I had a thought the other day. What if we released the idea of comfort zones? In my experience comfort zones mainly serve to hold us back and to keep us in fear.
We avoid taking on a new challenging task or activity by making the excuse that it’s outside our comfort zone. That keeps us from having to come up with strategies to make it happen, even when it intrigues us.
This take on comfort zones occurred to me as I was seeking to find the edge between balance and toppling during a one-legged pose in yoga class. Staying in my comfort zone kept me upright. However, I knew I was holding back from what I was capable of doing.
When I decided to embrace all potential outcomes as within my comfort zone, I challenged myself and got deeper into the posture than I ever had. This made me reconsider the perceived benefits of a comfort zone.
The Comfort Zone Is Not Your Friend
Good friends encourage and challenge us to be the best version of ourselves at all times. They will call us on our nonsense in order to help us grow. The comfort zone does exactly the opposite of that. It supports complacency.
When you break it down, a comfort zone is completely a construct of our own imaginations. We presume we will be uncomfortable in the new and unknown so we deem it outside our comfort zone.
We have to be open to the risk of falling and failing to make progress. A satisfying life requires stretching ourselves physically, intellectually and emotionally.
Fulfillment comes when we recognize the potential for comfort in any situation. When we don’t limit ourselves in our minds, we do whatever it takes to make what we want happen.
The Comfort Zone Encourages Choosing Fear
Being outside your realm of experience doesn’t have to be outside your comfort zone. Somehow we have made these two concepts interchangeable in today’s society. This has led to fear automatically being associated with the unfamiliar.
Unknown doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. Most of us have stories of experiencing an environment for the first time and immediately feeling at home. You meet a friend’s family or visit a new country and it’s like you’ve always known them or it.
We create the experiences we have from within ourselves. Rather than being intimidated by something different, we do better to consider everything within the realm of positive possibility. This requires choosing curiosity and challenge over fear.
Figure Out Where Your Comfort Starts
When I left the practice of medicine, many people thought I was seeking a more comfortable lifestyle than that of a private practice ob/gyn. In fact, comfort as most people define it had very little to do with it.
There was very little situational ease in finding my way as a non-clinical physician. This path was much less clear than the roadmap from pre-med to practicing physician. Taking the circuitous route I did to my current work was definitely not comfortable for me.
The key for me was realizing the goal wasn’t to design a comfort zone to inhabit. Instead, I had to determine what brought me internal peace regardless of the circumstances.
Even with that insight, I still thought the objective was to use the inner peace to expand my comfort zone. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the comfort zone has never existed at all. The boundaries were false.
Rather than fighting with fear for territory, it serves me better to recognize all of it is already available to me. This mindset gives me the power of choice. I do something because I want to do it, not because it’s the only option I have within my small area of comfort.
Before you claim outside my comfort zone in the future I invite you to ask yourself the following question – What has to happen for me to believe this is my comfort zone? The answer has the potential to unleash creativity that could change your life.
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Dr Jattu Senesie is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist, certified success coach, physician satisfaction specialist and speaker. She blogs about issues of self care and well-being in an effort to help her fellow altruistic high achievers find satisfaction in their success as early in their careers as possible.
