This Is How To Get Your Life off Autopilot

“You need to get out of the house more,” my wife declared one evening as I was enjoying a good book.

“Why do you say that?” I asked. “I’m quite happy in my art studio. Besides, I visit the gym, enjoy coffee with the boys, and take lots of walks with the dogs.”

“Babe, we live in Vegas,” she said. “You should explore more. See new things. Besides, I found the perfect event for you.”

Nervous, I put my book down, turned to her and said, “What would that be?”

“There’s a Las Vegas typewriter club,” she said. “I found them on Facebook, and they’re having a meet up soon. You should go.”

“Sounds interesting, but I don’t have a working typewriter. The Underwood you got from your Mom needs a new ribbon or something,” I said, pleased with having found a reasonable excuse.

My wife’s expression was not cheerful, so I added, “But what the heck, I guess I can go check it out.”

Find out who you are

Truth be told, I wasn’t enthusiastic about the typewriter meet up. A loner at heart, I’m not much of a joiner, but I know such experiences can be enriching and lead to meeting fascinating people.

The next day my wife was at work and texted me pictures of two working typewriters she found online for sale. She asked which one I preferred, and I picked the compact little 1933 Corona №4.

A few days later, UPS delivered my new (old) Corona, just in time for the typewriter meetup that afternoon. We bought some fancy typewriter paper, and I was all set.

I hadn’t typed on a typewriter since my university days, but I always loved the clickety-clack sound of the keys and pleasing physicality of the device, with its carriage return lever, spools, and type bars.

“At the typewriter you find out who you are.” — Tom Robbins

Like it or not, my same old routine of working from home, going to the gym, and walking the dogs was about to be interrupted.

Little did I know what adventure lay ahead.

We’re so comfortable we’re miserable

Speaking of adventure, consider the endurance athlete and NY Times bestselling author Dean Karnazes. His long-distance running has taken him all over the world.

Karnazes has pushed his body and mind to unbelievable limits. His website notes:

Among his many accomplishments, he has run 350 continuous miles, foregoing sleep for three nights. He’s run across Death Valley in 120 degree temperatures, and he’s run a marathon to the South Pole in negative 40 degrees. On ten different occasions, he’s run a 200-mile relay race solo, racing alongside teams of twelve.

You don’t become an ultimate athlete like Dean Karnazes unless you learn to do one thing:

Embrace discomfort

The repetitious nature of our work lives, comfy recliners at home, television, and social media distractions all cocoon us into a safe, mediocre comfort zone. We like what’s easy and familiar.

The problem is that easy and familiar won’t move you forward. Discomfort does. The discomfort of hitting the gym when you don’t feel like it. The discomfort of putting yourself in unfamiliar social settings (like a typewriter meet up in Las Vegas).

Discomfort is how we grow.

Outsideonline.com posted a fascinating interview with Dean Karnazes, who shared the following insight:

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.

Despite being happy and content with my life of reading, writing, and creating art in my studio, the truth is that I became a little stale. I found my comfort zone and lost my sense of adventure.

Fortunately, my wife knows me better than I know myself sometimes. Which is why she encouraged me to get out of the house and attend the typewriter meetup.

Sisters of perpetual indulgence

I drove north on Highway 15 and took the Sahara exit to downtown Las Vegas. The typewriter meetup was to take place in a photography studio. It was an area of town I was unfamiliar with, and it felt a bit sketchy.

I drove past graffiti walls, an adult entertainment club, a few shuttered businesses, and several guys with tattoos hanging around buildings and corners. I found out later I was in the Arts District of Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas typewriter club’s Facebook page provided an address for the meetup and warned that the photography studio was a bit hard to find.

I parked my car and slung a backpack containing my new typewriter over my shoulder. The main building in front of me included a business called “Las Vegas Oddities.” Apparently, it’s the go-to place if you’re in the market for unique collectibles such as animal bones, herbs, and occult supplies.

After some exploration, I found the photography studio, but the door was locked and no one was there.

To kill time, I strolled upstairs. The first business I encountered was called “The Nunnery: Holy Order Sin Sity Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”

You can’t make stuff like this up.

According to their website:

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, founded in San Francisco in 1979, have become a worldwide movement, with orders of queer nuns springing up across the planet fighting for the promulgation of omniversal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt. The Holy Order Sin Sity Sisters are the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence of Las Vegas, founded June 2005.

​The Sin Sity Sisters’ mission statement includes the following:

We work to raise money for our Sisters AIDS Drug Assistance Program (SADAP); fight for queer rights and visibility; do safer sex outreach; and strive diligently to keep our sense of humor, never taking ourselves so seriously that we forget to have fun.

Looking around, it was clear to me that the clusters of buildings housed an eclectic mix of Indie, hipster, and alternative lifestyle businesses.

A surreal experience

I gazed downstairs, and the photography studio, “Photo Bang Bang,” was now open. I was greeted at the door by the owner, Curtis Joe Walker. Behind him, I could see an old typewriter and knew I was in the right spot.

Curtis gave me a tour of the photography studio, and I was impressed by his photography work (especially his retro, Lomography instant photography).

The photo studio was a surreal experience, containing different themed rooms that photographers rent by the hour for creative work. Rooms include a 3-wall Cyclorama, a clock tower, a medieval dungeon, a haunted house, and endless props.

Here’s a short video tour of Photo Bang Bang in Las Vegas:

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We set my old typewriter down, and Curtis helped figure out why the spools were not working properly. He offered different typing papers to experiment with.

I started plinking away on my 1933 Corona №4 while Curtis gave an impromptu studio tour to a couple who popped in. Then, a tattooed woman in leather arrived and settled into the adjacent haunted room to work on a typewriter there.

I spent over an hour typing some fun letters to my wife, thanking her for pushing me out of my comfort zone. Photo Bang Bang was the last place I expected to find myself in Las Vegas, but the experience was an eye-opening, fun adventure.

You’ll never get better

Many of my accomplishments in the past were the result of getting comfortable with discomfort.

For example, during graduate school, I worked long shifts as a security guard. I pulled all-nighters studying for exams and spent weekends in the school library doing research.

At times I was tired and uncomfortable, but the Master’s degree I achieved served me well my entire career.

I trained for years in the martial arts, often driving to the dojo after working a graveyard shift as a young police officer.

Jujitsu was the martial art I studied, and the intense grappling and throws caused many scrapes, bruises, and injuries. Sometimes, I just lay on the dojo mat, exhausted.

Once I was thrown so hard the impact of landing on the mat threw my heart into super ventricular tachycardia. It took an ambulance ride and emergency room injection to correct my heart rhythm.

Despite the injuries and discomfort of my martial arts training, I gained many things, such as self-confidence, the ability to defend myself, strength, stamina, and greater focus.

“If you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.” — Angela Duckworth

Think of the hard things you accomplished in your life. Consider the discomforts you endured to reach a goal, gain new skills, obtain a certificate or degree, or achieve a promotion at work.

It’s the hard knocks in life, the discomforts and challenges, that shape us. Allowing yourself to remain stuck in the same old routines and cycles will not move you forward. They’ll just keep you on autopilot.

Your comfort zone is not your friend. Yes, it might guide you away from dangerous, unwise things. But more often than not, it will prevent you from stretching yourself. It will insulate you from discomfort, which is often the price of admission for personal growth.

Mindless repetition and mediocrity

An article in Huffpost.com made the following observation:

Have you ever paused to consider the ease at which you follow daily, weekly, and annual routines? Most people wake up at the same time, eat similar things for breakfast, wear the same rotation of clothing, arrive at work at the same time, grab lunch with the same people, watch the same shows at night…yada, yada, yada.

While habits, consistency, and routines can accelerate achievement in areas like exercise and creative work, they can also lull us into a rut of mindless repetition and mediocrity.

The Huffpost.com article goes on to note:

Routines like these become so familiar that we often lose track of the fact that we’re just cruising through life. Despite the fact that we live in an enormous universe with seven different continents, nearly 200 different countries, more than 7 billion people, thousands of languages, and hundreds of thousands of unique experiences, we stick to what we know. Then we wonder why we feel stuck, stale, and stagnant.

An article in Forbes.com mentions Jacquelyn James, director of research at the Sloan Center on Aging & Work. According to the article, James “argues that being engaged in new and exciting activities can provide a host of benefits as we mature.” She goes on to state:

As we get older, it is more important to find things to do that light up our lives…Our minds are central to this effort, and thrive when we are finding new things for them to do. Whether it’s acquiring a new skill or language (very high on the list of mental acuity benefits), joining a new group and meeting new people, or finding ways to continue using existing skills, successful aging and longevity are built upon patterns of lifelong learning.

Try new things

Work, sleep, and eating make up most of our days, leaving precious left-over time for leisure pursuits. If we don’t get intentional about how to wisely spend our free time, we’ll fritter it away on less meaningful things. Or worse, we’ll stay lost in our comfort zone.

Hamster videos on Youtube and political rants on Facebook might make for an easy diversion, but they don’t stretch your mind in new ways that help you grow.

In contrast, new experiences release dopamine in our brains and create new neurons and neural connections. The more challenging the experiences, the better.

If you want to want to get your life off autopilot, then you need to get comfortable with discomfort, and you need to do the following:

Try new things

Thanks to my wife, I get out of my comfort zone and attended a typewriter meet up in the Arts District of downtown Las Vegas. It was an entertaining adventure. I learned more about my new typewriter and got creatively inspired by Curtis Joe Walker’s amazing, old school photography.

When was the last time you tried something new? Usually, it’s laziness or fear that prevents us from venturing beyond our comfort zones. We imagine worse case scenarios when most often a new experience will enrich us.

Trying new things will amplify your creativity. Visiting Photo Bang Bang, viewing Curtis’s work, and exploring the Las Vegas Arts District have ignited all kinds of creative ideas for my writing and artwork.

Trying new things will make you more well-rounded. Ask anyone who travels frequently. New experiences can release dopamine and create new neural pathways in the brain.

A Huffpost.com article on neurogenesis and neuroplasticity noted:

Traveling promotes neurogenesis by exposing your brain to new, novel, and complex environments. Paul Nussbaum, a neuropsychologist from the University of Pittsburgh explains, ‘Those new and challenging situations cause the brain to sprout dendrites.

You don’t have to take big, expensive trips to try new things. There are simpler ways to get out of your comfort zone, such as:

• Change or vary the people you talk to. Meeting new people will open you up to new ideas, perspectives, and experiences.
• Change the things you read or view. If you read spy thrillers, switch things up and try a science fiction novel. If you watch FOX news, switch to CNN and challenge your views (and vice versa).
• Put yourself in different environments. Go on a micro-adventure, as I did with the typewriter meetup. It doesn’t have to cost much to explore new places.

Life is too short to stay huddled in your protective little comfort zone. The more you try new things and get comfortable with discomfort, the more you will grow.

You don’t have to become Dean Karnazes and run an ultra-marathon. You don’t have to join the Sin Sity Sisters, or buy an antique typewriter and hang out with hipster photographers.

All you have to do is try new things. It’s a powerful approach to improving your life, and I’ll wager you’ll be happy with the results.

Before you go

I’m John P. Weiss. I draw cartoons, paint, and write about life. Get on my free email list here for the latest writing and artwork.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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