Humans are creatures of comfort. We seek pleasures. A nice and cozy home, comfort foods, vacations, etc. is what we want. Comfort is good. Except when we are seeking growth. Personal and Professional growth happens when we go outside of our comfort zone. Expanding your comfort zone is often the cure to most of your problems.
But, we are also change-averse. Most of us do not realize it, but most of what we do during the day is governed by our habits. Hence, to change and grow, we need better habits and better systems before we experience any meaningful change.
How to expand your comfort zone?
“All things are difficult before they are easy.”
Thomas Fuller
There is always some degree of difficulty before it gets easy. We experience this whenever we learn new things.
Imagine learning a new language! At first, we are at sea. We have absolutely no idea where to begin and how to go about it.
Then, you find a book, a course on the language and begin to form a nascent understanding of the language. With enough time and practice, we master the language in due course.
The idea is:
Expanding your comfort zone takes time.
It takes doing things in your courage zone repeatedly till it becomes a part of your comfort zone.
Expanding your comfort zones takes better habits. Want to loose weight, create a habit of walking 10000 steps per day. To covert this habit into a system, install an app on your phone which tracks your steps and gives you daily reminders and gamifies the experience.
Buy My life’s good. Why change it unnecessarily?
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
– J.K. Rowling
The essence of living well is striving to do better than what you are doing now. It need not be better materially, you can do better socially, spiritually.
But one needs to focus on the flow. Embracing out of the comfort zone is difficult but needs to done. Without the flow of energy, life’s a dead end.
Expanding your comfort zone is also rewarding. Have you ever noticed that whenever you have a purpose, a goal, the energy in your steps is different?
Simply because you can!
As Jim Rohn said, Trees don’t grow to 5 feet and then stop. They grow all they can. It is only us humans who do not strive to achieve our full potential.
You should choose to expand your comfort zone simply because you can. Dying with your music still inside is a great disservice to you as well as to humanity.
