When I was in enough emotional pain because of the way I led my life in relation to our planet, I was ready to change. I’d had enough of eco-guilt and eco-anxiety. I honestly looked at my life and saw that I had accumulated many habits because I had become addicted to comfort.

For instance, it is comfortable to:

• “save time” by not preparing lunch and packing it into reusable containers. Or not preparing a reusable coffee mug or a water bottle. It was just so much more comfortable and convenient to grab a coffee or a bottle of water whenever I wanted it—and to throw the cups and bottles away after finishing my drink. No need to bother with washing.

• get into my car and to drive door-to-door when I needed to go somewhere. No hassle of riding a bike, going to P&R and getting on a tram, or facing inconvenient weather conditions.

• just put a capsule of Nespresso into my coffee machine and have my perfect coffee ready in less than a minute! No need to wait for water to boil and clean the coffee machine after each use.

• throw my compostable waste in with general waste. The idea of having a kitchen compost would mean walking to the outdoor compost bin often and washing another garbage bag.

• use paper towels to clean up after my little ones in the kitchen. It seemed much less convenient to use a cloth that I needed to wash afterward.

I could go on and on. We all need comfort, and sometimes, we need to be in our comfort zones in order to rest and restore ourselves. Getting addicted to comfort and not daring to step out of it, however, impacts our own well-being as well as the health of our planet.