I’m reading “Your Best Year Ever” by Michael Hyatt, and today a quote hit me like a punch to the gut:

“When it comes to meaningful achievement, comfort = boredom.”

Let me be clear about something: I wasn’t bored with my life. I love my life. I love my family. I cherish the time I have with wife and my son.

But I was absolutely bored with how I was handling the hard things in my life.

And that’s a dangerous kind of boredom.

The Comfortable Pattern

For a long time, it was really easy to come home from work and sit down on the couch. Get ready for dinner. Have a glass of wine. Tell myself I deserved it and do my best to escape the day I just had.

Here’s the thing: I had nothing to escape. Sure, there were stressors like any other day filled with jobs and decisions and everything else. But I didn’t need to escape anything.

Yet I was using the wine to combat stress.

Wine in itself is not a bad thing. But when you drink it as much as a stress reliever as you do for enjoyment, it’s probably become an unhealthy thing.

And time goes by so quickly. You put on some weight. You find yourself doing the same things every day, not getting anywhere.

That’s when comfort becomes boredom.

The Red Pill

You know that scene in The Matrix, don’t you? Where Morpheus offers Neo a choice.

Take the blue pill and you go back to your life. You believe whatever it is you want to believe. Everything stays comfortable.

Take the red pill and you’ll see how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

For me, the 7-40 Challenge has been a lot like the red pill.

What I’m doing, I enjoy. But it is not necessarily comfortable. I am not bored. I am challenged. And I’m more hopeful than I have been in a long time.

The Discomfort I Chose

When I started this challenge on January 1, I told myself I was going to have a dry January. I want to make it very clear: I don’t use alcohol to excess. But the fact that I have used it to relieve stress is something I didn’t particularly care for.

As I started this journey, I wanted the challenge itself to be the stress relief. Doing things that excite me. Treating my body well. Really spending time with my family where I’m completely present and plugged in.

It’s human nature to take the easiest path. When confronted with a hard path or an easy path, it is really, really hard to take the red pill.

But meaningful achievement? That’s on the other side of discomfort.

What’s Actually Hard

The individual tasks aren’t hard.

Reading my Bible is the first thing I do every morning. It’s not difficult. I want to do it.

Tracking my calories, my water, exercising every day – I want to do them. But I would naturally gravitate towards not doing them because there are so many other pressing things that need to be done.

Reading every day is not something that comes naturally to me. I love getting new information. I love new ideas. But setting aside the time to listen instead of daydreaming or whatever else it is I do has been very different.

Gratitude is where I want the natural position of my heart to be. I want this habit to be an outflow of how I truly feel on the inside. The truth is, I feel so entirely blessed and thankful for the life I have – even though I’m not completely where I want to be.

And I’ll admit: the creative hour paired with social media learning and all that comes with it is very challenging. I’m much more of a private person than I thought I was.

But I also know you can’t inspire others and hide your light under a basket.

The hardest part isn’t any single task. The hardest part is doing ALL of these tasks EVERY day.

The Compound Interest of Discomfort

I wrote earlier this month about compound interest – how when we do things over and over, we get surprised at how far and how fast we can go.

That has been the result I’ve seen this month.

I’ve accomplished things this month I didn’t know I could do. And the month is only two-thirds over.

What could I do if I could keep up this kind of output this year?

It boggles the mind.

Why I Left Comfort Behind

I wasn’t bored with my life. But I realized something critical:

If I’m going to take care of other people and inspire other people and be everything God intended me to be, I need to take care of myself.

I need to challenge myself to excellence.

I need to take better care of my body, my mind, and my spirit.

I need to be the transformation I want to see for others.

And I can’t do that sitting on the couch drinking wine.

Day 22 Reality

Today I rebranded all my social media accounts around the 7-40 Challenge. YouTube. Instagram. X (Twitter). TikTok.

It’s uncomfortable putting myself out there. It’s vulnerable documenting this publicly.

But comfort = boredom. And I’m done being bored with how I handle the hard things.

Michael Hyatt was right. Meaningful achievement lives on the other side of discomfort.

Day 22 Scorecard: ✅ Bible study ✅ Dirt work (replacing walking – garden beds getting built) ✅ Reading (Your Best Year Ever audiobook) ✅ Calories ✅ Water ✅ Gratitude ✅ Creative hour (Social media rebrand – all accounts updated) ✅ DDP Yoga Fat Burner 2.0

Twenty-two consecutive perfect days. The discomfort is worth it.

The best time to leave comfort behind? Now.

See you tomorrow for Day 23.