The Art of Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
When you do this, your comfort zone will expand.
If you struggle with constant thoughts of doubt, this is for you.
You look into the mirror on a daily basis and affirm yourself of many false judgments. You attack yourself with these judgments about why you aren’t enough and why things won’t go the way you want them to. You lie to yourself, but believe that you are being honest.
It’s not like you’re intentionally lying to yourself. You really do believe you are coming to terms with reality — that you are accepting the ugly truth. When thought of this way, you could actually claim that you are being mature and logical. You accept these so-called truths by traveling down the rabbit hole of pessimistic self-talk. In doing so, you maximize their ability to destroy you.
Life is a constant grappling with reality. We have to understand what things are and who people are in order to decide how to behave with them. We know we have to understand who we are so we can determine how to behave also.
In our attempt to accurately perceive what is true about ourselves, a number of things can go wrong.
- We can be convinced of things that are objectively untrue, but feel true to us on a subjective level.
- We can feel as though the reason why others don’t accept our awful truths is because they don’t really know us.
- We can seek out evidence for our shortcomings in the replaying of past incidents (and find it).
- We can formulate an entire world of negativity in which to build a home for ourselves.
All of this has to do with our perception of reality. Pessimistic views stem from an unhealthy relationship with reality. The toxicity of this relationship gets strengthened the more we engage in pessimistic thinking. It’s a vicious cycle, as they say.
After lying to yourself in the mirror, you step out your front door and allow these poisonous thoughts to begin deteriorating the day’s potential. The circle you limit yourself to gets reinforced with every moment that passes.
But you can’t see your the negativity in your head. You can’t see the lines that limit you and control your every move throughout the day. You can’t see that thoughts of doubt determine all the decisions you will make as a result of believing the ugly lies about your lack of worth.
This is unfortunate, because if you could, you would surely see that for its ugliness, and reconsider all the nasty things you tell yourself.
A comfort zone is a psychological concept. It’s not something we can take a picture of. It’s not something we can talk to and kindly ask to leave. When it’s in effect, we are subjected to its limitations, but don’t perceive the damage done.
Have you ever spoken to a human being whose troubles were the result of his simple refusal to take actions he knows he should? As an outsider, you get an accurate picture of the damage of having a tiny comfort zone. When deep inside a brick-walled comfort zone, the trapped person is no longer living in the real world. He is trapped within his own world of fear.
The most threatening thing to your true potential, though, isn’t everything outside your comfort zone, it’s fear itself. You think the comfort zone saves you from trouble, but the truth is the exact opposite. The tinier the comfort zone, the more havoc it wrecks.
If the truth is capable of being ugly, it is so when you consider that pain and hardship are required to achieve great happiness. That means the road to happiness can be a very dark one. At times, it is not a fun road to travel at all.
But it’s the only way.
Fear is mandatory. Pain is mandatory. Discomfort in the process of change is mandatory.
This is a universal truth: the more you step out of your comfort zone, the more it expands. Reflexively, the more you stay within your comfort zone, the more it shrinks. So the fear you feel about trying something new will begin to fade the more you do it. That’s also a universal truth.
Fear in the face of something challenging is natural, but running from it is optional. To the person that faces her fears, running will seem more and more like only an option. To the person that doesn’t, running will seem like the only logical option.
So this is what you do….
- You put yourself in uncomfortable situations so you can see for yourself that most threats are all in your head.
- You challenge yourself to act bravely and, in turn, become braver.
- You realize that what has made you comfortable in the past has often posed the greatest threat to your happiness.
- You accept this as fact: it’s always worth it to be uncomfortable if it’s required to achieve great things.
- And of course, you fall in love with the freedom you experience by stepping out of your old comfort zone so many times that it no longer exists.
Part of stepping out of your comfort zone is identifying which situations scare you and diving directly into them. If public speaking frightens you, do it. If being more assertive in the workplace frightens you, do it. If [insert nerve-wracking situation here] frightens you, then do it. It’s not complicated. We decide to make it complicated when we choose comfort over greatness.
The way to greatness is always scary and discomforting (always!). But when you think about the fact that you can get there if you really push yourself, the path doesn’t really seem as scary anymore. And then you can begin accept this new vision of yourself as the real truth.
