What Is Your Comfort Zone?

A phrase that has become very popular in recent years and is sometimes prone to distortion is the one that encourages us to "step out of our comfort zone." We hear and read in personal development magazines, "step out of your comfort zone," take it a step further, be brave, overcome, achieve!

But what should we understand by being encouraged, by achieving, by taking it a step further?

Since what may be an achievement for one person may be a step back for another, we cannot standardize and apply criteria equally.

To grow and overcome our limitations, it is beneficial for all of us to expose ourselves to situations that demand more from us... But the question is, more of what? More courage, more willpower, more determination, more action, more breaks, more consistency, more patience, more flexibility, more relaxation, more tenacity, more audacity? Everyone has their answer.

The rise of personal development is often misinterpreted, oriented exclusively towards increasing productivity and performance. And the reality is that in the fast-paced world we live in, which always demands more from us... for many people, the comfort zone is the vicious circle of tightening the belt and becoming insatiable doers. These people swim like fish in water in their demanding routines but they drown in a glass of water when they do not follow a strict and hard schedule. They know how to handle obligations but have no idea how to face enjoyment and relaxation. For these people, stepping out of their comfort zone will not mean aiming for more and better results but learning to relax their body and mind and reduce anxiety. Perhaps a retreat, a vacation, starting yoga or meditation, might be the best recommendation in these cases to expose themselves to something different and step out of their safety zone.

Getting to know ourselves, "understanding" ourselves, asking ourselves is the first step towards expanding beyond our known limits. The second step is the determination to "create opportunities" that demand us to unfold parts of our personality that have not yet been unfolded. I emphasize the word provoke situations because they will not occur by themselves. Since more of the same leads to the same, we need, from a place of will, to introduce something different under the firm belief that it will be good for us, even if initially we are not inclined to do so. This reluctance is what keeps us flying below our potential and ultimately narrows our view of ourselves and reality. We get used to seeing "no further" and being able "only so much."

When this does not happen, we make ourselves a bonsai and feel increasingly oppressed. In this way, what was initially "comfort" results in discomfort that is very difficult to deal with. Why? Because every human being, to feel happy, needs to feel that they are surpassing themselves, achieving, evolving, progressing, ascending, and transcending the limits of their mind. When this happens, we experience a glorious and intimate feeling of personal pride and satisfaction with who we are moment by moment, and can then see ourselves as processes in continuous movement.

When the comfort zone dominates our life, it becomes unstimulating, and we run the risk of becoming apathetic, indifferent, and lacking in meaning. The feeling of emptiness results from the lack of new challenges.

What Are the Benefits of Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone?

Self-confidence: Testing yourself and challenging yourself in areas you find difficult will undoubtedly make you a more confident person. In a kind of domino effect, we have real reasons to tell ourselves, "If I can do this, I can do that," a key reasoning in all self-improvement.

Inner Strength: Stepping out of the known can be scary, but transcending fears gives us vigor and resilience. Looking back and realizing how much we have grown, overcome, and matured is the greatest reward a human being who aims to live a meaningful and conscious life can feel. These are the sensations that weigh most heavily when we ask ourselves how happy and satisfied we feel with the life we lead.

Creativity: Just as routine binds us to the known, new challenges make us more creative and skilled at finding solutions or generating proposals. The greater our exposure to novel situations, the more experiences and information we have to create new neural connections that expand our response capacity and, therefore, our repertoire of tools to face and enrich life.

Personal Growth: When we take risks, we counter one of the most cumbersome obstacles to our development: the fear of failure. There is no learning without stumbling or difficulty. Exposing ourselves helps us to de-dramatize and enables us to continue growing because experience tells us that nothing can be so terrible. We can dare to climb when we overcome the fear of falling. Generally, being within the comfort zone means being outside the improvement zone. It is not enough to do activities; the important thing is that these activities are mentally challenging, not the usual ones. In this way, our life becomes stimulating and meaningful, for nothing has more meaning than seeing ourselves grow and unfold. That is what we came for.

Rewarding Sociability and Diversification: Every beginning, every new situation brings with it the possibility of contact with like-minded people who see life from a similar perspective. When we have different experiences, we renew and reinvent ourselves, and in this process, we find people who are in tune with us. It is not the same to know many people as to socialize according to our interests. Relationships established from the decision to improve oneself strengthen much more than those sustained from the usual routines.

Encourage yourself to go further

If you want to surpass your own mark, a small effort "is enough" if it's persistent. The sum of small efforts makes the difference, but the secret lies in perseverance, small steps sustained over time go further than a big sporadic leap.

Your ambitions must be linked to the effort you're willing to make. Ascending implies the risk of doing things that initially you might not be very good at. Keep in mind that anxiety is not always bad; in the right measure, it stimulates us to go further and reminds us that we are alive and that not everything is the same for us.

Both activating ourselves and relaxing and enjoying can generate anxiety, so it is important to keep in mind what I initially said... what is overcoming for each one is absolutely personal and intimate.

Now that I know how good it is to move out of my comfort zone, how do I achieve it?

• Do differently, think about what you would always do and act in the opposite direction. Going in the opposite direction to our tendencies takes us out of the lethargic comfort that makes us always feel "the same taste" personally. Get involved in activities that you would confidently say "this is not for me" or does not match my style. Exposing ourselves to challenging contexts that we need to adapt to makes us more flexible and broad-minded people. And if we later decide to return to the same, it will be from a conscious choice and not from fear and resistance to change.

• Accompany your internal processes with external changes, as inside is outside, they are two sides of the same coin. Making external changes, changing things around, renewing your personal style, traveling, frequenting new places, seeing yourself in strange spaces encourages and enhances your spirit of renewal. External changes demand internal changes, just as internal changes manifest in external transformations.

• Tune in to your spirituality, overcoming and unfolding is only possible when we stop acting on autopilot and become conscious and present individuals. Daily pauses that remind us where we are going and why we do what we do are essential to not lose ourselves in the usual routines and give meaning to each of the challenges we take on.

• Meet new people, attachments to the usual links make us always hover around the same ideas, beliefs, and perspectives about life and how to live it. When we meet different people, with cultures and customs that are foreign to us, we expand our questions and answers. We can think about implementing in our life, habits, ideas, and customs new to us that we had not considered.

If we want to feel happy and fulfilled, the first step is to know which parts of ourselves we need to grow and work on them, work on them, and work on them until they are strong enough to mature and make them our own.

Are you willing to step out of your comfort zone? The rewards are many, and the feeling is unmatched. There's always time to innovate, and if the limitations you feel are stronger than your desire to improve, seek help to navigate this personal process that will bring you so much satisfaction.