Why your comfort zone should be your holiday house — not your home!
The comfort zone is … so comfy! Why do we love it so much? It’s defined as the place that’s anxiety-neutral and only requires a limited set of behaviours in order to deliver a steady performance without a sense of risk. No wonder no one wants to leave it! Who in their right mind wants to stress all day and be miserable?
There are benefits of leaving it….
In 1907, Yerkes and Dodson conducted one of the first groundbreaking studies on the ‘comfort zone’ and found that when mice were anxiety-induced, their performance to complete tasks increased, but if it went beyond this optimal point, the mice deteriorated.
The problem is this — when we visualise doing things that make us uncomfortable, our caveman instincts kick in to protect us. We immediately think of the worst-case scenario and imagine that one little step outside our comfort zone will have us in a state of deterioration much like those mice. When actually there’s an optimum state we can maintain in order to benefit us!
Why leave it?
Because most of the things we want, including our dream career, are outside of our comfort zone. That’s why only 27% of Australians love their job. Most people don’t have the courage to go for what they really want. They are governed by their habits, their fears, and the opinions of others. Most people don't try and get out of their comfort zones because they have been convinced by others that what they want isn't possible. People they have respected and trusted have told them to stay within the confines of a life of low expectations. What happens is, over time, those people don't even have to actively discourage you anymore — because their voice becomes your own.
It’s painful to step out for a few months of your life and be uncomfortable. We acknowledge that. It sucks. But it’s also painful to stay in a job that’s not right for you; to wake up every morning and dread work, to long for the weekend only for it to come and go so fast that you feel unrested and disorientated from its passing, to bury your dissatisfaction in substances that make you forget the life you’ve created for a few hours.
If the job doesn’t fit you, work for you, or give you what you want, you need to forget about your comfort zone for a while and get something that does do all of these things.
In doing so, you will begin to live authentically and experience the following:
Growth
What happens when you master getting out of your comfort zone? Unfortunately, you don’t become a lion tamer. You still have fears!
What does happen, however, is that you form a new comfort zone much further away. In other words, you feel comfortable in WAY more situations than you did before. Your broaden your horizons. You become more resilient. You grow. Why do we want to grow? To be freer.
Mental Willpower
We live in an on-demand world. Everything is automatic and fast. We complain when our phones lag for a few seconds. We don’t have to watch commercials anymore, go to an ATM to check our bank balance, dial phone numbers, wait to get home to watch TV, go to a store to buy something… and the list goes on! It’s all so instant.
This is great for the most part, but a by-product of living in such a state is that when things get tough or take endurance, we tend to give up. One thing that comes from stepping outside your comfort zone is you learn to do the things you hate. This builds mental willpower. You’ll learn that pain is temporary and that whatever feat you’re trying to overcome will be possible thanks to your developed willpower to see it through until the end.
For instance, if you lost your job during the pandemic and you’ve found it excruciatingly hard to land on your feet again, know that every action you take develops your willpower. You’re in a state of re-building your internal systems in a more robust way so that if in the future you find yourself in a similarly challenging situation, you’ll be able to call on your re-platformed internal system to power you through it. This builds calluses on your brain, as David Goggins put it:
Self-Confidence
The very last door to unlock before we leave our comfort zone house is to disregard the opinions of others. Often, stepping out of your comfort zone requires you to get vulnerable, putting you at risk of criticism and judgment. What happens is, over time, you:
Stop blaming others when things don't go right
Gain humility through your hard work (when things are not handed to you)
Stop running from the truth of yourself and instead, you run towards it
Extreme ownership of your life
Light the way for others in your life
This is the ultimate freedom package. When a job is beating you down, or doesn't work for you, but you’re too intimidated to take a step into the unknown, remember that your actions in doing so will not only change your job — it’ll change your personality for the better.