Being Aware of Your Comfort Zone, Then Pushing Past It

I’ve always believed that the best things happen when you step outside your comfort zone…those times when we push past what is safe and just take chances that are foreign to us or seem absolutely bonkers. After all, as human beings we are capable of a complex and wide range of feelings and emotions as well as the ability to create, explore, and develop. We were not created simply to just to pay bills and die.

We all have our interests and passions and they’re part of what make us who we are. Some of us have many different interests and others of us only have a select few things that fascinate and energize us. While some of us will follow these passions into a career, others choose to simply have hobbies and side projects while they work a job that supports their lives, families, and helps pay for the things they find interesting.

Neither path is wrong; it’s simply a matter of what a person feels most comfortable with. However, sometimes allowing our lives to be guided by what we feel comfortable with actually allows our fears to drive our lives for us while we exist on autopilot.

I’m not just talking about the people who work jobs that don’t align with their passions either. Fear is a human emotion, therefore all humans are fearful at times. Even those who pursue our passions in a career or the most daredevil types among us have things that terrify us or that we aren’t comfortable with. And, since fear is an unpleasant feeling, we do our best to avoid the things that scare us. It’s instinctual.

I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I’m brave and seem to not let my comfort zone govern my actions. This is a nice compliment, but I feel it’s a little unfounded. While I do tend to say hello to people when others might not, or go out of my way to travel around the world or visit places on my own without any companionship, these things don’t affect me; they are within my comfort zone. I was raised to be friendly and travel and was taught that solitude doesn’t mean that you are a loner. The things that are within my comfort zone just happen to be a lot of the things that are NOT within most people’s comfort zones.

This doesn’t make me better than anyone else or immune to fear. I have fears just like everyone, and I don’t have it all figured out. Believe me, there are things that scare me every day and while my fears may not seem logical to some, they have played a role in shaping my life.

These fears include things like being terrified of not reaching my potential or living a life devoid of passion, true love, understanding, adventure and excitement. These kinds of fears have lead me to develop a comfort zone that kept me in constant motion and a sense of searching for novel experiences and have even prevented me from seeing wonderful things right in front of me.

Comfort zones are not just for the stereotypical routine-loving person. They take all forms and shape our lives as we get older. So often, we aren’t even aware that our fears are keeping us caged within our comfort zone.

The more I delve into the field of personal growth/development and self-discovery, the more I am fascinated by just how limited we keep ourselves. This kind of realization is an awakening, and I was filled with a desire to push past my fears to become my “best self”. However, upon further reflection I have come to realize that as hard as we may try to be our “best selves,” we will never reach that goal. We will never reach it because our best self is a constant work in progress. It will be until the day we die.

 The good news is that we can become a “better self” than we were yesterday and continue this process every day, constantly challenging ourselves to grow and cultivate well-balanced and fulfilling lives.

Every single day is a new chance to define what we envision our “best self” to be and to come up with ways that will work towards developing this. Set measurable ways in which you can take steps and make changes to push the boundaries of your comfort zone and learn how to use the things you fear to form your “better self”.

Maybe we don’t actively think that we’re afraid of something. Fear has a lot of excuses…”I’m too tired”, “I don’t have the time”, “It’s not a priority”, etc. Sure, we may be busy, but we always make time for the things that are important to us and consistently avoid things that frighten us on a certain level. It’s embedded in our instinctual nature, but the beauty of being a human being is that we can choose to rise above our fear and shape ourselves into “better selves” each and every day.

Doing so helps us bring together our comfort zone and the things that make life interesting and worth living. Closing the gap between these things helps us become more accepting of what once scared us so that we are able to use these things to grow.