Is our obsession with comfort quietly draining our wealth and resilience? Our modern lives have engineered almost all of the friction and discomfort away. We explore the mental and financial traps of modern convenience, and why leaning into voluntary discomfort builds a more resilient mind and wallet. We share actionable practices for improving your ability to tolerate discomfort, from Misogis to pre-porterms to meditation.
Mel joins this week’s podcast as we talk about:
– Introducing new rotating co-host Mel from @travelingtoretirement
– How modern conveniences have eliminated daily friction and eroded our baseline tolerance for difficulty
– Lowercase comfort vs. uppercase comfort – the difference between daily micro-conveniences and foundational life basics and safety
– Lessons from Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis
– The Japanese concept of a Misogi – a yearly challenge with a 50% chance of failure
– Stoic philosophy and voluntary discomfort
– Using controlled stress to prove that worst-case scenarios aren’t fatal
– How to automate small discomforts
Show References:
- Follow Mel on Instagram @travelingtoretirement
- Inside Out Money episode #117 – How to make more money – career advice, asking for a raise, side hustles, and more
- Inside Out Money episode #036 – From canceling Netflix to selling our homes – What we’d do in a recession
- Book: The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self
- Stoic Philosophy References – Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus on voluntary discomfort and negative visualization
- campFI: How to be prepared for early retirement and tackle your financial fears with Maggie Tucker
- friends on FIRE podcast #148 – 8 ways to tackle your financial fears
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