Shorten the Shower
Shorten the Shower
Productivity Challenge # 2
Break the Rule Stay Comfortable using productivity challenge # 2.
Shorten the Shower
This challenge is to stop your shower short of that perfect moment when you've lingered under the warm water to your heart's content.
You might be thinking, "Wait, what kind of masochistic program have I stumbled into here?"
Well hear me out.
The pleasure of comfort increases as we are able to choose it.
When we become a slave to comfort — when we MUST have it to feel good or happy — then that comfort is attended by a measure of underlying anxiety we try to eliminate by getting even more comfortable.
The way out of this loop is to prove to ourselves that we can survive and thrive without the comfort.
This frees us to enjoy comforts when they are present, to choose them when we wish, and then to meet circumstances that require effort, tolerance, or the delay of gratification with brightness, confidence, and maturity.
There's nothing wrong with long showers now and then.
But for the purposes of your training, when the moment of being clean arrives, just shut off the water.
Or you could set a timer and when it goes off, so does the water, whether or not your inner creature feels perfectly comfortable yet.
The ability to turn away from comfort at will is important.
Stop your shower short of that perfect moment when you've lingered under the warm water to your heart's content.
Practicing this sends a message to the unconscious about who is in charge and empowers the real you to be able to do what's appropriate in the moment rather than be run by the automatic need get the most pleasurable pay-off right now.
The truth is we don't have to:
See the end of a movie.
We don't have to eat the extra serving at dinner.
Cool down (or heat up) the car before we get in.
Those things are nice, but when the necessity for comfort runs the show we paradoxically distance ourselves from the well-being we were looking for in the first place.
Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.
Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.
Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.