How to come out of our comfort zone? || Acharya Prashant, at RVCE Bangalore (2022)
Questioner (Q): Sir my question is, whenever we take decisions in life, we tend to take the easier path despite it not being beneficial to us. We like to stay in our comfort zone. So how do we come out of this? How do we push ourselves to take the difficult route?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You do that because you have been convinced that you do not deserve anything beyond a point, right? The high things in life, be it within or without, they all require a price to be paid. They all require that you toil and face difficulties and suffer blows. But why will you suffer blows if you have been convinced by the environment around you that you anyway do not deserve to reach the top?
So you will say, the top is anyway inaccessible to me. I need to reach someplace in between. So I will take the shortest kind of route possible and the most economical medium possible.
When you know who you really are, and when you know that your potential is unlimited, then there is Self-love. Then you do not want to deprive yourself of what you deserve. And then you say, "I will pay whatever price it takes. I will not settle for something mediocre". But mostly, our misfortune, if I may put it that way, is that the mediocre society turns its own kid into mediocre products, right?
The kid is heavily dependent on the society, for information, for upbringing, for culture, for conditioning. All of that comes from the society, and the society is in itself never something of excellence. Therefore, it does not cultivate values of excellence within its kids. And the kid is made to believe that a normal kind of, as they say, 'run-of-mill life', that's all there is. In fact, if you try to think big then you are shown down. You are told to stay within your limits, no?
