Balanced Comfort Sacrifice
Statement: This article represents my current understanding and views of the topic in question. Please feel free to share yours in the comments proposing your own views with the intention of growth.
The elephant in the room 🐘
Being in the comfort zone is perfectly healthy and shouldn’t cause or contribute to your anxiety and discomfort. 💖 It’s important for us to recognise our need for a break and fulfilment. 🥰
What’s the comfort zone and how to identify it 🔭👀
The comfort zone is a psychological state of mind (in my life mostly present in relation with my career and hobbies) where things feel familiar, easy, and you are confident in yourself which bestows upon you the feeling of having control over your environment.
The comfort zone stretches far beyond just career and hobbies, it can affect most of your everyday life such as dating, communication, relationships with people, but also the relationship with yourself.
The most common hook of the comfort zone is that you are too fulfilled to notice your self growth, or better said, the lack of it. The only way you can identify and acknowledge whether you are in the comfort zone or not is if you are ready to accept the answer to that question.
Let’s list and observe some of the pros and cons of being in the comfort zone:
Try to identify with the pros before the cons as we people tend to think positive-first rather than seeing the unpleasant truth. Remember, you are the king, and the king is always right. (Crown immunity)
It’s useful to recognise that the comfort zone is a safe, protected, stress-free, and low-risk environment.
Social pressure, the unpopular view 👮🏼
People constantly keep talking about leaving the comfort zone, and easily try to persuade others into doing the same. Often spoken as if you are supposed to be an overachiever, leave your fish bowl and jump into the sea. This is where my views differ and where I choose to bend things.
Don’t leave your comfort zone, expand it.
As the title describes, you shouldn’t leave the comfort zone, but rather work on expanding it. This is the point where many will describe and visualise the personal growth with an image similar to the one below.
However, my personal experience and understanding is slightly different. As I believe that this way of viewing things is a bit unclear (especially when represented with an arrow across from left to right). It displays the journey of leaving the comfort zone as if you aren’t supposed to return.
The goal of “leaving” is only to grow, therefore you are not really leaving, but rather much like the universe, you’re expanding.
The Cycle Diagram over the Stacked Venn Diagram 🔄
You’re not supposed to rush into growing or deny taking a break. Once you’ve reached a milestone it’s healthy and beneficial to stop, relax, and process your position.
Seeing over the newly discovered horizon can sometimes be overwhelming and has the tendency to reduce your motivation instead of inspiring it. ✨ You have to remember to smile, you have to take time to be happy, and you cannot do that if you’re constantly yearning for more.
This is why my views differ and bend. I’m seeing this process as a repetitive cycle, where you leave the comfort to grow with the intention of expanding it, but more importantly you’re doing it for self-care.
If you’re too aware that others castles are bigger, that the horizon offers more and more, you might end up feeling that no matter how much you grow, it will never be enough. This is why you need to stop and “return” or rather put, enjoy the comfort zone.
You have to remember the pros of the comfort zone and what it defines. It’s a safe, protected, stress-free, and low-risk environment, a behavioural state where a person operates in an anxiety-neutral position.
It’s a place where our uncertainty, scarcity, and vulnerability are minimised. Where we believe we’ll have access to enough love, food, talent, time, and admiration. Where we feel we have control.
Once you are ready you will know, once you know you will desire, and once you desire you will restart the cycle and you will do it again. Growing, expanding, achieving, and near the end, smiling. Because you know that after the growth-zone (future), you can look forward to your new comfort-zone (present). Yin & Yang
As I wrote the last line it reminded me much of Yoga 🧘, where each time after all the effort and sweat, I looked forward to Savasana, a pose where I only focused on myself, right then and there.
I’m really hoping that you liked the article, and that it helps you in shaping your perception. 🥰✨
