Be Honest: You Don’t Want Comfort

11 people had breakthroughs this week. Will the next one be you?

Two things for you to think about

A healthy relationship should periodically make you a little uncomfortable. The conversations that matter are uncomfortable. The vulnerability required for intimacy is uncomfortable. Finding compromise and forgiveness is uncomfortable.

A comfortable relationship is likely an empty one.

Resentment is the compound interest on conversations you were too afraid to have.

Two things for you to ask yourself

Are you too comfortable in your relationship? If so, what conversations are you avoiding?

One thing for you to try this week

Have the uncomfortable conversation this week. Let me know what happens.

Last week’s breakthroughs

In last week’s newsletter, I asked you to close the doors you’re keeping open, so you can walk through the one that matters.

This was the push Kirti needed:

This email really made me stop and reflect because it describes exactly where I am in life right now.

I’ve been trying to keep too many doors open out of fear. I’m scared of losing clients, scared of the uncertainty that comes with freelancing, and at the same time I’m constantly surrounded by people telling me that a government job is the only secure future. It’s hard not to let that pressure get to me.

I’m also doing my Master’s in Law, partly because I’ve been afraid to completely let go of that path. It feels like another door I should keep open ‘just in case.’

But if I’m being honest with myself, the life I truly want looks very different.

I want to become a pilot. That’s the dream I’ve kept coming back to no matter how many times I try to convince myself to choose the ‘safe’ option. The reality is that the only way I’ll be able to fund that dream is by taking my freelancing business to the next level. Every client I serve, every piece of content I create, and every step I take in growing my business brings me closer to the cockpit.

So maybe the door I need to walk through isn’t law or a government job, it’s trusting myself enough to build the business that can create the life I actually want.

Thank you for this reminder. It came at exactly the right time, and I think it’s the push I needed to stop living with one foot in every doorway.

Our next reader is choosing a different life:

Growing up (in my teens), I had a lot of passions, not many opportunities to pursue them. Due to my circumstances, whatever career path I took had to bring in money and a lot of other opportunities. At the end of the day, I ended up in nursing school. And I hate it.

I will not have the opportunity to do everything I wish to do in life. I’ll not have enough money, energy, or time to do all I want to do. So I had to sit and think of what I want the rest of my life to look like.

I’m not going to spend my life as a nurse. I’m choosing something else that will give me more room to be me and to grow into the woman I want to be.

And a final thought from a reader closing a beloved chapter:

I’m trying to keep the door open to my current house while I’m in the process of buying a new one with my partner.

I want to keep my current apartment because it’s solely mine, and it’s my safe space, and it doesn’t require me relying on someone else. If things go south with my partner I can just come back to the apartment and continue on with life. But the growth is in deciding to trust my partner, trust myself, and trust that even if things don’t work out it’ll be okay.

It’s okay to close the door on a much-loved chapter in life, take the time we need to be sad, and then look forward to the future.

As always, send your breakthroughs by simply replying to this email. Let me know if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Until next week,

Mark Manson

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
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