Comfort Zone? A Double-edged Sword
Ahh, good old comfort zone; a concept so easy to comprehend yet so difficult to confront. If I have to give it a persona, Comfort zone would be that one Lazy friend who will constantly discourage you from making new acquaintances, and who will always agree with you, even when you’re wrong!
But you know what? It would still be someone you would want to hang out with and call “friend” because he/she will never point out your insecurities.
Anyway, let's go back to “comfort zone” being something instead of someone.
In the last decade or so, you surely noticed the exponential rise in the number of people stating how staying in the comfort zone is bad for you and how stepping out of it will change your life. Indeed, whenever you make a Google search around the term “comfort zone”, you will find 9 out of 10 articles focusing on its downsides and disadvantages.
Don't get me wrong; I am a big believer in stepping out of your comfort zone — which I’ll explain later in the article — but what’s regrettable is the lack of consideration around the comfort zone’s good sides.
1. The first edge of the sword
Your comfort zone can have different dimensions interdependent to the context you are in. In easier terms, it means that your comfort zone can range from being your room if you are a teenager, your house if you’re an adult, or even your home country if you live abroad. Of course, the spectrum of what your comfort zone can be is as broad as the number of people thinking differently, but I think you get what I mean.
Having a sheltered place to get back to in times of anxiety and acute stress is therapeutic. Yes, I used the word “sheltered” because you are protected emotionally from the outside world. People won’t always be nice to you, and will rarely empathize with you, let alone stand by your side in times of sadness. And so, being able to physically detach yourself into a place of familiarity and ease will help you reflect and rejuvenate.
There is embedded in our collective psyche called the flight-or-fight response. Long story short, when Humans are confronted with events they perceive as harmful, specific chemical reactions happen in their brains driving a temporary boost in their metabolism. At that moment, cortisol (stress hormone) and adrenaline are released pushing your heart to pump more blood, your bladder to relax and your digestion to slow down — amongst other physical effects — in order to physically prepare you to either fight or flee (survival mode). In prehistoric times, when human survival depended on hunting, harmful events mostly involved animal attacks and harsh climates. In today’s times, harmful events encompass job loss, debt owing, intense competition, social bullying…
This gets me to the point I want to make; Before, fighting was the preferred option because our physical survival depended on it, whereas now, our mental survival depends on us having a place to go back to and calm our mind.
So if you ask yourself if spending time within your comfort zone good for you? Yes, it is.
… But! (because there is always a But)
Staying too much, or coming back too often to your comfort zone, will undeniably cripple your individual growth.
2. The second edge of the sword
About 250 years ago, Voltaire began one of his moralistic poems with an interesting verse: “le mieux est l’ennemi du bien” which translates into;
“The best is the enemy of the good”
Indeed, the excess of anything in life will be detrimental to its natural benefits. Drinking too much water will cause hyponatremia which is life-threatening, loving someone too much will install an unhealthy pressure forcing a break-up, working too much will increase stress to a point resulting in organic diseases,… you get the gist.
The fundamental problem with remaining too long in your comfort zone is the fact that you’re not challenged anymore, which impedes your learning curve. Let me explain further:
To improve, one needs to understand what works and what doesn't, and the best way to do that is to experiment, to fail, and then to experiment again.
How would you judge the validity of your ideas and decisions if you don’t compare them to ideas and decisions at odd with yours?
What's more; when in your comfort zone, the failure factor is reduced by a big margin because nothing is pushing you to criticize your behavior or your thoughts. The “nothing” in that case is the pain generated from failing. You need to search for it, to feel it, to embrace it, and then to act upon it. Pain is a stressor that forces your attention and gives you the willpower to outdo yourself.
One last really important thing I want you to keep in mind about pain;
“Being” in pain is okay and normal, “staying” in pain is not, because then it becomes a choice.
3. Few final words
If you read biographies of people you deem successful, fiction stories about heroes, mythology tales, or even the history of Men’s sociocultural evolution, you will notice the following pattern:
Leaving the comfort zone > exploration > pain > efforts > proactive change.
So go out of your comfort zone, experience new stuff, and if you stumble upon the pain I talked about… it means you’re on the right path toward a better and wiser self. (But, hey! Don't forget to get back in it whenever you need your batteries charged).
I will end up this article with a quote from Henry Ford saying something so logical yet so powerful once you say it out loud;
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
