Expand Your Comfort Zone

Life is full of routines.  We all have certain ones that we adhere to very strictly and some where we are just going through the mundane motions to complete them.  I agree that it’s beneficial to have routines to give structure to our lives, but in too much excess it can also unfortunately hinder us from enjoying life in its full eclectic and spontaneous vibrancy.  There’s a luxurious proverbial place in our lives that these routines help us to create.  This place of security, ease and contentment is known as the ‘comfort zone’.  As you probably know, your comfort zone is a place where we are familiar with our environment, where we don’t have to extend ourselves beyond our typical routines, or cognitively challenge ourselves to think outside of our own personal reality.

The obvious reason the comfort zone is called such is because it’s comfortable.  It’s created from our experiences, our likes, our dislikes, and serves as a place in our lives where we have settled down into contentment.  It’s a safe and non-threatening space and there are many people who see no reason to leave it.  As we get older, we are more reluctant to leave our comfort zones as verbalized in the cliché, “being set in our ways”.

I could solidly bet that any time you’ve done something you’ve never done before, you’ve either learned something about yourself or learned something about the world around you.  This is why throughout my years of experience of supervising people, I’ve made it my responsibility to challenge my employees to leave their comfort zone and try new things.  Through their endeavors to achieve this, I give them my support to go with them and/or process their experiences.  I do this because my philosophy on supervisory leadership is that I believe in professional development for employees and personal development as well.  Therefore those that I supervise should not only be a better professional having worked for me, but they should become better people as well.  But I digress.

Although we may proudly tout our experiences as very worldly, or grandiose, all have limits and those limits can always be pushed farther and wider.  Expanding outside of your comfort zone can be awkward, difficult and feel uneasy.  The best way to go outside of your comfort zone if you’re too nervous is to ask someone to join you.  So if it’s trying sushi for the first time, going to an opera, or even attending an event in a community different from your own, invite someone to go along.  Having someone with you helps the nerves subside a bit, and gives you someone to process your experience with.  It can be very impactful when that person is going outside of their comfort zone as well because it can be an experience that you share.  There are some experiences that you’ll try that might need some cultural context to truly understand the purpose behind a food, the reasoning for a cultural practice or to translate a language for you.  In those cases it’s more beneficial to go with an experienced person that can guide you through it and explain it so that you get the full context of the experience. 

The most important aspect of going outside your comfort zone is that regardless of whether you enjoyed it or not, you’re guaranteed to learn something new about yourself and the world around you.  Your level of empathy to understand others will increase and your cultural awareness whether it’s socio-economic, religious, ethnic, etc. will increase as well.  It might be a bit of a utopian thought, but I believe the world would be a better place if we would go outside of our comfort zones more often to increase our level of understanding and regularly enhancing our experiences.  I share today’s blog with you because it’s one of my resolutions for 2014 and beyond to commit to do this more frequently than I have in the past, and I welcome you to do so as well.  Feel free to comment below when you’ve done something, or contact me to share.  I would enjoy hearing what your experience was like.