«If you want to get something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done before.»
Richard Bach
I often come across a phenomenon where people don’t understand what the personal comfort zone really is.
A person is sure they’ve never been in a comfort zone, so calls to leave it leave them puzzled — how can you leave a place you’ve never been?
The misconception lies in the fact that most people think the comfort zone is a space where a person feels physically and emotionally their best, where it’s nice and pleasant to be.
A person doesn’t understand the meaning of the phrase “comfort zone,” hence the confusion about why they need to leave it.
In this article, we’ll talk about what this “comfort zone” creature is, whether you need to leave it or better stay put.
What is a personal comfort zone
In reality, the comfort zone is a space where a person has settled in, and this place or state becomes familiar to them.
Comfort zone = familiar zone
The comfort zone is a familiar environment where everything is clear and understandable, where every step is calculated in advance.
A zone where a person feels safe because they know the outcome of events and the result of their actions ahead of time.
The personal comfort zone is what is habitual.
Let’s say a person decides to change jobs. The old job is their comfort zone — everything there is clear and familiar.
Moving to a new place will be a way out of this zone, because now, along with a higher status and income level, their degree of responsibility, workload, and time spent on duties have also increased.
The changes that cause stress in a new environment — that’s what leaving the comfort zone is.
The situation remains uncomfortable for a person until they get used to the new position, until the environment becomes clear and familiar.
As soon as they adapt to circumstances where everything becomes familiar, stable, and predictable, the situation turns into a comfort zone.
Now the discomfort zone has changed polarity and become a comfort zone.
See also Resting on your laurels vs Constant development. The meaning of continuous evolution
What is the trap of staying in the comfort zone too long
There’s a saying that if you put a frog in a container of water and gradually heat the water, the frog will start to adapt.
It will raise its body temperature to maintain a comfortable stay in that environment.
Sooner or later, a critical moment will come when the water gets so hot that the frog can no longer stay in it.
But it also won’t be able to jump out of the hot water, because it has used up all its energy raising its body temperature.
And it has no strength left to jump out of the hot water. As a result, the frog gets boiled in the hot water — meaning it doesn’t survive.
If you put a frog directly into hot water, it will immediately jump out of the boiling water.
Because staying in such an environment is very uncomfortable for it, and it has enough strength to make the leap.
When a person’s life situation deteriorates gradually and the changes happening are practically unnoticeable, the same thing happens to them as to the frog.
A person first agrees to one concession, tolerates discomfort, then to others.
This way, they gradually make peace with troubles, and as a result, without noticing it, they switch into a victim consciousness and get used to that state.
What a person gets used to is their comfort zone.
Read about the concept of victim consciousness and how to get out of this state in this article.
A person can sit and think, it seems like something isn’t right, something is off in their life and they should change it somehow, but they do nothing about it, putting it off for later.
And when the situation is already just dire, and they have no strength left to live in such conditions, they also lack the strength to change anything in their life, because their energy was spent on adapting and getting used to it.
The longer a person remains inactive, the more their ability to make decisions and do something to change their life atrophies.
Their ability to overcome the bar they could jump over may be much lower by the critical moment.
If a person has no motivation to change anything in their situation, then life itself stimulates them by throwing in problems that motivate them to take action.
Troubles knock a person out of their stable, habitual zone, and they are forced to take measures and act.
It is precisely thanks to such a turn of events that their life can radically change for the better.
For example, a situation where a person loses their job and is very upset about it.
But over time, they start their own business and get firmly on their feet. Because, finding themselves in a hopeless situation, they begin to act.
A person has potential, but lacks a trigger that will shift their attention to opportunities. Troubles become that trigger.
Or the case when a family breaks up and a person is forced to be alone and grieves over this state of affairs.
Especially if it’s a woman with a child in her arms. But later, her life turns out very well, and she is already happy that the first relationship ended.
Also read the article How to Find Wisdom in an Unpleasant Situation
If you look more closely, the circumstances in which people initially found themselves probably couldn’t be called comfortable.
They were just familiar. The person got used to that job and resigned themselves to life’s instability and low salary.
The woman got used to that relationship, even though there was a lot of deception and reproach in it.
It is always easier to solve a problem at its very beginning than to later find the energy and strength to eliminate it.
Remember the rule of three signals, pay attention to them, and don’t get stuck in a comfortable environment.
Don’t wait for life to hit you so hard that you have to, burning yourself like a frog, jump out of the boiling water.
What’s the Benefit of Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
A state of uncertainty makes people uncomfortable.
A person is afraid to take unfamiliar actions because they worry that everything could turn out even worse than it is now. They’re afraid that something might go wrong.
Stepping out of your personal comfort zone means taking actions that feel a bit scary. There’s always a risk of losing something.
But to move forward, you need to go beyond your comfort zone.
I really liked one story that seems very ordinary at first glance, one that happens to many people, and it also clearly shows the benefit of stepping out of your comfort zone.
A young guy leads an active lifestyle and loves sports games, which often leads to situations where he twists his ankle.
He noticed that if he immediately sits down and takes off his shoe in those moments, his foot swells up.
Because of the injury, the guy has to stay home for a couple of days, which doesn’t fit into his plans at all—or rather, it completely destroys them.
So he decided to change his behavior, and the next time he twisted his ankle, he didn’t sit down feeling sorry for himself, but pushed through the pain and kept moving.
As a result, his foot didn’t swell. It’s quite possible that improved blood flow helped, but that’s not the point here.
The thing is, the guy couldn’t know the outcome in advance—how it would all turn out, because his foot could have swelled up even more. Enduring the discomfort and continuing to move—that was the step out of his comfort zone.
There’s only one way—go and do it, and find out if the new thing is worse than the old!
Taking unfamiliar actions is always an opportunity to move to a new level, a chance to improve any existing circumstances.
If a person wants changes to happen in their life, the feeling of discomfort must become a normal, ordinary state for them.
People who are considered successful systematically step beyond the boundaries of their comfort zone—for them, it’s a natural state.
Development begins when a person steps outside their comfort zone.
While inside this zone, a person performs actions that are familiar to them. When a leap is needed, stepping out of the comfort zone is vital; otherwise, the person stays right where they are, not moving, not developing.
As soon as a person stops, getting stuck in their usual life, they lose the ability to transform their life, to create and bring something new into being.
The ability to quickly and easily solve any life challenges is lost.
By lingering in the comfort zone, a person also misses the opportunity to realize their potential.
There’s a saying: “To whom much is given, much will be required.” This is exactly about that—if a person doesn’t realize their talents, they live an empty, joyless life and don’t feel happy.
That’s why staying in the comfort zone is destructive.
See also: How to Let New Opportunities Into Your Life
New opportunities are always there; we are surrounded by them. The question is how well you’ve developed the ability to see the most of them. Read the article to find out what’s needed for that.
A person is given potential, and it is their responsibility to realize their uniqueness, to reveal themselves, and to give their creations to the world.
Living consciously, pulling yourself out of your comfort zone, is a fascinating journey of constantly discovering something new.
A journey where many wonderful events happen in life.
And how often do you notice in time that it’s time to leave your personal comfort zone?
Share such situations and tell us how you got out of them.
Your stories will be very helpful to many readers of our blog.