I have become fascinated lately by the relationship between challenge and comfort, and the importance of balancing the two. They are mutually exclusive states: to challenge yourself is to step away from comfort, and to comfort yourself is to avoid challenge, at least for the moment. Each is necessary, in the pursuit of resilience. I believe I am slowly finding the balance between them in my own life, after many years of favoring comfort over challenge.

Comfort is a part of building resilience because having a stable base is a great place to start when a crisis arises. Just as my daily meditation practice teaches my body and mind to return to calm, familiar routines, comfortable relationships, and bodily pampering can help to keep my emotional state grounded. The key actions that ground me are what I call my touchstones, an idea I’ll return to in a future post.

Too much comfort is what you seek out when you’re tangled up in fear: fear of emotional pain, fear of change, or fear of failure. It looks like a refusal to engage deeply with the people you care about, shutting down or deflecting difficult conversations, avoiding vulnerability. It looks like avoiding unfamiliar situations or new tasks, shuffling them off to others with whatever justification seems handiest. It looks like using bodily comforts to numb the sense of discontent that comes with not doing your emotional work. And this is a place I’ve been, was in for years, and a place I see other people in.

All comfort and no challenge feels good and safe, but it leaves you unprepared to face the ups and downs of life. Life is fundamentally uncontrollable. What we can do is learn to control our reactions and learn to manage our feelings about the things that happen to us. Practicing managing discomfort by challenging yourself in the absence of outside stress builds courage and self-confidence. Presenting yourself with emotional challenges–leaning in to difficult conversations, questioning the things that trigger big feelings, turning towards vulnerability–can build vital self-management skills and strengthen your social web of support. Then there is always the more traditional type of challenge: testing yourself in new situations and trying new things. Even if you fail in your endeavors, you will have proven your courage to yourself and given yourself space to learn. Courage, self-confidence, and a wider knowledge base are all facets of resilience.

There is of course such a thing as too much challenge. Too much challenge breeds chaos. Exhilarating as it is, jumping from one challenge straight into the next may not leave you enough space to process and learn from your new experiences. In fact, feeling driven to face a challenge every moment could be a sign that you’re on the run from other parts of your life–gravitating towards new activities and new situations to avoid the emotional intensity of the ones that are more familiar.

As in so many parts of life, balance is key, and I feel like I’m groping slowly towards a better balance between challenge and comfort. Consider your relationship with this dynamic. Do you favor comfort? Challenge? Have you found your own balance between them?