There’s a comfort epidemic plaguing society that is so pleasant we still seek it out at all costs. But it is costing us in mental illness, chronic pain, and diminishing quality of life. Ever since realizing that drinking himself into oblivion was failing to protect him from his inner turmoil, Michael Easter has been on a quest to rewire himself by “rewilding” himself, choosing to go on wilderness treks that stretch the limits of his safety-craving self. Based on his experiences and research, he argues that we feel more alive and enjoy life more when we embrace adventure and discomfort, whether that means climbing mountains or simply learning to embrace boredom.

Life in a developed, post-industrial society is usually pretty tame even on a rough day. There’s running water, indoor plumbing, dependable electricity, climate control at the flip of a switch, supermarkets stuffed with food, manifold forms of transportation, and ready access to goods, services, and information via the internet.

The comforts and conveniences of modern life are all the more pronounced when we consider what life was like for early humans. Compare modern homes and apartments, for example, to the makeshift shelters and dark, dank caves our ancestors relied on for safety from inclement weather and ferocious predators. For most of human history, there were few (if any) reliable sources of food. People had to dig up roots and pick their fruits and then migrate when there was no more food. And that was just gathering. Hunting was a harrowing business. Animals could be much bigger and more menacing than today’s apex predators, and our early human ancestors took far more risks bringing down their kills. It was a stressful existence: Find food or starve, kill or be killed.

By some metrics the world is a better place. We live longer, and we enjoy better health and more wealth and luxuries than many royal families did just a few centuries ago. There has never been a more prosperous time for people around the globe. Poverty levels are dropping along with starvation and illiteracy. “Will my child get into a good school?” is a much more common question than, “Will my family survive the night without being mauled by wild animals or cut down by rival tribes?” The questions have changed.

In some ways, this is a call to gratitude, but the call would be more clarion if the modern world did not present its own perils and challenges to wellbeing that our early ancestors never had to cope with: obesity, depression, loneliness, dependence on medication, chronic inactivity, and electronic overstimulation.

Obesity would not have been a struggle for nomadic and semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. They moved around far more than the average American, even an exceptionally active American. What we have the luxury to call exercise was just normal daily living for our ancestors: cutting, hacking, throwing, running, digging, hunting. One of the best ways to hunt some animals was simply to trot after them until the prey keeled over from sheer fatigue. Think of the fitness required to stalk an animal like that! And, of course, there was no GPS, so the rest of the clan couldn’t simply drop a pin for the hunting party to find its way back.

Most of us are not regularly engaged in tasks that are physically demanding and benefit our wellbeing. Many of our comforts even cut us off from the things that do benefit us (relationships, time in nature, facing down challenges with courage and persistence). We have found a slew of distractions (alcohol, pills, smartphones) that numb us when discomfort rears its head, but these distractions stunt us rather than free us.

For all the conveniences and technological marvels at our fingertips, we aren’t happier for them. A mere six percent of Americans believe things are getting better in the world. There is a deep sense in many people that something is “off.” Part of the problem could be how tame our existences are, and the solution lies in “rewilding” ourselves. If you learn to embrace discomfort instead of eradicating it, you might be surprised by the benefits it brings you.

Boredom effectively died with the advent of the iPhone in 2007, but so did the capacity for imagination and creativity. The death of boredom might seem like a win at first glance. Many philosophers loathed the state of boredom. So do the life coaches and self-help writers who try to teach us how to make every moment productive. The novelist Leo Tolstoy (via one of his characters) described boredom as the “desire for desires.” Boredom feels like some kind of purgatorial state that we are anxious to flee, one way or another, and with the omnipresence of devices in today’s world, fleeing has never been easier.

But it turns out we need boredom. Retreating to devices blurs out the thoughts, emotions, and questions that our mind is attempting to work through. If we are always stimulated, the brain doesn’t get a break, even if we think we are taking a break via screen time.

Our brain operates in one of two modes: “focused mode” and “unfocused mode” would be the simplest way to describe them. When we enter unfocused mode (the default mode network), the brain has deactivated the insular cortex. The insular cortex is deeply ensconced in the mammalian brain and helps regulate emotion and homeostasis. Its function is restorative.

The brain is in focused mode when we write, read, talk, or even watch TV. When we are staring at screens, the brain is engaged and does not have the opportunity to go to unfocused mode. This poses problems for us because without the moments in unfocused mode, where the default mode network comes online and our brain gets a break, we never make the most of focused mode. Without adequate moments in unfocused mode, we are less creative, get less done, and do not process complexity well. So when we are glued to our screens, we tell ourselves that we are winding down after a long day, but we are actually winding up even further. It’s not the lazy-brain activity we tend to think it is. It takes energy we might not have at the end of the day and keeps us from the rest we need.

And how do mentally tired people act? They are prone to short tempers, ingratitude, and lack of focus. An entire society of mentally tired people swimming in screens, then, is hardly a recipe for healthy institutions and thriving communities. But it is a recipe for widespread depression. There is goodness and beauty that we only find when we slow down, but it is on the other side of the discomfort of disconnecting from screens from time to time. If we do not learn to embrace boredom and rest our overheating brains, we will miss the things that make life worth living.

Keto. Paleo. Low-carb. High-protein. Gluten-free. Dairy-free. All organic. Vegan. Carnivore. Mediterranean. Okinawan. Blue Zone. These are all dieting trends, and depending on which nutritionists you go to, they will swear by one or another. But there are so many fads, so many changes in the research, and powerful lobbies that leave us wondering what can be trusted and what is simply lucrative or politically expedient.

Trevor Kashey has the solution, and he has made a living by ingesting and distilling massive amounts of cutting edge nutrition literature and making it accessible to the layman. With a bachelor's degree by age 17, a doctorate by age 23, and an IQ of 160, he is a savant: a top-tier researcher, an accomplished bodybuilder, and famous trainer. He trains everyone from Navy SEALs to Olympic squads to CEOs, and his track record makes him among the most sought-after trainers in the world. So far, his clients have lost a combined total of nearly 250,000 pounds.

Unlike many nutritionists, who receive kickbacks for recommending certain brands and products, Kashey has chosen to remain unincorporated. He stays as unbiased as he knows how to when he researches and tries to distill information for the layman who doesn’t attend medical conferences about nutrition. Perhaps the miracle is that people who come to Kashey not only lose massive amounts of weight after despairing of never losing it; they keep the weight off.

So what is his secret? He equips people to embrace the discomfort of hunger and cultivate awareness of their eating habits. Kashey argues that most nutritionists rely on pop diet fads and fail to understand the most fundamental biological mechanisms that drive energy. They focus more on what people are eating than why they are eating.

Going hungry is not the worst thing, even if it sometimes feels hellish when we are accustomed to using food to cope with stress and anxiety. Consider that people eat an average of 550 extra calories after a night when they get five hours of sleep instead of eight. An apt Japanese expression for this absent-minded compulsive eating literally translates to “lonely mouth.”

The key to achieving and maintaining a healthy body that Kashey has tapped into is learning to monitor eating patterns fastidiously and eliminating the knowledge gap between how much we think we eat and how much we actually eat. The majority of people in the developed world tend to grossly underestimate the calories they consume. We are hardly conscious of our eating habits, which is our biggest danger. Kashey leans into the Hawthorne Effect, the sociological discovery that people tend to alter their behavior when they know they are being watched. Once you start watching yourself and find the triggers that set the reward hunger circuits in motion, you can start inserting what Kashey calls “calorie negative” paths to managing stress.

Most of his success stories have to do with facilitating dietary self-awareness and replacing the urge to eat with light exercise. When people get home on Friday and find themselves pulled toward the pantry, that’s the best time to go for a walk. It beats the stress they are trying to work through and improves health. Calories are subtracted rather than added. Waistlines thin instead of thicken. Stress and depression levels fall rather than rise.

If food has become a haven for you, finding out why you are eating is a better investigation than what you are eating. Remember, it is okay to feel the discomfort of hunger, sometimes.

Of the people from Western countries surveyed, 80% report feeling uncomfortable at the thought of death. Even for those in the autumn of their lives (65 years or older) only half of those polled had pondered the kind of death they would prefer to die.

Busyness and distraction are the best antidotes many people come up with to avoid contemplating the end. The culture around death is such that we do not think of it until it is upon us, and, when it is upon us, we have created institutions that help us move past it as efficiently as possible. We cover up the deceased at the moment of death and send the body to the morgue where it is dolled up to appear as young and vivacious as the undertaker can manage.

The expediency was not always part of the culture in the United States. In the 1800s, tending to the deceased was a family affair. Death was just a common part of life, and it did not evoke the same discomfort it does now. Community was present for every step of the process, from sickness to death and burial. That all changed in 1865 when Abraham Lincoln died. His body was embalmed at a funeral home, and ever since, the practice became popular, and the funeral business became an enormous industry.

Around the same time, hospitals were on the rise. Care might have improved but it did remove the sick and injured from the intimate family setting in which people were traditionally cared for. The sick and the dead instead received care from strangers in (very literally) unfamiliar settings.

As a result of these transitions, we have distanced ourselves from death and dying, and we have lost the opportunity to face down the discomfort of death. Twentieth century German philosopher Martin Heidegger once remarked, “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life—and only then will I be free to become myself.”

About a century later, scientific experiments at the University of Kentucky are corroborating Heidegger’s intuition. One study divided subjects into two groups: The first was to cast their minds back to an unpleasant trip to the dentist, and the second was to ponder their death. To the surprise of many, those asked to reflect upon their mortality reported unprecedented clarity about life, greater joy and satisfaction in life. Researchers concluded that by confronting honestly the deepest existential threat, the brain begins automatically searching for uplifting content.

This could be why the people of Bhutan, despite a low ranking by many development metrics, are among the happiest in the world. In the only country whose capital city doesn’t have a single traffic light and only half of residents have internet, less than 9 percent of citizens polled reported unhappiness. Death is embraced and features prominently in the country’s educational programs, religious instruction, and artistic expression. When someone dies, the body “lives” in the home of the deceased’s family for three weeks before being slowly burned to ashes.

There is a famous story of the Bhutanese king telling a reporter in a 1972 interview that, "gross domestic happiness is more important than gross domestic product." He saw how rising wealth and GDP were producing a stressed and frenetic middle class and an infelicitous working class. He did not wish that for his people.

One Oxford-educated Bhutanese man reflecting on the United States’ misery submitted that the endless lists of to-dos, pursuits, and conveniences distract people from confronting the deeper parts of themselves. But life is not a series of checklists, and giving in to compulsive action can prevent us from facing the things we fear.

Death is one of those leering threats we compulsively avoid. But in a strange, counterintuitive twist, the pondering of death leads to happiness. Yet again we find that embracing the initial psychological distress and discomfort makes for a more meaningful and joyful existence.