The human mind is, in fact, lazy. It wants to get from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible. Our "Point B" aims to be happy and content in anything that's not chaos.
When we lead a life for so long in that chaos, our mind will seek to find comfort in said chaos, eventually building an addiction to it. Very similar to the way that so many people enjoy watching reality TV due to the drama. It creates an addiction to that chaos because it activates the fight, flight or freeze response in our brain. Giving a bit of an adrenaline fix with an ever so slight dopamine hit.
When we learn to finally find comfort in that chaos, just to be pulled from said chaos into legitimate happiness and comforts, we step into a different type of uncomfortable. No longer being bound by anything, there's nothing weighing on us. Our subconscious has become so used to being in fight, flight or freeze mode, it begins to pick out things around us that match the narrative that we used to tell ourselves.
This is the yellow car law in full effect.
When we are now pulled from chaos and put into comfort, comfort begins to feel stressful because we aren't use to feeling free from that anchor. Our subconscious starts to stir with self talk similar to, "Wait a minute, I feel like I should be stressing about something. I feel like I should have pressure on me right now."
Subconsciously, we may self sabotage to create more drama because our "ground zero" WAS comfort IN CHAOS. Even though we're in this new sense of comfort, this perspective of comfort is not OUR perspective on comfort, yet.
Self sabotage can look like - "This person is just starting something, did you see how they looked at me?" Or we may begin to question certain aspects of our relationships. Poking, digging and prodding to try and find something to make chaos in our life again. We will purposely root ourselves into that shit, once again, just to feel that "comfort and chaos."
It's very similar to when we lose weight. If we jump back into eating the old ways too quickly, we're going to gain all the weight back. Whereas, if we lose weight, maintain that weight loss for a while, however the diet is structured, our bodies "composition ratio's" set-point slowly starts creeping down. It comes closer to where we are currently sitting at the peak of weight loss. After dieting for so long, if we find an eating pattern that will suit our daily requirements without having to stress about weighing and measuring everything, we may only gain 10lbs back instead of 30lbs because our set-point had time to shift to a lower body fat ratio.
When we are pulled from chaos and put into comfort, we have to train our thought habits to adjust to believing that no pressure is ACTUALLY good for us. We don't always have to be in a state of fight or flight. We don't have to be in that state of chaos and hold this anchor. Over time, we realize one day, "Wow, the way I used to react to this is not how I'm currently thinking right now."
This takes time, but living a life free of chaos is worth it. Always remember that the only thing in this life we have control over is the choice in how we react to any situation.
Is the human mind lazy? You betcha. It prefers to sit in the familiar. But we all know that nothing overly exciting happens in the familiar... right?
- Coach Wolverine