The Comfort Crisis is Really The Comfort Norm by Jude Hopkins, 8/14/26

Has anyone ever changed after reading a self-help book?

I doubt it. I read this one, The Comfort Crisis, for background on my second novel, but it turned out to be more about the need for building physical endurance instead of an overview about increasing mental persistence, something I'm fascinated by. In other words, why don't most people fulfill their dreams?

Author Michael Easter fills almost 300 pages with his personal examples and lots and lots of research and statistics to illustrate that “we are living progressively sheltered, sterile, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged, safety-netted lives” — and we should toughen up, as he has.

Who’s listening? Anyone? Anyone?

I once wrote a proposal and three chapters for a self-help book back in the late 1980s, snagged a top New York agent, and was on the verge of signing a contract (the proposal was called “The Scarlett Syndrome,” using Scarlett O’Hara as the thread throughout), but I allowed this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fall through the cracks. Another post, another day.

Anyway, I know how self-help books work, what’s included in them, the format, the this, the that. Personal stories, research and evidence, recommendations on how to change your life.

Author Easter is in fine fettle himself, tending to his human carriage, even going on a hunting trip to some God-forsaken northern land and killing a caribou to test his extraordinary strength. Yep, that story is interwoven throughout this index-finger-shaking diatribe on how Americans are woefully unmotivated and unfit.

“We have too many ways to numb out, like comfort food, cigarettes, alcohol, pills, smartphones and TV,” he writes. “We’re detached from the things that make us feel happy and alive, like connection, being in the natural world, effort and perseverance.”

I could have saved him the effort. If trying to get people to change, in my case, read a classic book instead of a lot of the tripe that’s out there, forget it. It ain’t happening. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, people only change if there's a quick payoff, like grades in school, or attracting someone of the opposite sex. Most people don’t change, especially if someone asks them to because it’s beneficial for them.

Nope. Too much trouble. Not enough time. On and on and on.

“Today’s comfort is tomorrow’s discomfort,” Easter screeches, if indeed someone can screech from words on a page.

Oh, he tries. In addition to statistics and research, he gives us a bit of Eastern philosophy. We would all be better people if we pushed ourselves more, mentally and physically, if we walked in nature three times a week, if we just did something beyond our usually soft and dreary lives.

Maybe so, but who’s listening?

“The deep regrets of the dying include not living in the moment,” the author writes, “working too often, and living a life the person thinks they should rather than one they truly want to.”

One of my favorite poems was written by the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold titled “The Buried Life” about just that, how we occasionally have moments in which the lives we wished for send sparks through us. But only momentarily:

“But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life;

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force

In tracking out our true, original course;

A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us—to know

Whence our lives come and where they go.”

Indeed.

Perhaps I’ve been reading too many old Russian novels, but the sad fact is that most people aren’t moved to change. As one of Tolstoy’s heroes finds out too late, “his career, the ordering of his life, his family, the things that preoccupied people in society and at work — all of this might have been wrong.” But what good is a deathbed epiphany?

In the meantime, where was I? Oh yes, most people don’t change, much, if at all. Convention may deaden, but it rules. “The Comfort Crisis,” is not a crisis, but a norm. When it isn't, it's news. And a lot of "likes" on social media.

I wish the author good luck on his next caribou hunting trip ‘cause he’s not about to change anyone with this book, sadly. Dare I end with an adage? Change comes from within, not from a self-help book, no matter how worthy its message.