Getting out of the comfort zone is not child’s play. Routine and habits can be very comforting because they give us a pleasant sense of stability and security, but they can also become cramped over time. The walls we build around us to protect ourselves and give order and structure to our lives can end up suffocating us, limiting our potential, preventing us from growing and living new experiences.
The benefits of stepping out of the comfort zone are enormous. New experiences not only revitalize us, but help us develop a greater open-mindedness and allow us to better face times of change and uncertainty. They also help open us up to new possibilities and allow us to discover things about ourselves that we might not otherwise have discovered. Despite this, escaping from routine is difficult, especially when it has been the same for many years. In fact, we won’t be able to do it if we don’t implement a radical change in our way of understanding life.
Five tips to get out of the comfort zone and grow
- Facing fears so they don’t put our backs against the wall
The fear of stepping out of the comfort zone is the main barrier we have to overcome. This fear is usually the expression of much deeper and more paralyzing fears, such as fear of failure, fear of losing control over events, fear of being vulnerable and exposed, or even fear of rejection by others .
Whenever we imagine something new that excites us, fear arises and generates resistance to change . That resistance will be greater the more intense our fears are. The good news is that when most people take the leap, they find that the anticipatory fear was much greater than the actual fear. We must not forget that our brain loves patterns and habits because in this way it saves energy, so it will not spare the tricks to keep us in our comfort zone.
But it’s not a good idea to pretend fear and uncertainty don’t exist. Leaving the comfort zone we are facing certain risks in a controlled way and challenging ourselves, so feeling anxiety and fear is something perfectly understandable. The key, then, is to acknowledge those fears and be comfortable with them. It is not a question of ignoring them, but of overcoming them.
- Choosing things that excite us and are worthwhile
“Whoever has something to live for is able to endure any how,” said Nietzsche. Perhaps the most important question is not “how to step out of the comfort zone” but “why step out of the comfort zone”. Having a good reason is a powerful incentive to face our fears and dare to do what we have never done.
Having new experiences is great, but if skydiving isn’t your thing, there’s little point in pushing ourselves to the point of suffering a heart attack by parachuting out of a plane just to get out of our comfort zone. It makes much more sense to find activities that are challenging, but also energize us to give us the push we need to overcome our doubts and fears.
Perhaps for you new experiences mean spending a gap year in an exotic country or simply changing your life in your environment. Getting out of your comfort zone isn’t an excuse to do crazy things, it’s doing something crazy to make a dream come true.
But we also have to be careful because the unconscious often plays tricks on us by helping us structure our lives in such a way as to avoid the things that scare us. Therefore, we must separate the wheat from the chaff until we find what scares and excites us in equal parts. This is probably a great reason and incentive to get out of the comfort zone.
- Seeing ourselves in permanent change, construction and evolution
The comfort zone is anchored to all our certainties and certainties. It is not only made up of our habits and routines, but also of our narration of the world and of ourselves. All the labels we give ourselves condition and limit us within the comfort zone.
If we believe we are shy, we will structure our lives around that label, avoiding situations that force us out of our comfort zone. Instead, starting to perceive ourselves as people in permanent change, people full of potential to explore, will make a substantial difference that will help us develop a growth mindset.
The secret lies in being able to separate the past self from the present self. The past may have marked us, but it must not become a tombstone for our future. A study conducted at the University of Edinburgh has shown that we are not the same person at 14 and at 77.
The changes that our personality undergoes over time are so great that we continually transform ourselves into different people. Therefore, there is no point in clinging to the things that have defined us.
- Proceed step by step, at our own pace and respecting our time
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” said Lao-tzu. It’s okay to take big, bold steps. But it’s also okay to take small, methodical steps. Getting out of your comfort zone doesn’t mean putting aside all precautions and acting recklessly. Every step forward is progress, no matter how small it may seem.
Rushing into some decisions, especially important ones, tends to make us regret them. Instead, promoting self-awareness as we assess our limits and think about the next step is the surest way to get out of the comfort zone and the best way to reduce the anxiety it generates.
Many times, without a clear roadmap, we have no way to draw on past experiences and accumulated wisdom. This can generate enormous anxiety because we feel we are walking in the dark. Therefore, when we decide to step out of the comfort zone, it will be best to do so at our own pace.
- We don’t have to live outside our comfort zone indefinitely
The comfort zone is a condition in which one operates with a neutral level of anxiety, using a limited set of behaviors to achieve a constant level of performance, generally without the feeling of imminent risk.
Asking us to live outside the comfort zone forever can generate so much fear and anxiety that we won’t even try. In fact, it’s not even healthy because we would constantly expose ourselves to relatively high levels of anxiety and would be more exposed to imbalances and dissonances, as revealed by a study by the University of Waikato and our performance would suffer.
Staying in the comfort zone once in a while isn’t bad. It helps us re-energize, allows us to pause to assess where we’ve come, and gives us the equanimity and peace needed to plan for our future.
Like everything in life, we need to find a balance that allows us to grow and continue to explore while feeling relatively comfortable and developing certain skills. In fact, after a learning period, a new comfort zone is created, wider than the previous one, in which we feel at ease again.
Sure, there are some exercises to get out of the comfort zone, but undertaking them without backing them up with a profound change of mindset only produces anxiety. The secret is not to change one comfort zone for another, but to expand our comfort zone so as to leave room for the new, for uncertainty and for challenge.
