Break out of your Comfort Zone!

How to Leave Your Comfort Zone and Enter Your ‘Growth Zone’

 

Introduction

The human brain is powerful. It allows us to build rocket ships, explore physics and overcome unimaginable challenges. Yet it also craves comfort. In many ways, the brain is a creature of habit. It creates neural pathways that it refers back to whenever it needs to make a decision. These pathways become patterns in our thoughts and behaviors. That’s why it seems like we get stuck in a rut sometimes. If you feel like your life is on a loop, you may need to leave your comfort zone.

 

Life is full of opportunities to step outside the comfort zone, but grabbing hold of them can be difficult. Sometimes the problem is not being aware of reasons to do so. After all, if the feeling of comfort signifies our most basic needs are being met, why should we seek to abandon it? What holds people back most of the time is their frame of mind rather than any distinct lack of knowledge.

 

What Is the Comfort Zone?

What is the comfort zone?

The comfort zone is a psychological state in which individuals feel safe. It fulfills our need for certainty, one of the most powerful Six Human Needs. When we’re in our comfort zone, we know what to expect and we know how to react. We feel that we have some control over the situation. All of our immediate needs are filled and we feel at peace.

 

When we leave the comfort zone, we’re no longer in a familiar and controllable situation. The brain hasn’t created the pathways it needs in order to know how to react – and we may feel anxiety and fear. Yet learning to leave your comfort zone is essential.

 

How to leave your comfort zone

To leave the comfort zone, you must learn how to control the natural fear and anxiety you will feel when you try new things. It starts with getting in touch with your emotions and transforming your mindset.

 

1. Find your baseline

To move out of your comfort zone, you must determine your risk tolerance. Most people think they’re more risk tolerant than they actually are – and many people don’t actually know their risk tolerance because they’ve never been faced with an extreme situation in which it’s been tested. To find your baseline, determine your driving force. If your number one human need is certainty or connection, you may need to leave your comfort zone more than others.

 

2. Master your emotions

Those who are able to easily leave comfort zones may have more emotional mastery than those who stay stuck in routines. This doesn’t mean that they repress their emotions – in fact, they do the exact opposite. They acknowledge that their emotions are there to guide them. They feel their feelings fully and ask themselves, “What is this emotion really telling me?” When you leave your comfort zone, anxiety is normal. It’s telling you that you feel vulnerable. Acknowledge it, then move past it.

 

3. Develop a growth mindset

Growth is one of the most essential human needs: If you’re not growing, you’re dying. The most successful people in the world have a deep need for growth that pushes them to leave the comfort zone in search of new things. This is called having a growth mindset – the belief that humans can improve their skills. In contrast, people with a fixed mindset don’t believe they can improve themselves, and may not bother trying. When you develop a growth mindset, you’ll unlock your inner power.

 

4. Start small

You don’t need to go big immediately. Start small: Say “hi” to a coworker you’ve never said hi to before. Make a quick company announcement. Take a different route to work. Try a new restaurant. Begin to create new habits that turn your ability to leave your comfort zone into something that feels natural and becomes a part of your daily routine.

 

5. Find like-minded people

If you want to leave your comfort zone, you must surround yourself with the right people. People with a growth mindset. People who challenge themselves to be better and do better on a daily basis. People who will celebrate your accomplishments and help you learn from your failures. This could be a results coach, a mentor or a group of supportive friends. When you learn to leverage the power of proximity, anything is possible.

 

6. Accept failure – and find the lesson

Fear of failure is one of the most common fears that hold us back from achieving excellence. When you look at the best athletes, business people and actors, you will find they have one thing in common: they have all failed spectacularly at some point in their lives. The difference is that they don’t let failure hold them back. They know that in every failure there is a lesson – but you must move out of your comfort zone in order to find it.

 

10 Inspiring Quotes

 

All growth starts at the end of your comfort zone.

You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

My comfort zone is like a little bubble around me, and I’ve pushed it in different directions and made it bigger and bigger until these objectives that seemed totally crazy eventually fall within the realm of the possible.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

You have calibrated life when most of what you fear has the titillating prospect of adventure.

The level of effort you tolerate from yourself will define your life.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

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