Comfort
Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life
We all have areas where we excel.
Areas we have natural proclivities towards.
Areas where we have invested countless hours of work.
We love doing these things—whatever these things may be for you—because we are good at them!
It’s comfortable. The success is predictable, and who doesn’t want to be successful?
But as the late British neurologist Oliver Sacks noted in his book The River of Consciousness, “It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled.”
On October 6, 1993, Michael Jordan, then 30 years old, announced his retirement from basketball.
Jordan and the Bulls were coming off three consecutive NBA Championships, but after his father’s death in July 1993 and a feeling of burnout, the global superstar shocked the world.
Four months later, Jordan signed a minor league contract with the Double-A Birmingham Barons.
Jordan’s father, James Jordan, long encouraged his son to play baseball one day. In fact, it was the topic of discussion during one of Michael’s last conversations with his father.
“Dad, I want to go play baseball. I’m thinking about retiring. I wanna go play baseball,” Jordan recalled. “All the things that he was saying, ‘Do it. Do it.’ Because he had got me started in baseball.”
So that’s exactly what he did.
In 1993, Michael Jordan was unarguably the best in the world at his specific “area”.
Returning to the NBA for the 1993-94 season (and beyond) would not have even been a question for anyone else in his position. The Bulls would have been the favorites to win the NBA title, and Jordan would have been the favorite to win his fourth MVP.
But he embraced uncertainty. He did not let fear of failure stop him; The fear of embarrassment that would accompany his likely struggles.
So, tell me, if Michael Jordan could bypass both millions of dollars and the borderline guaranteed success that came with his NBA career, why are you afraid to stray from your comfort zone?
Not to be blunt, but whatever your comfort zone is—the “area” you excel in—I am confident your success does not hold a candle to the early-1990s Michael Jordan.
However, we find things we are mildly good at and latch onto them. Beat them into the ground. Maybe even become a master of them.
I’d argue that reaching a level of mastery in a particular area can be one of the worst things to happen to someone.
When you reach the top of your field, or a place you feel comfortable in, you are more than likely to remain at that plateau, continuously creating more of what you already know.
Where the real creativity unfolds—the things that are remembered for generations—is the constant yearning for the new.
New knowledge. New work. New challenges. New direction.
As writer Robin Sharma notes, “Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”
“… combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” — Albert Einstein