Do you know why you open the fridge when you’re hungry, see that there’s nothing there, and then open the door again five minutes later?
If you look statistically at all the times you’ve been hungry in the last few years, the majority of the solutions were found inside that fridge. So that’s your default. It’s familiar. Opening the door again doesn’t solve the problem this time, but it feels good. It feels right. So you keep doing it.
When we’re scared, stressed, or uncertain we default to the familiar. We do the things we’ve always done. We solve the problems we know how to solve, even if that isn’t the problem we currently have. But solving any kind of problem feels good in the same way opening the refrigerator door feels good.
When you want to solve a problem, you have to get uncomfortable. You have to do things that, at first, might not feel good – because they’re unfamiliar. As you navigate them, they’ll become easier, and problems will get solved. But the solutions aren’t where you were to begin with, or you wouldn’t have had the problems.
You’re hungry because that fridge is empty. Now you have to go somewhere else.
The Opportunity Machine 