How (and why) to get out of your comfort zone?
“Comfort Zone is a beautiful place but nothing ever grows there.”
Let me try and imagine how your life is.
You are well settled in life, moderately successful, have a nice job, get promoted every few years, drive a cool car, travel every few months, have a constant set of friends you regularly hang out with, talking the regular shit, and go home to a worthy partner. But whenever an opportunity comes up to apply for a new job that pays double but might require you to move to a new city, or to join a running group comprising of CXOs of different companies early in the morning, you give it a pass.
You wonder how come you are unable to bring yourself to go running, something that you loved doing everyday till your college years, and you tell yourself that life happened. You got married, got a job, had kids, and now this is how its going to be for the rest of your life.
Anytime there’s a chance to change your routine, your brain immediately jumps in, and tells you to stop right there. That you are are living a good life, you like the city, you like your friends, you like waking up at 7 a.m. and not earlier, and hence there’s no need to change anything as it won’t make you any happier than you already are.
Now be honest with yourself, and confess if you are a victim(I will tell you why) of this lifestyle or not. If you agree that you are, well done, read on and find out why it is a sinister place.
By the way, it is not a big deal to predict how you are living your life because 70% of the world lives like this. Then there’s the 29% who are struggling to make ends meet, and they don’t have the time to read this blog.
Now that we have correctly identified your current state, let me tell you how this life is a curse, and not a boon, as you might think.
This place you find yourself in is known as ‘comfort zone’.
It’s a very bad place to live in because it keeps you mediocre in life. It holds you back from unleashing your full force and becoming the legend that you know you were destined to become. There’s just 1% people on this planet who have identified how to break out of their comfort zone and set the world on fire. And it’s high time you did too.
Get out of that Comfort Zone. Now. Because Comfort Zone is the place where dreams go to die.
“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be Notorious.”
Make yourself uncomfortable.
Agreed that the coal had no choice in this regard but it’s a good thing that you do. You could choose to not go through the process of diamond’ification’ (a fictitious term until Oxford recognises it) and live a life equivalent to that of ordinary coal without anything to differentiate you from others and thus get valued accordingly, or you could choose to work on yourself until you become a diamond, and see your value and the quality of your life rise exponentially.
And here’s the best part. You don’t even have to put yourself under extreme pressure or stress (like coal) to become a diamond. All you have to do is start small and break out of that comfort zone.
How do you break out of that Comfort Zone?
Ans: Baby Steps.
We humans despise change. Our brains do everything in their capacity to convince us to stay where we are, mentally as well as physically because the brain likes to conserve energy and doesn’t want to go through upheaval. That explains why people stay stuck in the same job, even though better paying and more satisfying jobs abound, because we are able to convince ourselves that the effort of looking for a new job, and then packing up, and moving to a new place is so much tougher and not worth the effort, and in no way a significant progress from the current job. We are basically lying to ourselves, and we know it too. And that’s what keeps us MEDIOCRE, all our lives.
It’s highly critical that we recognise when our brain is trying to fool us, and not fall for its old tricks again. Instead, its time to turn the tables on the brain and trick it instead.
And so we start by training our brain to get used to small changes. So that it doesn’t go into panic mode the moment it registers a deviation in routine but is eased into it.
Observe your daily routine, which is more or less the same most days of the year and decide to tweak the thing that you find the easiest to change, such as reducing your TV watching time by half an hour and using it for helping your partner out instead. Anything that’s outside the routine. What you are doing right now is shaking off that routine, telling your body that change is in the air.
“Because once you make it a habit to venture out of your comfort zone in one area of life, it quickly spreads to other areas of your life and very soon, you are kicking butt in all departments.”
Until Next Time.
– Wowlifer.
