The following post is the transcript from my podcast episode of the same title. You can listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-revolution-within-podcast-with-dana/id1788811076

Hi there everybody, thanks for being here with me today. 

I’m Dana, and you’re listening to The Revolution Within Podcast. This is the podcast where you’re learning how to revolutionize your relationship within yourself by ditching people-pleasing, prioritizing self-kindness, and finding what lights you up.

But first, some housekeeping. Let me tell you how you can connect with me to work with me: My website is revolution-within.com, I’m on instagram @revolution_within31, and you can reach me via email at dana@revolution-within.com. 

There are a few different ways that you can work with me: You can book me for a one-on-one coaching package, I have a digital course coming up soon that will also have group coaching sessions, and my book is also in the works…hoping to get that out to you by this summer. Fingers crossed on that.

Okay, so this week on the podcast I’d like to talk more about the concept of “comfortable misery.” I like to talk about this phrase since…I wrote a song with this title in the 90s, but I never recorded it so it’s hard to prove, like, I coined it, um, but I’ve been talking about it for many many years. Anyway, it doesn’t  matter.

I’ve noticed in our society that we tend to be surrounded by people kind of shuffling along, answering “fine” to the question “how are you?” and moving along, nothing to see here. 

But often we’re not fine. So why are we so afraid to talk about what’s really bothering us?

Well…a lot of people like to keep things private, and that’s fine. But if you don’t talk about things that bother you, then where does that energy end up? Like I talked about last week, we deflect with overdoing something - eating, drinking, scrolling through social media - whatever. 

Or maybe it’s because we don’t want to be construed as a trauma dumper  or drama queen or a complainer. I get that. I used to be (and sometimes still am) one or more of those things. I’ve had friends in the past say that about me behind my back or even tell me to my face - which I actually prefer to be told to my face, I definitely try to live by the credo these days not to say anything about someone that I wouldn’t say directly to their face, and I hope others would do the same for me. I used to have a friend who called me “drama” behind my back, a nickname that was actually well earned. And I basically just constantly complained. 

That’s something that I’ve worked on, it was rooted in low self-esteem, and that was at a time in my life in my late 20s where the people I looked up to the most were the ones who put me down. And I live very differently these days,m.

But I can understand how others don’t want to be perceived as complainers or disliked because of it. (There’s that people-pleasing thing, along with not wanting to be perceived as “difficult “)

Wait, Dana, back up a minute. What’s trauma dumping? That’s when you go around talking about bad things that happened to you in your life openly to people you’ve just met and/or barely know seeking sympathy from their reactions, and it usually makes them very uncomfortable. Also known as “poor me” or “victim mentality.” 

This is not to be confused with confiding in a friend about an issue you’re having. That’s entirely different. I just wanna make that clear.

Trauma dumping isn’t necessarily done deliberately, but it is an attention seeking behavior that comes from a place of very low self-worth and it’s done by people who think that the only way they’ll get people to pay attention to or be friends with or love them is if they can get people to feel sorry for them and want to nurture or take care of them. And it tends to have the opposite effect. 

I…used to do this when I was very young. In my teens. And it was…it makes me cringe just to think about it. Anyway.

As an empath, I’ve had a considerable amount of experience with having complete strangers tell me the most terrible things they have ever happened to them (usually in romantic relationships), and I can say that it’s pretty draining. 

So I get that you might want to move along with your day by just saying “fine” and not wanting to get into it. Sometimes people are going through a lot and they don’t want to actually talk about things because they think that it’ll be like opening Pandora’s box and everything will spill out and they’ll start crying hysterically to a stranger in the middle of the grocery store. 

I’ve also had this happen to me. Not that it’s a bad thing to be able to support someone in this moment…it’s not always trauma dumping. Sometimes somebody just needs a hug. Or someone to actually show them some compassion.

What I’m saying is that it’s not a good thing to keep all of those unprocessed emotions inside all the time, because that’s how you find yourself living a life of comfortable misery. 

So what exactly is comfortable misery, Dana? I’m so glad you asked!

Comfortable misery is living your life in a perpetual state of mundaneness.

It’s when you go through life living every day just going through, doing the same things over and over with no significant, attainable planned-out goals, no real dreams or aspirations, and nothing to really look forward to. Like emotional malaise.

Other people won’t typically notice that you’re living like this, though. When acquaintances or co-workers engage you in conversation about the weather or workplace or what movie you watched on Netflix this past weekend, you’re pleasant and engaging to talk to… most people would say that you’re a lovely person and that you seem to “have your shit together,” so to speak.

But you feel…stuck. Dissatisfied. Like things are…fine, but something is missing. Maybe you don’t socialize much or at all because meh. You don’t feel like it. Or maybe you spend a lot of your time doing things for other people more out of a sense of obligation than actual goodwill, or even because you don’t have anything you’d rather do with your time.

Maybe your marriage or relationship is…fine. You spend time together because you live together, but maybe it’s become more of a habit than a real connection. Maybe you’ve lost the reason why you’re even still together.

Same thing with your career or job. It’s like you started out liking it or even loving it, but as time wore on it’s become unchallenging or tedious or just…fine. 

That’s comfortable misery. It’s certainly not a terrible life, but it’s not one you’re springing out of bed every morning to get back to either. There are moments of fun here and there, sure, and occasionally you take a cool vacation or maybe a “friends weekend”, or a “girls night out” but that’s it.

Let’s just categorize it as “Meh.”

And when we live our lives like this, we inadvertently surround ourselves with other people who do, too. So like the crabs in the pot of water, we keep pulling each other down if any one of them tries to climb out until we don’t even notice and believe that this is, indeed, “all there is.” 

Comfortable misery loves company, after all.

Well. We’re not doing that anymore. Not here, anyway. We’re on a quest to get unstuck…to create something to look forward to.

It was my own comfortable misery that got me here talking to you in the first place. I spent decades struggling with my weight and depression. Just going through cycle after cycle, weight swinging up and down, depressive episodes swinging up and down. The pendulum of my mental and physical health swinging wildly back and forth into perimenopause, not getting answers for symptoms because…well, there weren’t any. Up until recently,  no one was studying women’s health past pregnancy. Can you believe that? 

Fortunately now we have gynecologists like Dr Mary Claire Haver and Dr Jen Gunter who are advocating for women in perimenopause and menopause to find out how to manage this crap. It’s kind of a nightmare - Dr Gunter accurately calls it puberty in reverse. 

It really is, it’s…pretty terrible. 

When I turned 50 I’d just about completely lost my mind and had it with being dismissed by doctors…I’ll spare you the grim details of what I was experiencing. It was bad. I ended up eventually having a hysterectomy. 

Anyway. About a month after I turned 50 I ordered hormone replacement therapy online of all places and my dear sweet Universe, it helped so much. 

That’s another thing. There’s all of this false information out there about how hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increases the risk of cancer and it’s not true. It’s been proven to not be true, Dr Haver has the studies, and yet there are still women who refuse to accept that. Several women I know refuse to accept that. Well, I’m not one of them. Thank goodness. 

Anyway, the hormone replacement therapy is what got me out of depression for long enough to find Corrine Crabtree, that incredible badass weight loss coach entrepreneur that I talked about in episode one. I got into her weight loss program No BS. I lost 50 pounds over 18 months, became a certified wellness coach through her two years ago - and since then, I’ve seen those pendulum swings of weight loss and depression get less and less extreme. Those swings were crazy wide for years and years and they still swing, but now a lot less. I manage my depression and my weight much better now than I used to.

I’ve spent the last few years figuring out how to smooth things out so that I don’t fall back into comfortable misery. I don’t want to go back there. I’ve seen how much better life is when you go for your dreams. I’ve gone for my dreams before - I was on a TV show, I worked for MTV, I’ve had articles I’ve written published, I recorded and released an album for a record label. It was a really small label that doesn’t exist anymore and only a couple hundred people heard it, but I did it. I went for it. That’s why I moved to California 25 years ago.

Granted, that was all before I met my husband and had my kids.  I did some cool things, and I’ve also had lots of failures. And then I spent 15 years raising my boys allowing those failures to define me and keep me small, convince me that I’d failed and now I’m just a mom, that my dream of being an author, a songwriter, of starting a podcast, becoming an entrepreneur again were just nonsense. 

But I’m here to tell you that still small voice inside me began to whisper, and then get louder and louder, “You have more to do…you have to help other people figure this out for themselves!”

So here I am, putting it all out there.

Because even before I became a coach, I would get messages and talk to people about this all the time. 

I even had a teacher in high school who said my last name should’ve been Talker, not Walker. Haha funny funny.

I see people all around me just resentful and frustrated with their current realities and not understanding that they’re where they are because, well, first of all they’re not kind to themselves. Second of all, most of them have been severely undervaluing themselves their entire lives, and third of all they’ve just bought into the collective idea that we have to follow these rules -we have to be a cog in the wheel. Be a worker bee. 

Who wrote these rules?

There’s so much more available to us, but we don’t know that because nobody teaches us that in school and it’s really scary to not follow these rules that somebody else made up that everybody else is following that we’re conditioned to believe that we have to follow.

But guess what? We don’t have to follow them!

So even though comfortable misery loves company, I’m offering you a different option. A sunnier perspective, if you will. The book I’m writing - which is tentatively titled “Write Your Own Rulebook, Babe” - is basically about what I just told you. 

It’ll walk you through how you can move from a life of comfortable misery to one of clarity and purpose. Yes, it will be uncomfortable and scary. But that’s also exciting when you think about it…to put yourself out there and take risks is pretty badass and exciting. 

We fear the unknown…but it’s all unknown. 

“I have a fear of failure” is something I’ve heard repeatedly from people when I ask “What’s holding you back?”

You have no idea if what you want to try will fail or succeed…so why not try? 

Failure is not an option…it’s an inevitably. 

Everybody fails. Repeatedly. 

But no one posts their six years of failed attempts, reworked ideas, debt accumulated, the countless times they’ve screamed in frustration over a missed opportunity or cried over clients lost or had to skip vacation that year because that money went into the business. 

Instagram doesn’t show you that part. Facebook ads don’t show you what it took to get there. 

But I’ll let you in on a little secret…all of that is what gets you out of comfortable misery. And if you keep trying, keep writing, keep tweaking, keep refining, keep networking…you’ll get there. Because 9 times out of ten when someone doesn’t “make it” it’s because they gave up too soon.

And if you’re okay with “fine” then you can just ignore me. But if you feel stuck and you want more, then you can work on changing your mindset. 

That’s where it begins. It’s a mindset shift. Knowing you’re worth better than “meh.” Even if you think “I can’t change my attitude, I’m too old” or “it’s genetic.” Nonsense. Predetermined attitudes can be redetermined with practice, patience, and persistence. Our brains can be rewired. 

And only someone who has experienced this, walked through it, and has come out the other side can guide you through it. 

I mean, you can let it take years or you can get coaching and cut that time down significantly…it’s up to you. 

But let’s say you’re not ready to jump into one-on-one coaching yet. That’s fine…What can you do today to start? 

You can start thinking about whether you agree with me or not. Are you living a life of comfortable misery in some aspect? Maybe you have a great career but your home life has gotten mehhhh. Or you’re in a wonderful relationship and your career kinda started sucking now. Or you really like your work and your partner but you don’t have fulfilling friendships or a thriving community. 

Or maybe you’d just like to find something within yourself but don’t even know where to begin because you’ve been a people pleaser your entire life.

Regardless, there’s usually something that immediately comes to mind when I say the phase “comfortable misery.” 

So your assignment this week is to think about this:

1. Where’s your comfortable misery?

2. How did you get there?

3. What’s one, small actionable step that you can take toward leaving it behind?

That’s what I have for you this week, beautiful dreamers. Thanks for listening and until next time, remember - all will be well. Take care.