Why and how to step out of the comfort zone

“As you move outside of your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.”

— Robin S. Sharma

Familiarity and comfort keep one safe, yet more often stuck and lifeless. Most people are quite content to sail through life without striving to fulfill their potential. They’d rather avoid risks and challenges in case if life does not emerge as they hope for. However, discomfort is crucial for obtaining results, quality, and peak performance. Therefore, those successful people whom you look up to, have pushed past their comfort zone in order to reach their current level of mastery. Likewise, if they’ve done it, you can do it too. You just need a strong purpose and a decision, as well as a motivation for learning and inner growth, which becomes the focal point of pushing past your comfort level.

What happens inside our comfort zone?

If we stay inside our comfort zone, nothing changes. We don’t grow. We’re not challenged. We don’t get to find out what we’re capable of. Instead, we’re comfortable. Life’s easy. Yes, some may opt for the easy road because it seems easier in the short-term, but they end up denying themselves of the opportunity to improve and turn into stronger, more confident, capable and resilient individuals. Comfort zone is precisely home to the apathetic, the perfunctory, the dispassionate lacking direction and nor purpose. This being said, certainly the longer-term benefits exceed the apparent comfort of the short-term.

Then, why do people remain in this gap? Well, because when we step outside of our comfort zone, we’re taking a risk, and opening ourselves up to the possibility of stress and overwhelm; we’re not quite sure if we can handle everything that might happen and thus choose the easy way that leads to nowhere.

What happens outside the comfort zone?

Increased productivity

“Being comfortable often prohibits us from chasing our dreams.” Pushing the limits can help you achieve much more, get more things done, and develop a sense of self-confidence and pride. It can also give you more ambition, drive, and momentum as well to stimulate a desire to be better, to trust the process and to believe that you can get through more adversities.

Increased creativity

Stepping out of your comfort zone and facing challenges, gives you the toughness to be creative, gain experience, find solutions and cope with more problems and difficult situations. Consequently, when you learn new skills, open more doors and learn new things, you become more inspired and develop a new sense of creativity and vision. The frustration that comes from tackling the unknown paves the way for finding new possibilities and viewing challenges from different perspectives.

More resilience

Challenges and discomfort make you more flexible as a contrast with comfort which lures you into the gap of dullness and aridity. Being resilient is an important skill. It’s basically the ability to be like a bamboo tree- bend but not break. Stand up after each setback with an increased sense of purpose and enthusiasm, to try again and launch a greater comeback. Stepping out of comfort zone and facing the fear of failure gives you more of that- as you do mistakes and learn from them. Most people are afraid to try and make a change. Consequently, more often when they’re exposed to tougher circumstances they break down due to the lack of flexibility and ability to adjust and overcome hardship.

Likewise, people with a fixed mindset believe that making mistakes is a signal of incompetence. They are afraid of looking bad so they chose the safe way. Fear of looking bad stuns growth and leads to lesser performance. Therefore, as you go through hell, and keep going, you get to believe that you can go through anything.

Guaranteed self-growth

Taking risks and learning from failures contributes to self-growth, regardless of how many mistakes you do. It’s rather more important how you adjust and what you strive to do differently next time. This approach gives you more space for self-improvement and control that you’re doing everything right, that you’re giving it all, and that you’ve taken the right decisions, thus trusting the path paved for you. By venturing out of familiarity and comfort, you give yourself the opportunity to expand your possibilities and gain new knowledge, experience and countless personal benefits concerning character, mental toughness, and inner strength.

How can we step out of the comfort zone?

Getting out of your comfort zone requires honest self-reflection. Are your habits helping you achieve your goals? Are you challenging yourself, or are you playing safe? Get out of the comfort zone and embrace struggle. do something you were hesitating to do before and don’t worry about failure. Understand that often things get worse before they get better. There is no progress without change, so stop avoiding it. Do more of what challenges you every day in order to get the best out of yourself.

Small efforts you can do to step out of your comfort zone could be waking up early, exercising regularly, choosing the healthier option, refusing procrastination, staying self-aware, letting go of unnecessary clutter in the mind, being kinder, responding better to situations, overcoming bad habits and tendencies and overcoming your fear. The book “Hell Week” by Erik Bertrand perfectly emphasizes these ideas and gives you a detailed guide to taking action.

Taking action

Here’s how the navy seal David Goggins describes “stepping out of comfort zone”: “Instead of hitting that fucking snooze button in the fucking morning, and not making your bed and not cleaning your house, you don’t hit the snooze button. You get up. You don’t want to go run? You go run. You don’t want to go swim? You go swim. You don’t want to make your bed? You make your bed. You don’t want to clean your house? You clean your house. You don’t want to study? You fucking study. That’s how you start to callous your mind. So that became my life. If you say you’re gonna wake up at 4:00 in the fucking morning to go run? Wake up at 4:00 in the … It’s gonna suck. It’s not gonna be fun. Do something that sucks every single day of your life. That’s how you grow. Embrace the suck.”

Finally, get comfortable being uncomfortable by responding to tough situations differently than you used to do before. Get curious and maintain an open, positive mindset. It will definitely be hard at the beginning, however, as you keep pushing in the right direction everything is within your reach!