up shit that we can complain about instead. The idea is that your brain’s reaction to challenges like what MMM described is to produce dopamine (creating contentment/happiness) vs if you get your dopamine hits from constantly binging Netflix, etc, then your body has to produce less dopamine to recalibrate, making you less happy and more anxious. Worth a listen for some of the science behind what this article is describing. Reply The least filling food was croissants, while the most filling was plain white potatoes. The USDA reports that a small croissant and a medium potato both have about 170 calories. This study suggests you’d have to eat about seven croissants, 1,190 calories, to experience the same fullness you’d get from a single potato. The key quality that made a food filling: how heavy its 240-calorie serving size was.” After reflecting on his ultra comfortable life, the author decided it was time to experience discomfort. He set himself the challenge of a month-long hunting trip in the Alaskan wilderness, sleeping in a tent. All the comforts of modern life would be stripped away. Why not park somewhere else, either as close to the garage entrance as you can or maybe even somewhere down the street on the “home” side of work if practical. And then still run whatever streets and staircases up/down as many times as you like? Reply

Fad diets aren’t sustainable. Simply put, they don’t work. Only 3 percent of the people who lose weight succeed in keeping it off. Part of the problem is that we’re hopeless at estimating how much we eat. For instance, a 1992 study of overweight people found that participants who thought they were consuming around 1,000 calories were actually consuming double that.

I think of all your blog posts, my favorite post title is “Is it Convenient? Would I Enjoy it? Wrong Question.” I can’t remember the post at all, but I remember that title. Reply What's the ultimate goal in this life? Is it to transcend the problems of everyday reality and retire in comfort and serenity near the beach? Or is it to test our limits regularly and embrace the discomfort and challenges of being a human being? This is a question many of us take for granted. We all think that retiring rich, fat, and happy should be the ultimate goal, but how many of us would be lonely and bored should we ever reach that plateau?

Ellis Paul Torrance was an American psychologist. In the 1950s he noticed something off-target about American classrooms. Teachers tended to prefer the subdued, book-smart kids. They didn’t much care for the kids who had tons of energy and big ideas; kids who’d think up odd interpretations of readings, invent excuses for why they didn’t do their homework, and morph into mad scientists every lab day. The system deemed these kids “bad.” But Torrance felt they were misunderstood. Because if a problem comes up in the real world, all the book-smart kids look for an answer in…a book. But what if the answer isn’t in a book? Then a person needs to get creative.” I’ve been looking at this problem-seeking tendency in myself lately and sure enough it is there. When I run up against something that is annoying because it’s not perfect/easy/comfortable, I ask myself, Why is that important? And the answer is, it’s not. Breezy and yet bracing synthesis of tough adventures and hard science. Ironic, perhaps, for a book about how we need to challenge ourselves to be so enjoyable to read.” —Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration It helps when you have like-minded people in your circle of friends. I do have three friends who embrace life with less comfort but with a lot of passion and realness. Unfortunately two of them live abroad and I don’t get to be around them as much as I would like to learn from each other and bounce off ideas etc. A lot of people I know (and like) are what we in my native language endearingly (using a diminutive) call: “little luxury horses” (translation from the Dutch word: “luxe-paardje”). It is fine, but it’s not that for-filling a life as the lovely suffering I like to do with the aforementioned like-minded friends. Or species was used to fighting for their food, seeking shelter, and facing many obstacles on the way. Our ancestors were always on the go and had little access to comfort. And yet, they might have been happier than us. They were living in the present and appreciated the smallest things. Now, we face performance anxiety, burnout, and serious mental and emotional issues.

Moving your body, even a bit, has enormous benefits – again to almost all people towards reducing the probability and severity of almost all diseases. So can you imagine the benefit of moving your body for several hours per day in a natural environment, and including heavy load bearing and bits of extreme exertion? Yet our instinct to default to comfort works against us in a largely comfortable world, Easter points out. It causes us to miss out on profound human experiences. When they ran out of stuff to find they would start looking for a wider range of stuff, even if this was not conscious or intentional, because their job was to look for threats.” It’s great to spend money on adventures and improving yourself, being generous to others, and making the world a better place.