The Trap of Comfort

Sometimes I catch myself getting too comfortable—too complacent. It’s happening right now. My workouts feel too easy, my diet too relaxed, my life too smooth. Sure, like everyone else I have the daily struggles of kids, family, and work—the normal anxieties and stresses. But when I zoom out, it’s clear: as 21st-century Americans, we live in incredible comfort. And comfort breeds complacency.

My house is always at a perfect temperature. If I need to go anywhere, my car takes me there in minutes. If I need something, Amazon or Home Depot delivers it the same day. Even when I step outside, I've turned my backyard into a second living room—pavers, couches and a fire-pit where I can lounge in comfort without ever touching nature. None of this is bad—in fact, I’m deeply grateful for it. But all this convenience lulls me into a kind of sleepwalking state. I notice myself becoming a zombie, a slave to the very technology that makes life easier. The constant bombardment of screens, noise, and so-called “entertainment” creates a low-grade malaise that lets time slip by without my full engagement in this incredible world I’ve been given.

I need a shock to my system. In September, I did a 100-hour fast, but it wasn’t enough. Now, I need something bigger—an entire month packed with deliberate discomfort and growth. Here’s how I’m going about it.

Fasting From the Phone

Like most of you, I’m far too attached to my phone. It never leaves my side. Honestly, I’m more likely to leave the house without shoes and a shirt than without that glowing rectangle. I don’t have a Neuralink, but my hand might as well be permanently fused to the thing.

I once heard someone say boredom died in 2007 with the invention of the iPhone. Even the “good” things I do on my phone—podcasts, audiobooks—often crowd out the contemplative silence my life desperately needs. And the bad things—let’s be real, Instagram—just waste time and shorten my attention span.

I’ll open Instagram before bed for a “quick scroll,” and before I know it, 40 minutes have vanished. That’s 40 minutes less sleep—sleep I actually need when my kids wake me up at 5 a.m. A slightly funny reel isn’t worth trading for the health of tomorrow.

So for October, I’m using a device called Brick (no, this isn’t a sponsored plug). It turns my smartphone into a dumb phone, locking apps until I deliberately “unbrick” it. I’ve done this for days at a time, but this month, I’m going all in. For 31 days, my phone is a tool, not a tyrant. No social media. No endless scroll. Just calls, texts, and work basics.

Fasting From Food

Self-denial is a muscle. If I can’t say no to a cookie at night, how can I expect to act with strength and virtue when the stakes are higher?

Fasting is training in self knowledge, a key weapon for mastery over oneself. It has always been a way for me to order my life toward the good and to grow closer to God. In October, I’ll fast every Friday for 24 hours. Then, in November, I’ll do another 100-hour water fast, with a stretch goal of 168 hours (a full week).

Food isn’t the enemy. The lack of discipline is.

Filling the Void With Good Things

So I’m pulling things out of my life—my phone, junk food, cheap dopamine hits—but I don’t want to just create voids and then fill them with other distractions. I want to create space and fill it with things that are enriching and powerful.

I once heard it said that if you give a clown a balloon filled with water and ask them to twist it into a balloon dog, all you’ll end up with is a wet clown. If you hand them an empty balloon, you might get something resembling your shoelaces, but not the fun animals kids love. However, if you fill the balloon with the right medium—air—that clown can twist it into a balloon dog in seconds, and bring joy to a child. Our lives are no different. If we remove the “water”—junk food, shallow entertainment, bad habits—but don’t replace it with anything, we’re left empty, hollow, and unsatisfied. But if we fill our lives with good things, the right things, we can shape them into something meaningful, something beautiful, something worth celebrating.

So what are the “good things” I want to use to fill the voids in October?

Reading and Beauty

Reading is a big one. Sure, I use audiobooks because it’s 2025 and let’s be honest—I can’t hold a paperback while slinging weights around the gym. But I can crush an audiobook while crushing some gains. Still, this month I want to actually read a physical book every day. To sit quietly, touch paper, and absorb wisdom from men far wiser than me.

I also want to listen to more classical music, to intentionally add objective beauty into my life. I played classical guitar for ten years as a kid, though I stopped enjoying it just a few years in. Still, that experience left me with a deep appreciation for the art form as an adult. Classical music carries a weight, a grandeur, a beauty that goes beyond entertainment—it enriches the soul.

The Challenge of Silence

Reading and listening to good music will be easy. The true challenge for me will be silence.

The power of silence—to contemplate, to think, to hear God’s voice—cannot be overstated. Yet my life is intentionally filled with noise. Silence is uncomfortable. Sound, music, podcasts, audiobooks—all of that is easy. Distraction is comfortable. But real silence, the kind where it’s just me and my thoughts, can be unsettling.

The quietest place on earth is an anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In that extreme silence, you can hear your eyelids blink, your heartbeat, your breathing, even your bones creak. Instead of nice and peaceful, this intense level of silence is eerie and unnerving. The extreme example shows us something: silence strips us bare. It forces us to confront ourselves and, if we’re willing, to hear God.

If boredom was killed in 2007, silence died long before that—but whatever scraps of it were left were certainly snuffed out by the little device we all carry in our pockets. That’s why, this month, I’ll be doing what I call the “Calendar Club of Silence.” In the traditional calendar club, you run one mile for every day of the month. For October, I’ll practice silence and contemplative prayer for two minutes per day, multiplied by the day of the month. October 1st: two minutes. October 15th: thirty minutes. October 31st: a full hour. One uninterrupted hour of silence and prayer—no phone, no music, no notes, no distraction. Just me and God.

All About the Gains

Of course, some people reading this are probably wondering what kind of workouts I’m doing in October, as if all this isn’t enough already. And they’re right. I can’t resist a workout challenge. My most notable one was the Murph Workout: a one-mile run, followed by 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats, then another one-mile run—all while wearing a 20-pound weight vest. I did that for 120 days in a row without skipping a single day. It was brutal, but transformative.

I probably won’t top that—my wife wasn’t the biggest fan of that season, though she supported me like she always does. (There was the bonus that I was completely shredded during those months, so at least it had that going for it.)

Recently, I joined a gym again after five years of training exclusively outside or in my basement. I want to use that membership, so I won’t be doing a “Murph a Day” kind of challenge. Instead, I’m adding two weekly workouts to push myself in new ways. First, I’ll run four miles, stopping after each mile to do 100 push-ups—for a total of 400 push-ups. Second, I’ll bike ten miles and then do 100 pull-ups. Pull-ups and push-ups are the GOATs of exercise, and anything that helps me crush more of them is a win in my book.

At the end of the day, I work out like my life depends on it—because it does. I want to be the kind of dad who says yes to every adventure, not the one who says, “Sorry, I’m too tired.” I want my kids to be the ones saying, “Dad, slow down. You’re going too hard.”

This month isn’t about punishment or proving anything to anyone else—it’s about growth. It’s about refusing to drift through life on autopilot, about reclaiming my attention, my body, and my soul from the comfort that lulls me into complacency. I want to feel alive, challenged, and fully present in every moment I’m given. October is my reset, my reminder that growth doesn’t come from ease—it comes from intentional discomfort, from pushing past what’s comfortable, and from saying yes to the life I actually want to live. By the end of this month, I hope to be stronger, sharper, and more awake—not just for myself, but for my family, my Lord, and the world around me.

"You were not made for comfort; you were made for greatness."
- Pope Benedict XVI