This week's podcast for our AC Premium community was about comfort and how it can often be - if we are not intentional - the enemy of greatness in our lives. So much in our culture pushes us to comfort as the ideal, meaning that "making things easy" can become our primary way of thinking about the world, our work and our relationships. But that kind of thinking only leads to death because the pursuit of comfort is ultimately a losing battle.#172#8224

I don't by any means claim to be an expert in all of this, but in my humble opinion it seems that rather than pursuing comfort, we should be pursuing meaning. Meaning in what we make, meaning in what we experience, meaning in our relationships. To find meaning in what we do and what we experience brings joy that is often lacking in the more hedonistic pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. But if we can learn to find pleasure in the pursuit of meaning, then we are on to something. If we can train ourselves to think for a few seconds between stimulus and response and be self-aware enough to recognize when we are simply succumbing to what's easy instead of what is right, then we will be poised for creative accidents.

This has been a long and difficult battle in my own life, as I have often found my primal urge toward comfort to be stronger than my urge to make something meaningful. But when I intentionally push myself to examine new stimulus, to get into uncomfortable relationships and to be disciplined about my time I nearly ALWAYS find that I am far better off in the end.

Get uncomfortable this week. Do something that makes you squirm. And have the self-awareness to apply that experience to what you are making. Remember, comfort is often the enemy of greatness.