Your Comfort Zone-What is it and How to Get Out of It

Your Comfort Zone

What is a “Comfort Zone” anyway?

Wikipedia defines it as the following: “A comfort zone denotes that limited set of behaviors that a person will engage without becoming anxious. Alternatively denoted as a “plateau” it describes that set of behaviors that have become comfortable, without creating a sense of risk.”

Your Comfort Zone is the way you do things, the way you think, the things you believe. It is familiar territory, and it is where you feel totally SAFE.

It is also where you will get the same results you always get, again SAFE. Safe is good, right?

Is it?

That job you don’t enjoy; staying there is safe, but is that good for you?

That relationship that makes you feel badly; holding onto it is safe, but what is the cost to you?

Those beliefs you learned as a kid; holding on to them is safe, and it certainly keeps your family happy, but what do those beliefs create for you when you go out in the world?

That negative thinking; it’s safe since it keeps you from ever being disappointed, but how many exciting opportunities have gone away when you said, “I don’t want to”, or “That won’t work”, or “I already tried that before?”

Your comfort zone is good news/ bad news; it’s easy and you get to feel safe, but you also get to stay stuck. Life is grayer, there’s little or no excitement, and moving ahead to bigger and better things for your life never gets to be more than a dream. The longer you stay in a comfort zone, the darker it gets, as your dissatisfaction with stagnation increases. You may even reach the point where you feel desperate for things to change. But until you are ready to let go of “totally safe” and embrace possibility thinking and risk, you will remain in your suffocating cocoon.

The good news is that Life Coaches help people deal with these issues all the time. In a perfect world all of our clients would be totally ready to take the leap into the new and unknown. More often we see people while they are still holding on to “safe”. Fortunately, there are effective techniques that coaches can use with their clients to make the journey into the new less daunting.

Having a cheerleader behind you and someone to talk to about your anxieties help too.

Here’s more from the Wikipedia definition:

“Highly successful persons may routinely step outside their comfort zones, to accomplish what they wish…. To step outside a person’s comfort zone, he must experiment with new and different behaviors, and then experience the new and different responses that then occur within his environment.”

In fact, successful people step out of comfort and take risks on a regular basis. They do it all the time. Are they just braver then the rest? Nope. They have simply learned that every time they try something new, the next time it gets easier and reaching beyond the comfort zone eventually stops feeling like such a big deal.

How ready are you to step outside your comfort zone?