Breaking Free From the Dreaded Comfort Zone

Mental HealthAugust 20, 2020

When it comes to living life, you are always doing one of two things – growing or dying. Of course, this is an exaggerated statement. However, it is one that highlights the importance of choosing how you want to live your life. Leading a successful life of happiness is centered around progress.

This is because, for most people, satisfaction is the joy of moving closer and closer to your potential. The essence here is ‘moving.’ It means to be happy about the life we are living, we need to be in a state of motion. Growth is progress, and progress is moving. A comfort zone is not a space in which this takes place.

Comfort Zones Hinder Growth

Being in a state of motion in life is about stepping outside of yourself. The only way you can ever become anything better than what you are right now is by experiencing something that is outside of you. This means you have to step out of this space called the comfort zone to seek growth or movement in some form. The comfort zone is a space within which you are stagnant, although comfortable. It is a space that demands a little more effort to get out of.

Comfort Zones Stop You From New Experiences

One of the most important things we can accomplish in life is the discovery of what we are passionate about. Once you find your passion, you can devote time and effort to master it. This gives your life a sense of purpose while also making a positive change to the world. If you are lucky, you find your passion very early on in life. However, if you are unlucky, you land up in a comfort zone before you find out what your passion is. In a comfort zone, you won’t try new experiences to find out what it is that you like or don’t like. And so, a comfort zone puts an end to the discovery process.

The Greatest Danger of Comfort Zones

If you allow yourself to enter a comfort zone later in your life, there’s an even more significant threat to your growth and happiness – allowing yourself to settle. People who allow themselves to settle wind up living life as though they are dead. This means going on with an experience that doesn’t bring you happiness. Living this way means that even if life presents you an opportunity, you end up not going for it because of the fear of not being able to return to your comfort zone.

Beating Your Comfort Zone

With enough patience and effort, it is possible to break out of the dreaded comfort zone. You could develop a habit of stepping out of this space. It’s all about knowing exactly how to do this. The key to moving from your comfort zone is to lower your resistance towards an opportunity or experience. Doing the first small step makes the next step easier. Continuing in this fashion leads you to break through eventually.

Things that can help you to get out of your comfort zone is making a list of all the things you have been procrastinating, no matter how big or small. The next step is to do each item one at a time. Continue doing these things, even the most menial of tasks that pull you out of your comfort zone, and you will begin to grow comfortable with doing things that bring you out of what you are used to.

The trick is to break out of your comfort zone like you work out on a muscle. The more you use it, the easier it becomes to use it. Challenge yourself today, right this moment, to do at least one thing from your list of procrastinated things to push yourself to get out of your comfort zone. So the very moment you finish reading this article, make a list of your own, and pick your first step. Remember, the key is to start small and keep chasing your dreams until you get there! Every morning, pick something off of the list, and every day, add things to that list. Before you know it, you’ll be achieving so much more, and you will be asking yourself, ‘what comfort zone?’