How to Stop Choosing Comfort Over Your Goals After 40

Nikkiey: Comfort feels safe. It feels familiar. It feels easy. But comfort is like slow poison that kills your potential. It's what keeps you from waking up early to train. It's what makes you procrastinate on the conversation that you know you need to have with someone. It's like that whisper in your mind: "Ah, you deserve rest. You've done enough." When deep down, you know that you're avoiding what would actually move your life forward.

What's going on, you guys? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to today's episode, episode number 305.

Today's episode was inspired by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. You guys know that I love her. She's so good. The other day, she posted a reel about comfort and discomfort, and I really want to expand on the message she delivered in that reel in this episode with you guys, because as cliche as it sounds, you grow from being uncomfortable. And I want to talk about that.

So first, she mentioned addictions, one being sugar cravings, Netflix binges, even something that I would consider binges like phone scrolling before bed. But what she's alluding to, and what I want to talk about, is that there's one addiction that doesn't get talked about enough. It's a subtle one. It's a quiet one. It's the one that doesn't come with any guilt right away. And that's comfort.

Comfort feels safe. It feels familiar. It feels easy. But to say this honestly, but nicely, comfort is like slow poison that kills your potential. It's the one that says, "I'll do it tomorrow," or "I'll start on Monday," or "I'll get it done when life gets less busy." That kind of mentality, that way of moving through life. It's what keeps you from waking up early to train.

It's what makes you procrastinate on the conversation that you think you need to have with someone, or that you know you need to have with someone. It's like that whisper in your mind: "Ah, you deserve rest. You've done enough." When deep down, you know that you're avoiding what would actually move your life forward.

And I say this, I don't want this podcast to feel like I'm shaming you guys, like I think you don't deserve rest and you're not doing enough. I don't want it to come off with that message. I want to change the perspective. If you feel like you deserve rest, think about it and look at your day, look at your week. Have you truly done things that are moving the needle toward the potential that you have, moving your life forward, moving your health forward?

Because this is the thing. The truth is, comfort isn't harmless. It's seductive. It's stealing your edge, it's stealing your hunger, it's stealing your growth. Because let's be real, comfort doesn't look like an addiction. Even as I'm saying this out loud and speaking to you guys and going on a rant about this, opening up this episode, you don't look at someone and say, "Oh, that person has a comfort addiction." It doesn't make headlines. It's not labeled as something, quote unquote, toxic, like alcohol or something like that. But it's quietly numbing millions of people every single day, I feel like, especially when you look at statistics of where America is when it comes to our health factors.

Comfort is what's keeping you checking your phone instead of checking in on your habits on a daily basis. Think about how many times you guys check your phone and pick up your phone. That number is in your phone if you really want to know it. If you go into your screen time, you can tell how many times you've picked up your phone, which can be a lot, which should be alarming to some of you guys. Think about that number. And then think about how many times you check in on your habits on a daily basis. Are you eating enough? Are you drinking enough water? Have you gotten enough rest? Have you worked out?

Comfort is what's keeping you, on a weekly basis, ordering the same food every week because it's easy. Not because it fuels you, but because it's easy, especially nowadays, with how easy it is to order food. You open up an app, click on the restaurant that you want, and it's going to be at your door so you don't even have to move.

And going back to what I said a couple minutes ago, it's that voice that says, "Oh yeah, you've done enough. You deserve rest." When deep down, yes, you've had a hard day. But I think about the moms inside of WarriorBabe. There's a mom that has two sets of twins, there are moms that have multiple kids, and they're running the household and they have a career, but they're still showing up for themselves, getting their workouts in, choosing to eat better. And some of you guys say, "Oh, I'm just exhausted, and I've done enough. What more can I do?" Deep down, you've barely even scratched the surface of your potential. Because think about it: where are you right now in relation to the goals that you want to accomplish?

Have you truly done enough that's moving the needle forward? Deep down, you know that answer. And this is the thing: comfort comes in and gives you this illusion of peace. It's really just being dressed up as rest. And what's dangerous about this is that it doesn't destroy you overnight. It does it very, very slowly. It takes away your ambition little by little. It steals your discipline without you even noticing, until you wake up one day and you wonder, when did I stop trying?

That's what comfort does. It convinces you that fine is enough when you were made for so much more than fine. For those of you guys that think you've done enough by trying every program, one after another: have you gotten to where you need to be? Is that really trying enough? You haven't gotten the answers. You're falling and slipping back into the same things that you've done time and time again. That should drive you to be uncomfortable, to try something that maybe you haven't tried before. That's the message I'm getting at.

Maybe you're convinced by fine, like, "This is me just getting older, and this is what I need to accept." But then you're just allowing the comfort to take over. And maybe in 10 years, you're going to look back and say, "Dang, when did I stop trying?" Because you got the message of, "Oh, well, I've tried enough, I need to rest." When really, a lot of people are just getting comfortable as they continue to age, and they aren't trying things that make them uncomfortable.

I want to talk about the cost of this, the cost of comfort. Every time you choose comfort, you're making some type of trade. You're trading progress for temporary peace. You're trading growth for familiarity. You've done the same thing over and over again, so it's familiar for you. The growth is outside of the familiarity. Some of you guys are afraid to try macronutrients because it looks like it requires time, it requires you to be uncomfortable, because it's a methodology maybe you've never heard of before.

Maybe you've seen some people talk about it and how out of the gate it's going to be hard, and you don't want to do hard. That's where this message is going. People don't want to do hard anymore. They just want to do what's comfortable. You're trading the life that you want for the life that you already know. And if you're in the life that you already know and you aren't where you want to be, you have to almost die to yourself in the life you're living right now to create the life that you want.

That's going to cause you to be uncomfortable. And this is the scariest part: it feels so small in the moment. You tell yourself, "Oh well, this is just something that I'm familiar with," or you go back to programs that you've done before because they gave you success 10 years ago. Or you tell yourself, "I'm going to just skip this one workout," or "I'm going to start on Monday," or "I'm going to speak up next time," or "I'm going to get started after the holidays." These micro moments, this is what I mean, they're so small in the moment. But think about it: these micro moments of you choosing comfort build up over time. They have their own compound effect.

And they start to create this identity, one that's safe but stagnant. And the truth is, the longer that you stay comfortable, the more resistance you're going to feel toward anything that challenges you. Let me say that one more time and let it sink in. Because if you're somewhere in a life that you know, and you're eating healthy, quote unquote, but you're not eating enough, and you hear that you have to eat more food, you have to get more protein in, you've got to track your macros, you're going to resist that, because it's going to challenge you, because you've stayed comfortable for so long. And you'll start avoiding not just the pain of changing, but the potential of changing, because you're comfortable.

You're being met with resistance on starting something new, and as soon as the resistance happens, it makes you uncomfortable, and you don't want to be uncomfortable. Comfort doesn't feel dangerous until it's taken years away from you. For some of you guys, if you look back two, five, eight years, it's not until you look back that you realize you built a life around avoiding pain, avoiding challenging yourself, instead of building the strength and the potential that you know you can. Deep down, it's inside of you. But there are layers of resistance because of the comfort that you've sought over the years.

And to be honest, my friends, I say this out of all love, because I want to challenge you guys to think differently. I want to challenge you guys to be uncomfortable. When you live like that, you don't feel alive anymore. You just feel comfortable. If comfort is what weakens you, then discomfort is what makes you powerful. There's always an opposite.

So I want you to think about it like this. The moms that have made their health a priority for themselves had to overcome a lot of resistance: conversations with their husbands, changing their schedules around, having conversations with their loved ones and saying, "Hey, I'm making this a priority for myself." That's the discomfort. And that's the discomfort where you grow. It's where you truly meet this higher version of yourself, the version of you that doesn't quit when it gets hard.

So I'm sure in those conversations, in changing your schedule and telling your husband that you want to do something for yourself, you don't quit when it gets hard. Those conversations are going to be hard, but you're meeting your higher self in those conversations, in that discomfort. Think about it: every single thing that's ever changed your life started with discomfort. A new job starts with discomfort. Even as you're starting a new program... [audio gap] ...enough for your goals instead of your emotions.

Think about it like that. The women that are eating 1200 calories are under the impression that's going to get them to lose the weight, because it's what they've believed for so long. But the first time you decided, "Oh man, I heard that I need to eat more food," that's uncomfortable, right? But "I need to eat more food for my goals, so I'm going to do that." That started with discomfort. But did it change your life? I know it's changed lives for thousands of women inside of WarriorBabe.

You're meeting your higher self. And those moments feel uncomfortable. Your body resisted, your mind screamed, "Why are you doing this?" But you did it anyway. And even if you're stuck in comfort in a different season of your life, you're probably experiencing that in some fashion in some bucket of your life: your body's resisting, your mind's screaming, "Why are you doing this?" But once you do it anyway, dude, you get so much stronger. And for anyone listening that's a WarriorBabe and felt uncomfortable in any of those examples I just mentioned:

Your body resisted, your mind screamed, "Why are you doing this?" But you did it anyway, and you got stronger. Discomfort is where the growth is. It's the resistance that builds the muscle. It builds it mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. You can't build strength in ease. Think about even just working out your body in the gym. You build that under tension. You build it in the moments where your body says, dude, stop. Think about the last two reps of a set, when you're trying to push for that metabolic stress so that the muscle can really start breaking down, so afterwards you can build it up. Think about those moments where your body says stop.

But your mind's like, dude, keep going.

Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply.

All right, let's get back to the show. When people ask me how I got stronger, my answer is so simple, and it's what I said opening up this podcast. I learned to get comfortable by being extremely uncomfortable. I put myself in situations where I had to have uncomfortable conversations with family and loved ones and friends that didn't get what I was doing on my journey. But I knew it. You're the only person that knows the goals you want to accomplish. It's the only thing that makes sense in your own mind, and you've got to safeguard that. Because those visions, your intuition, that feeling, is something only you get and understand. So going about your day to day, when people don't get what you're doing, you're going to be uncomfortable. And that's good.

So I want to encourage you guys. I've talked to so many women who, at a point in their life, thought they were pushing themselves, but they weren't. They were coasting, and they were calling it balance. That was a big thing a couple years ago: "I'm balanced, I'm balancing it all." But at a point, you're afraid to go that one step further, because you're afraid of maybe failing, or you're trying to stay safe.

And what I've got to say is, you're not stretching yourself to the next level, to where you can be. So maybe you're in a season where something like this is resonating with you, and you're craving that next challenge, you're missing that fire. You've got to intentionally start seeking discomfort again: waking up earlier, or maybe you've been too nice, or too lenient in conversations, and you know you need to stand up boldly for yourself. And when I say that, I mean be emotionally intelligent when you're in conversations with people, because there's a way to have conversations with people, and there's a way to have conversations with people.

Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause? It's time to take control. If you're between 45 and 65 years old and tired of struggling with body fat and muscle loss, WarriorBabe is here for you. At WarriorBabe, we've helped over 18,000 women just like you lose body fat, build toned muscle, and understand their bodies better with personalized plans based on hormone and thyroid testing and more. Imagine knowing exactly what your body needs to see real results, and results that last. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com/apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com/apply.

All right, let's get back to the show. If you're sticking up for yourself and speaking about how you want to accomplish things and how you feel about things, the reactions you get from others shouldn't matter so much when it's something that means so much to you.

Because, remember this, reactions only come from that individual's world and their own insecurities. They see you doing something and they wish they could do that too. So I just want you to remember that.

There's a reason your brain fights discomfort. There's a reason this is so hard: your brain is designed to protect you, not to push you. The primary goal for humans in anything is to be safe and to feel safety. So the second you do something uncomfortable, your brain is going to fire back and alarm you: "Stop, why are we doing this? It feels dangerous. Retreat, pull back." But it's not danger. That's growth.

If there's anything you can leave this podcast with, it's to start rewriting the narrative in your mind. When you feel that resistance, think, "Cool, sweet, I'm growing." When your body feels that danger and doesn't recognize it as growth, it's just your nervous system not being used to it yet. But every time you push through discomfort, whether it's finishing your last rep in the gym... ladies, those of you who are going through the motions and just showing up to lift, you should be really struggling in those last two reps.

Okay. Every time you push through that discomfort, every time you push through the discomfort of saying no to comfort food or to binging or scrolling on your phone, confronting your own excuses, you're teaching your brain a new pattern. That's what Dr. Gabrielle Lyon was saying in that reel too: if there's anything in the day that you're so used to doing because you're on autopilot, what can you do differently? For example, she mentioned drinking coffee first thing in the morning. Don't. And the same thing with what I'm saying: finish that last rep. Go with your discomfort.

You're teaching your brain a new pattern by getting off the autopilot of what's comfortable and choosing something different. You're showing yourself, you're showing your brain, that you can handle this. And that's how you build resilience. That's how you rewire yourself for strength. You don't need life to get easier. You personally need to get stronger, because life's going to get harder. But the hard moments you experience won't feel so hard when you're really strong and you're used to being uncomfortable.

That's the only way you get stronger. The only way that happens is through discomfort.

You guys know I'm big on the word awareness. I don't know how many times I've said it, and I even have a guest coming on Monday that highlights the word awareness. There are a few things you might be addicted to with comfort, even if you look like you have it all together. So bring awareness if you say "I'm going to start over on Monday" more often than you take action today.

Or if you chase convenience instead of consistency. Or if you choose what feels good now over what builds your future. You guys know how I am with thinking about the person you want to become. That future self is going to go through so much discomfort. So whatever feels good now, saying yes to the comfort food or skipping a workout, if you choose the opposite of that, you're building your future self in the moment now. Or bring awareness to how you avoid feedback because it challenges your ego.

Or how you avoid risk, even the kind that could absolutely, 100% change your life. And if any of those hit home, that's okay. It doesn't mean you're weak. It just means you're becoming more aware. It should make you more aware. And awareness is the first step toward breaking any type of pattern, because you can't fight what you can't see. But once you can see it, if you can lower your ego and lower your pride, you can take your power back by bringing awareness to the patterns that have kept you comfortable for so long.

And guys, this is truly building a muscle. You're not going to be able to do all of this overnight. You may not be able to do this in the next month. Maybe you will. Maybe some of you will. Some of you can take this advice and turn around and implement it the next day. Those are the best learners, the best students. But maybe there are some things you can choose over time. I have five things you guys can go and try to implement for yourself.

So that you can start building this muscle and start to thrive under challenge. Maybe you just take one of them and start implementing it in the next 30 days or three months, because it takes time. It's a compound effect. You've had a compound effect in comfort. Now you need a compound effect in being uncomfortable, in discomfort.

So the first thing would be trying something hard every day, even if it's small. Like saying no to your coffee. Or, the extreme, taking a cold shower. Or, dude, not hitting the snooze button.

Getting up when the alarm goes off. Or saying no when you want to please people. I want that to hit deep. That's something hard. It's not easy to do. Trust me, I get it. So that's one thing: try something hard every day. That should be something you just start doing every day, even if it's small.

Another thing is to reframe the feeling. Discomfort doesn't mean you're failing. It means, dude, I'm expanding. I'm growing. That resistance you feel is your old self dying off. Like I said earlier, you have to die to your old self so that you can level up and emerge.

And that's not going to happen without you feeling uncomfortable. The third thing you can do, and this is something I've been training myself to do over the last year, is train your emotional endurance. We are women, and we will act on our emotions in the first reaction. But when life gets heavy, do not run from it. Sit in it. Feel it. Learn from it. Every time you do that, you're raising your threshold for what you can handle. So every time you feel an emotion, don't run away from it. Sit with it. Feel it.

Embrace it. Learn from it. And then allow a second reaction to come from you. I would mainly focus on doing something hard every single day, but for those of you jotting these down, the fourth thing I would say is be intentional with your comfort. Rest is good. Don't get me wrong. If you're saying you need to rest and you didn't do enough, that's not good, but I'm not saying rest is bad. I'm saying rest is good, but you need to earn it. You rest after your effort, not instead of it. If you know deep down you could have done more to show up for yourself, then you know that rest isn't earned.

Comfort should be a reward, not a lifestyle. So you rest after your effort.

And this next one I think is so important for any bucket or area of your life where you're trying to level up: surround yourself with people who can challenge you. Because if everyone around you is keeping you comfortable, you are never going to grow. So get into WarriorBabe, get into programs, get into rooms that are going to stretch you, even if they intimidate you.

Let me tell you this. If you feel intimidated before you step into something new, that is a great indicator that you are growing, and you need to lean into that. So if they intimidate you, lean into it. If you're nervous or scared, don't run from that emotion. Stay with it, feel it, learn from it, and then lean into it.

All right. So just to close off this episode, let me name those five things again really quick. The first one is do something hard every day. The second is reframe the feeling of discomfort: instead of "I'm failing," think about how you're expanding.

The third is to train your emotional endurance. Sit with the emotions you're having and don't run away from them. Every time you sit with them and learn from them, you're raising what you can handle. The fourth is being intentional with your comfort. Comfort should be a reward, not a lifestyle, so you rest after the effort, not instead of it. And the fifth is to surround yourself with people who are going to challenge you.

Because, in summary of this podcast, the most dangerous addiction isn't sugar. While it's dangerous to your health in some ways, the most dangerous addiction isn't that. It's not alcohol. It's not Netflix. While they all are, yes, bad, it's truly comfort, because comfort makes you forget what you're capable of. It keeps you small. It tells you that safety is better than strength and that ease is better than being excellent. Your potential is possible for you. And deep, deep down, if you can bring awareness and lower your pride and your ego, you know that's not why you're here.

You're not here to be comfortable. You're not here to live numb. You're not here to be asleep. You're meant to live, to be awake, to live your life and continue to expand, to evolve. And that requires you to be uncomfortable, because being uncomfortable sharpens you. It makes you resilient. It makes you confident. It makes you unstoppable. So don't run from the hard. Run toward the hard. Seek all of the small discomforts, because that's where your greatness is forged.

All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Share it with somebody who needs to hear this too. Maybe a coworker you're friends with, or a loved one, an aunt, a cousin, a best friend. Pass it on to them and hold each other accountable in the season of life you may be growing in, where you feel uncomfortable and feel like you need to break through the comfort, and you can be uncomfortable together. Okay? All right. I love you guys, and I'll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

Hey, really quick before you go, I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value or sparked something in you, take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review make all the difference in helping more women discover the tools they need to transform their fitness and their confidence. It takes less than a minute, but it can change the path of someone else's journey. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much.