LLI 64 When Growth Gets Comfortable: Reigniting Your Inner Edge
Show notes
Have your once-bold routines turned into autopilot rituals? In this episode, we explore the subtle trap of growth plateaus—when comfort creeps into once-challenging commitments. Sang invites you into a real-time reflection on what happens when the daily practice of showing up becomes too familiar, and how to break the loop with conscious curiosity.
If you’re a coach, creator, or soulful entrepreneur who once stretched beyond your limits but now finds yourself coasting—or even bored—this episode speaks directly to you. It’s an invitation to:
Reclaim your edge without burnout.
Recognize when consistency turns into complacency.
Find stability within, not from fleeting outcomes.
Honor your discomfort as the beginning of new creation.
This isn’t just about podcasting or parenting—it’s about the human challenge of living fully awake. With heartfelt wisdom, Sang reminds us how to reengage with purpose, evolve through discomfort, and hold space for our messy, miraculous becoming.
Show transcript
00:00:00: Iteration number 64 of the Love Louder podcast.
00:00:04: Now I found that we got a little bit too comfortable in this podcast because we were recording
00:00:11: every day.
00:00:12: And this was exactly why we started it, to take the frame of just recording every day,
00:00:20: publishing every day, and to let it be the only, only, only fixed thing so we could actually
00:00:28: overcome the first initial resistance of creating, of putting ourselves out there, of speaking
00:00:35: our voice.
00:00:36: Now, let's go a little bit deeper into that.
00:00:40: And I noticed that for my part, I got a little too comfortable because it was just okay.
00:00:48: It was so, so, so easy at first.
00:00:54: And that is the key to go in with ease, but it does not mean that you do not do hard stuff.
00:01:01: And when I noticed that change, and it was in the last week or so, that when I just actually
00:01:08: took the pause of daily recording, as we have mentioned in the episode before, that I noticed
00:01:15: that it got comfortable and a little too familiar and a little bit boring.
00:01:25: And also a little bit stressful because then I was juggling around, like, when do I record
00:01:30: the episode when something is not going according to schedule in my life with my baby and everything
00:01:38: like that, which is still fine to navigate it, but this element of, oh, it's somehow,
00:01:43: it's like, it's getting to a routine, which is nice because routine save us from precious
00:01:49: energy we can use to create something new.
00:01:52: But the key is, do you create something new then?
00:01:55: Or do you just fall back into the routine?
00:02:00: And that is what I found during the reflection of the past week, one and a half week, where
00:02:05: we stopped actually recording every day.
00:02:08: So I want you to ask you today if that is for you to get the case to, maybe you have
00:02:12: established routines that once felt really like a big challenge, like stepping out of
00:02:18: your comfort zone, expanding it, expanding your, how you go through life and how you move
00:02:26: around, not just like physically, but maybe also emotionally when you stepped out of your
00:02:30: comfort zone.
00:02:31: But now it just got very familiar that you do not even recognize it, that it is, it has
00:02:38: become element of your being right now.
00:02:41: And that is exactly the case.
00:02:42: Now, this is part of the evolution because that's what we're stacking now.
00:02:48: It's not that evolution is not that we learn something, then we forget it, then we learn
00:02:52: it again, then we forget it.
00:02:53: That is not evolution and that is not really generative learning.
00:02:58: The generative learning is exponential learning and it means to stack what you've learned
00:03:05: before.
00:03:07: And that is why it is inert in the human being and the human becoming in life to change,
00:03:21: to seek the challenge, to seek what is new there, the adventure to.
00:03:27: And of course you can hide from it and sometimes we just don't want to embark the adventure
00:03:31: and then life pulls on us.
00:03:33: It just dishes us something where we just get really uncomfortable.
00:03:38: Now if we can embrace that fact that that's just how life is, it's the evolution, it's
00:03:45: the change, it's our adaptation and it is like the core of the survival of the fittest.
00:03:52: It's not those who are physically fit, but those who fit best in the upcoming challenge.
00:03:59: And it is not that you're just like something comes up and you're just ready for it.
00:04:05: You build your capacity through the challenges before that.
00:04:08: We never suffer from an experience itself.
00:04:11: We suffer from the lack of experience before that, from the learning before that, from
00:04:17: the same experience or similar experience.
00:04:19: That's why sometimes we find ourselves in loops.
00:04:23: Sometimes we find ourselves in loops in business.
00:04:25: Sometimes we find ourselves in loops in discussions, in our relationship.
00:04:29: The never-ending loops that just come to the same result again and again because we have
00:04:34: not learned from what was before.
00:04:40: Because an experience can only serve us for the next if we take something out of it.
00:04:46: If we let it pass by, if we try to hide from it, if we put our head in the sand, burying
00:04:54: ourselves in there, yeah, we might as well be dead because we just want to hide from
00:04:59: the change, we want to hide from life.
00:05:02: And there's a really fine line.
00:05:09: There is a really fine line here in balancing our need for stability, for security, for
00:05:17: stillness, for calm and this other moving life.
00:05:27: And it is part of the human dichotomy.
00:05:31: And as long as we pretend that it is only one part and it is usually that our brains
00:05:36: play us into the direction of let's feel safe, let's keep everything like what is here
00:05:42: right now, what is known to us.
00:05:46: That's the moment when we begin our suffering because we try to fight life, we try to resist
00:05:51: life in its dichotomy, in its everything that it is, in compasses and we cut ourselves off
00:06:00: from life too.
00:06:02: And someday, one day we will wake up and it sometimes just feels like numbness.
00:06:08: It just sometimes just feels like boredom or it feels like intellectuality to be very,
00:06:18: to hide in your intellect, to be overthinking things or sometimes very, very offensive in
00:06:27: discussions and disputes with other people.
00:06:33: Now can we move through everything that comes our way and use it not to just stay outside
00:06:42: like leave our home base, our instability but to use it to bring ourselves back to that
00:06:49: core stability, to that stability because that is the real stability.
00:06:55: It is not found in the external.
00:06:57: That is what you cultivate in your core, the stability that you bring to the wobbly circumstances
00:07:06: to the ever changing life.
00:07:11: It is the stability that you bring in adverse situations and that is the true stability that
00:07:17: you can find in essence.
00:07:21: And it is your very unique pathway to cultivate it.
00:07:25: It might look very different for you than for somebody else than for me.
00:07:35: That is what stability is, the instability instead of fooling ourselves and creating
00:07:40: out of stability and by that creating this insecurity in ourselves because as long as
00:07:47: we make ourselves dependent of a person, of an outcome, of a result, of life playing
00:07:57: in a way that we fantasized it to be, this is not power.
00:08:04: It's not personal power.
00:08:06: It is clinging onto circumstances and these are ever changing.
00:08:10: Now how powerful can you feel then?
00:08:13: How stable can you feel then?
00:08:15: When you base your stability, your instability on something that is ever changing, well you
00:08:21: create not stability, it is instability.
00:08:24: [ Silence ]
00:08:31: And when we use everything that is in the outside to come back home to ourselves, to
00:08:37: look inside what is going on, not in a way of overanalyzing, dissecting it, searching
00:08:43: for the pain and the suffering and the why, which can be a pattern too, but really just
00:08:50: using it, learning the lesson, letting go of the story, moving on with that, what you
00:08:58: learned as a treasure and keeping them stacking up, it will just, what you learn will exponentially
00:09:09: grow your being, will exponentially expand, your becoming, will be more and more of that
00:09:19: approximation of who you are meant to be.
00:09:24: It will feel more and more as you, as in life, as who you are right now and sometimes, not
00:09:31: sometimes, I was tempted to say sometimes it shows very, very subtly or in small things
00:09:38: like recording a podcast.
00:09:40: Well, now it is not a small thing for anyone, everyone, but like when you go through the
00:09:45: iterations when you have done a bit, it all suddenly feels kind of small because you have
00:09:54: grown into that.
00:09:57: You do not pick a challenge because you know that you're ready for it because you know
00:10:01: you can easily do it.
00:10:02: It is a challenge because you're asked to grow into that.
00:10:07: And then when you're in, it will just in hindsight, it is always like, oh, well, it was not that
00:10:14: scary as I anticipated, but hell, am I grateful for that person who I was, who was that courageous?
00:10:22: And now, what now?
00:10:27: And can you meet yourself then in the next moment that comes up because it is not about
00:10:32: performing, about repeating the same stuff over and over again, anticipating the growth
00:10:38: curve, the change, well, you do inertly, but it's not that you force it.
00:10:44: It just happens when you meet yourself in the very next moment, in the moment that you're
00:10:51: in now, when you are able to embrace everything that is instead of indulging in fantasy of
00:10:59: how it should be.
00:11:05: Because let's be honest.
00:11:09: It's very rarely that something turns out exactly how we fantasize it to be.
00:11:14: And then there was, there's another twist coming around from Laura, if that just throws
00:11:19: everything all over again, especially when you have kids, when you have a family, when
00:11:24: you have a partner, it will never be as we imagined it to be.
00:11:35: You long for the job position until you have it, until you feel like it's flattening your
00:11:41: spirit, your excitement.
00:11:44: You want that part in back until you got them back.
00:11:48: You want that event to happen in a certain way until it happens and you find out, oh,
00:11:53: that was just not how I expected.
00:11:55: Now it can go in very different direction.
00:11:59: It can be like, oh, this is not what how I expected.
00:12:06: That is quite another challenge right now.
00:12:09: Or this is like, wow, it is, I could have never imagined it like that.
00:12:15: Now to be open for everything to be possible, that is the challenge for us because it means
00:12:22: opening our heart.
00:12:24: It means letting go of opinion that we have formed.
00:12:28: It means letting go of the beliefs that we have created around ourselves and around others.
00:12:37: Because very often we just base what we expect on what we have experienced in the past.
00:12:46: When we let go of these stories while, while honoring what we feel in the moment, and sometimes
00:12:53: it is grief, sometimes it is pain.
00:13:01: And that is good.
00:13:02: It is not about pushing them away.
00:13:10: Because one part is you letting go of the story and the other part is the story letting
00:13:15: go of you.
00:13:18: And I used to watch the trees in summer and autumn when the first leaves are actually
00:13:24: turning yellow, green leaves turning yellow and just falling down.
00:13:30: And that is a good question to contemplate.
00:13:32: Like, is it the tree letting go of the leaves or are the leaves letting go of the tree?
00:13:38: And it very often is both.
00:13:44: So you cannot force letting go because this will be just bypassing your own emotions.
00:13:49: And that's not the way.
00:13:50: It is not what we are approaching in this podcast because we want to base this all on our curiosity.
00:13:58: But curiosity does not only mean intellectual curiosity, but also the curiosity in your
00:14:05: own internal life, in your emotions, in your patterns, in your habits.
00:14:11: And by that it just puts everything into perspective because you then just start to have that inkling
00:14:20: of "Oh, I can actually step away from the drama a little bit, but still be connected
00:14:28: to what I feel."
00:14:31: And that is precious.
00:14:37: Because there has to be room for sadness.
00:14:40: There has to be room for disappointment.
00:14:44: There has to be room for that, what we feel uncomfortable with too.
00:14:54: Otherwise we would be just chasing another shiny illusion of something and selling ourselves
00:15:01: to the next best thing.
00:15:09: Because only, only if you honor, if you respect, if you love yourself with everything that
00:15:20: you are, and it also means with your patterns and habits and thoughts and feelings, only
00:15:27: then it will make room for more.
00:15:32: And that is meeting yourself with an open heart.
00:15:36: That is expanding your capacity for whatever there wants to arrive or arrives for you in
00:15:43: life.
00:15:44: That is creating stability inside yourself.
00:15:53: For now, for today, my invitation is just take a very, very deep breath into that, what
00:16:06: you've just heard, and see how the rest of the day will go with that contemplation inside
00:16:15: your heart, inside yourself.
00:16:18: And that's exactly this.
00:16:22: Then we keep an open heart even through adverse situations that might be external, but also
00:16:33: the adversity, the turbulence inside ourselves.
00:16:39: Love a little louder.
00:16:41: Lead like a lover.
00:16:43: And love like a leader.
00:16:48: Shan.
00:16:49: [BLANK_AUDIO]
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