Crew Blog has a useful lifestyle post on getting out of your comfort zone. It’s useful because this is challenging for me.
I generally like daily activities to be safe and predictable. Since I rarely seem to have good surprises, the fewer of them I encounter, the better.
When you leave your comfort zone, you go in the opposite direction: toward greater uncertainty. In most people this increases anxiety. When you’re anxious, you are more likely to view events negatively. This generates a reluctance to try new things.
But you really should push your boundaries. Among other things, expansion will help you:
- find more activities you enjoy
- increase your productivity, because anxiety pushes you to be more focused
- boost your confidence as you experience new types of success
This illustration, from the above article, is a helpful way to visualize things:
You want to venture far enough out of your normal zone so you learn from new experiences, but not so far that you become overcome by nervousness:
Finding that middle ground where you are anxious, but where those anxiety levels are still manageable, is what we are looking for. Once you become acclimated to that new level of anxiety, you have successfully expanded your comfort zone.
So here’s to hurdling your fears and overcoming your mental boundaries. As Marcus Taylor says in this video:
“If you want something you don’t already have, you have to do something you haven’t already done.”