If things are going well and you’re comfortable, that’s exactly the time when you need to disrupt yourself a little. You need to push to a new goal, take on a new challenge, or assign yourself something new to build. This is even more true the older you get.
It’s not just because it’s good for the soul, even though it is. It’s because it’s inevitable that your comfort will be disrupted anyway, from the outside. No machine lasts forever, and you will have new challenges thrust upon you by life, whether you want them or not.
When that happens, it’s not good to be out of practice. If you’re too comfortable, too sedentary, then those challenges double in difficulty. The very act of building a new machine becomes overwhelming, regardless of the inherent difficulty in the task itself, simply because your life is so solid. It’s good to have solid walls, but they go both ways.
Is your life good right now? Excellent – go find a way to make it a little harder. Just choose a good payoff for your challenge, and you’ll grow in all ways, and your new machine will be even better than your old one.
The Opportunity Machine 