The One Place You Don’t Want To Be

The one place you don’t want to be is in your comfort zone.  At least you don’t want to stay there for very long.

I don’t think of a comfort zone as a good or a bad thing. Really, it’s an anxiety-neutral state of being. That state on its own can’t hurt you but it can’t do anything for you either. If you choose to stay within your comfort zone, indefinitely and unequivocally, that’s where the danger lies. That’s where you risk getting stuck, taking the path of least resistance and reaping few rewards. It’s a life where pushing your boundaries and moving out into the unknown becomes so terrifying, that you not only give up the idea of pursuing your dearest dreams…You also give up dreaming.

If you’re not moving forward, not pursuing the treasured life goals you’d most like to achieve, not making any progress on becoming the person you want to be…If all of that’s the case, in what direction are you moving?  You’re not moving.  Not at all.

Now, it could be that you feel like you’re just standing still, as opposed to moving backward. Even if that’s true, even if you just feel flat, it’s still not a productive place to be.  For most of us, this state of non-motion, non-productivity is our “comfort zone.”

You can push past your comfort zone and change the paradigms that are no longer serving you. There are practices that can push you to achieve the goals that once seemed unreachable.  Most importantly, stepping beyond your comfort zone gives you the capacity to move forward in your life goals, so you can do exactly what you want with your life.  The very act of stepping outside of your comfort zone is critical to your success and well-being. Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some stress and discomfort. In fact, performance peaks when we’re well out of our comfort zone. If you’re too comfortable your performance suffers from inaction.

Here are 8 things you can do to prevent getting stuck in your comfort zone.

1. Get up early.Unless you’re a morning person, getting up earlier than usual can take you way out of your comfort zone
2. Accomplish an “impossible” goal.Few things compare to the exhilaration of accomplishing something that you didn’t think you were capable of achieving.
3. It’s easy to get stuck in your comfort zone when you’re so busy that you don’t slow down enough to really think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
4. Focus on one thing at a time. Focusing completely on a single task is a big risk—the risk of failing at something to which you’ve given your all. That’s why it’s so uncomfortable.
5. Volunteer at a place that makes you uncomfortable. Spending time around things that scare you, or things you don’t know much about, helps you realize there’s nothing to fear. The unknown becomes approachable.
6. Take a new route home from work every day, or a new route to the grocery store. Changing your surroundings and charting a new path changes the way your brain perceives things.
7. Say no.Research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley showed that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout and even depression.
8. Quit putting things off. When things are hard, it’s always easier to decide to tackle them tomorrow. Saying you’ll do it tomorrow is just an excuse and it means that either you don’t really want to do it or that you want the results without the hard work that comes along with it.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that I don’t really believe in the status quo.  I think it’s a myth.  You’re either moving forward or you’re moving backward.  Standing still just means the world is passing you by more quickly.

Author: Pat Schultz
Success Coach & Transformational Speaker

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