Short on time?
Quick comfort zone tips:
- Your life isn’t a great big failure if you’ve teeny areas of comfort: yes, to grow you sometimes have to do that which scares senseless, but some comfort zones you’ll need, as you prepare and launch for the big stretch.
- You don’t need to make one big leap all at once out an imaginary zone. Push yourself everyday.
- They don’t really exist, it’s all in your head. True.
- Breathe, and give yourself permission to take it at your speed, get into the flow baby!
- You always can stretch further than you may think, try it every now and then.
- Know why you are stuck in a zone, change or reframe that first.
- Minimise personal risk.
Got more time?
Excellent…
Let’s start with a little blame and moaning because that’s really useful!
FC Houghton and CP Yaglou have a lot to answer for.
Science bitty ahead…
Back in 1923 they coined the phrase ‘Comfort Zone‘: they weren’t coaches, psychologists, or personal development gooroos.
Nope, they worked for the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers and they developed the Effective Temperature Scale: the temperature range at which the naked human body is able to maintain a heat balance without shivering or sweating.
Science over. Phew!
The term comfort zone is an excellent metaphor to be used for personal growth, it has stood the test of self-help and quotes time, it’s well and truly stuck.
Our brains just ‘get’ it.
Why?
We know what comfort is — oh, yummy, nice, easy, simple, no stress, tuck me in place.
We know what zone is — small, shut off, red lights, barriers, isolation, do not enter here.
Plop the two together, visual perfection.
We both know that a quote such as:
‘You must step out your comfort zone and realise your dreams‘
Actually means: ‘move it, quit the fear, you know what you need to do, get going, stop stalling and resisting, get your butt in gear now, nothing was ever achieved by just sitting on thumb, for goodness sake will you just do it already’.
Yeah.
We all get that.
Or
‘Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new‘
Actually means: ‘you know all the sweat, shaking, fear, pit of your stomach butterflies, terrifying thoughts that you are having? Well it’s worth it, perfectly normal, get it moving’.
Comfort Zone sums it all up, nicely packaged.
However…
I read a post recently that said: “90% of people live in their comfort zone and that you are tired, depressed, worthless, just surviving and life is mediocre if you are.”
Really?
No proof though, not even a link to the research. Shame!
(Rolling Eyes) Oh wait. It wasn’t another made up piece of woowoo to scare people who already feel vulnerable? No, surely not!
A bit like the myth ‘you only use 10% of your brain’ nonsense or ‘our brains are like sponges’. Pah!
Just telling you to ‘step out your comfort zone’, to me, is a bit like telling someone who is experiencing depression to ‘pull themselves together’.
It’s not helpful.
You have a reason for being in the zone. It may not be a good reason to everyone else, but it is for you. You’re getting something from it, otherwise you wouldn’t be there.
If I had my way I would ban the use of the words ‘Comfort Zones’.
It wouldn’t work though.
No, I’m not being defeatist; it’s because it’s that sticky.
It’s a bit like the majority of us call implements that clean up the floor ‘hoovers’. When you may have a Dyson, or Vax. Or doing an Internet search you say ‘I’ll Google it’ not ‘I’ll Yahoo/Bing/MSN it’.
And anyway what would I replace them with? From the top of my head…
Sheep Pens? Fear Circles? Puddles? Enter Area 51?
Nah. The phrase works.
So we’ll roll with it.
But..
Can we pllleeeaasssee go a little deeper…
A comfort zone is psychological ‘place’ where you feel comfortable, at ease, not threatened, it’s what you physically, psychological and emotionally can tolerate.
1. You have thousands of comfort zones (plural). Life isn’t one big zone.
Some you will find it easy to stretch, others not so much. And it all depends on your self-image in the area of the zone.
And like the temperature scale, you probably have a few degrees either side of what you can tolerate.
See, ‘step out’ your comfort zone, suggests that you need to move it all in one go. No. You can shimmy, hop, skip, jump, baby step your way out.
2. Stepping out can do more than harm than good. What! Yes, keep reading.
Say for example you have a fear about public speaking (which you’ve been taught, but we’ll get to that another day), you decide to step out your ‘zone’ and just go for it.
Up onto the podium you go.
What if you bomb? What if it is w-a-y worse than you ever thought it would be. You just want to hitch-hike (word two!) it out the country. It was really painful to you and your audience.
What, truthfully, is the chance of you ever trying again sometime soon?
Nope, you will return very quickly to the ‘safe zone’ or otherwise known (in this example) as the ‘I can’t speak in public zone’ and rest up there.
I’m not saying don’t ever step. I’m saying weigh up all the risks. If the risks are HIGH, you may need to have carry out a ‘mental’ risk assessment. Is the risk worth it? How can you minimise the risk before the stepping?
Which leads me to…
3. Where’s the advice if it all goes belly up and you’re left worse off for stepping?
To come out some of your comfort zones you may need (sometimes), tools, knowledge, experience before you make the step, safely.
And it might go pear shaped, it might. But then it might not. Trying something once, not succeeding is not enough evidence to never try again.
4. What’s the matter with having a wee stretch?
Say, you want to move house. You’re scared. A little apprehensive. Do you just say ‘I’m stepping’ and instruct your estate agent to buy for you any house on the market? No. You go and look at a few. You see what others are like. You wander around others living spaces picturing what it would be like if you lived there.
You ask questions. You drive round the area, perhaps visit the schools and go to the local take away.
Why can’t the same be translated into other areas of your life?
Want to write a book? Then take a writing class.
Want to change career? Then speak to the people doing the career you want. Go visiting to companies and organisation you want to work for.
Want to start a business? Then attend networking events and conferences where business owners are meeting.
Test it. Stretch it.
You are able to increase the comfort zone temperature a couple of degrees yes? Well, once you are there, in the new zone, and that becomes comfortable do the next thing, then the next, then the next.
Stepping out a comfort zone, is not to scare yourself half to death. Well, it doesn’t have to be. Why would anyone want to do that anyway?
5. When can you rest a little, take a breather and then move on again?
Do you have to do it all at once? I believe a little breather every now and then is okay. You aren’t stopping. You are resting. Pace it.
6. Is it much more advantageous to know why you are ‘in there’ in the first place?
Now, this is a mega one. If you’re in a zone that you don’t like, that you know it’s not good for you and are fighting resistance to stay there because it is feeding and offering you something (only you will know what), I think the first step is facing the reason why.
And, in my experience when you know the reason why, zones actually crumble anyway. You no longer think in ‘zones’. The world becomes access all areas.
7. They all aren’t bad!
You need some. Your brain will not allow you to be unsafe. It’s primary role is survival: safety.
Good coaches/trainers/mentors know that no matter how they work you with, we cannot move you forward. 80% of the time we are challenging your resistance to change or you’re challenging us to stop bringing up your resistance!
You already know where in life you are crouched into a teeny little ball, held hostage and small.
And you know what needs done.
Yes, you do.
Whether you do it or not, well that’s a different story.
Comfort zones don’t exist, they are only there because you have created the ideas of what is and is not possible for you: where you are comfortable, your images of who you are, where you think you belong, self-esteem, confidence, beliefs all play a part.
If you’re carrying out a behaviour that makes you anxious, a little stressed, uncomfortable, trust your brain. It’s your inbuilt self-regulator or thermostat: it won’t let you be unsafe, it will get you the hell out of there.
It will however search for past experiences, emotions and physical responses, so it knows how to behave for you. If you have already taught it that the ‘one thing’ that stretches you is ‘horrible, you can’t do it, you’ll fail, oh remember the last time’ it can only give you the physical, psychological and emotional response that matches the thought.
First, change the thoughts. See yourself in the situation actually doing it, all through your thoughts. (There is an exercise in this post that will help.)
So, here’s a plan…
Write down 10 things that scare the hell out of you but you want to bring about:
- Ask yourself, is this worth the risk?
- How do you know?
- What will carrying it through give you?
- What will it take away?
- What will you be trading or giving up?
- How can you minimise the risk?
- Where did you learn that it was scary?
- Do you have enough personal proof, or did you gather evidence it from others?
- If it’s worth it, when will you start to build up the evidence that you will be safe?
- Who can you recruit?
Don’t think they have to be massive: making cold calls, putting out a newsletter, joining a group, sending of your CV, joining a class, losing weight, dealing better with conflict.
Choose 10 that you have been resisting.
Okay, at the end of all this maybe FC Houghton and CP Yaglou did coin a great phrase, out of all the metaphors for personal growth and development it is a good one, if they were still alive I probably would buy them a popsicle (I know, bad choice. But the word didn’t fit elsewhere.)
Go and do your best…
But before you do, here’s two fantastic mindmaps all about comfort zones.
They are from Paul at MindMapInspiration (follow him on twitter at @mindmapdrawer). Click on the image and you’ll be taken to his website — which is mindmap heaven, and awesomeness.
Your Turn
Tips, techniques, tools, ideas for moving past resistance and stretching a comfort zone?
Photo credits: IceSwimming
If I were to introduce Susan to you (and if she wasn’t in the room) I’d say “extremely professional, she