Everything Counts: 52 Remarkable Ways to Inspire Excellence and Drive Results

Chapter 42. Inconvenience Counts

"Becoming uncomfortable is not a nuisance, but a necessity to growth, excellence, and success."

Success requires those who seek it to develop an enormous threshold for discomfort and inconvenience because of the many sacrifices involved. This truth applies to every definition of success; it applies to everyone and to every endeavor. In short, to be successful, you must get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Inconvenience and discomfort are part of the foundational building blocks of achievement. Every person who has ever been legitimately successful has nurtured the habit of doing things that others don't like to do. Unfortunately, our society has placed such a high premium on convenience and expediency that it has enabled weakness, while also creating an inability for many to perform at peak levels.

The acceptance of inconvenience and discomfort explains why people with every apparent qualification for success become disappointing failures, while others achieve outstanding success in spite of many obvious and discouraging handicaps. In other words, we've got to realize right from the start that success requires an unconventional approach, and a much different philosophical view.

True success is something that only a minority of people manages to attain. It is unnatural, and it's not realized by following our natural likes and dislikes. Nor is it guided by our natural preferences and prejudices. We have to accept that becoming uncomfortable is not a nuisance, ...