The Day Comfort Almost Won

And How a Navy SEAL Made Me Realize I Was Losing

The moment comfort stops feeling safe.

A few years ago, I thought I had earned the right to coast.

I had checked the boxes: career milestones, podcast hitting charts, and book deals on the table, and from the outside, everything looked solid. From the inside, it felt… quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that starts to sound like surrender.

So I did what any self-respecting overachiever does when life gets too comfortable: I doubled down on routines that required zero risk. Same 5:20 a.m. alarm. Same black coffee order. Same mental playlist that kept the world had already decided who I was, and that version was “good enough.”

Comfort felt like peace. It felt like arrival. It felt like the finish line.

Then I sat across from Brent Gleeson, a man who has been shot at in real wars, and he said something so soft it detonated inside me:

“Comfort is the slowest form of suicide for your potential.”

No shouting. No finger-wagging. Just a statement of fact delivered the way a surgeon says, “We found something.”

I laughed it off on the outside. Inside, my stomach dropped three floors. Because in that moment, I saw the negotiation table I’d been sitting at for years. Every morning, I bargained away deep work for “just five more minutes of sleep.” Every evening, I traded real conversation for another glass of wine and another episode. Every weekend, I let the same low-grade habits linger because changing them would be… uncomfortable.

I had become the master of comfortable mediocrity disguised as balance.

The comfort that feels like peace… until it starts to feel like surrender.

Brent didn’t get to negotiate like that. His wake-up call came the day his father died.

Grief has a brutal way of stripping away the stories we tell ourselves.
In the silence that followed, Brent looked at his life and saw the gap:
The man he was versus the man he had promised himself and his father, he would become.

So he started subtracting.

Not with fanfare. Not with a 75 Hard challenge or a viral sobriety post. Just a private line drawn in the sand: alcohol was gone. Excuses were gone. Anything that lowered the standard he wanted his children to inherit was gone.

Because discipline, he said, isn’t punishment. It’s the highest form of self-respect.

That conversation forced me to look in the same mirror.

“You can’t become someone new while clinging to what numbs you.” — Brent Gleeson

I realized I had been protecting habits and comforts that were quietly killing the version of me I still claimed to want. I had been choosing ease over excellence, day after day, until ease started to feel like a life sentence. I had been negotiating with my potential like a corporate lawyer on retainer, and I was winning every case.

The truth Brent left me with is this:

There are only two versions of you in any given moment: the one you say you want to be, and the one you keep choosing with your daily actions. One of them will win. Not because it’s stronger. Because you fed it for more days in a row.

Your potential isn’t lost. It’s just waiting for you to stop negotiating.

We recorded that conversation as episode 700 of Passion Struck. Seven hundred episodes of people choosing themselves again. Seven hundred reminders that becoming isn’t a one-time event; it’s a daily vote for who you’re willing to become.

Brent’s story is an extreme version of that vote: combat, loss, sobriety, rebuilding identity from zero.

My version looked smaller on the outside: finally deleting apps that stole my mornings, saying no to speaking gigs that paid well but felt hollow, and, hardest of all, admitting to the people closest to me that parts of the “successful” version of John they loved were actually armor I’d outgrown.

Small subtractions. Massive compounding interest. Because becoming is rarely about adding more, it’s about having the courage to subtract what’s been quietly killing you. The habit you defend because “it’s not that bad.” The relationship you stay in because leaving would be messy. The story you keep telling about why you can’t start yet.

Subtract those, and suddenly there’s room for the life that’s been waiting.

I asked Brent what he would say to the version of himself who was still negotiating. He didn’t hesitate:

“Stop waiting for a tragedy to force the decision. Choose the hard thing while you still have the luxury of choosing.”

I’ve been carrying that sentence around for weeks.

So here’s my question for you. The one I’m asking myself every morning now:

What are you still negotiating with that no longer deserves a seat at your table?

A habit. An excuse. One comfort that’s costing you your future. Name it. Subtract it. Watch what grows in the space you just reclaimed. That’s how becoming actually starts.

Listen to the whole conversation with Brent: Episode 700 — The Navy SEAL Playbook for Going All In on Your Life:

Your turn. Hit reply and tell me one thing you’re ready to subtract this week because it no longer belongs to the person you’re becoming.

I read every single one.

Also, you’re more than welcome to download the Companion Digital Workbook I specially crafted after my conversation with Brent. I promise you it’s packed with tons of value, so you’re set to go ALL IN. Download HERE.

Pick up a copy of Brent’s new book, “All In.”

P.S. Episode 700 dropped the same week Passion Struck hit #1 in Health & Wellness worldwide on Apple Podcasts. That only happened because you keep choosing yourself and inviting others to do the same. Thank you for making this possible.