The opposing forces
"Should I just stay here?"
Every time I go back home to spend time with my parents, there’s this moment, usually after a week or two, when a tension creeps in.
It’s incredibly comfortable. Familiar. Safe.
But I start missing my "new home", now Cape Town. The challenges. The unknown. The things that push me forward. The going away. The diving into unknown.
Should I just stay here, where it’s easy?
But I know what happens then, I start to wither. I miss the stretch, the friction, the reward of change. The aliveness of growth.
On one of our Lion’s Head hikes, a friend and I talked about this exact thing, this universal, internal tug-of-war:
Stay with what you know, or venture into the unfamiliar.
Seek comfort or pursue growth.
Hold the shore or set sail.
Turns out, this isn’t just personal. It’s biological. Neurobiological as Andrew Huberman would say.
I was listening to the Hubermanlab podcast, and Andrew explained that our nervous system is wired with two opposing needs:
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Homeostasis: to keep things steady, minimize disruption, keep the balance.
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Reward-seeking: to risk what we have in pursuit of something better, or at least something new.
The tension isn't a bug. It’s a feature.
Those who create meaningful lives, who shape the world in quiet or loud ways, they don’t get stuck in the tug. They move. They leave the shore.
They choose growth every time.
Tony Robbins says: "In life, you're either growing or dying."
He's actually saying the same thing - you can’t have both: comfort and growth. You’ve got to choose.
So, lately, which have you been choosing more?
Balance? Or growth? Rewards? Or homeostasis?
