The Comfort Zone: How Uncomfortable do we need to be to Grow?

by Sarah Donnelly, Holistic Life and Wellness Coach

Comfort zone
noun
a situation where one feels safe or at ease.
a settled method of working that requires little effort and yields only barely acceptable results.

In our comfort zone, can we grow? The definition suggests it might not be possible. To officially grow we might need to step outside of our comfort zone and do something that might not feel as easy as our day to day routine. Something that requires more effort might be exactly what we need. One of the main ways of continuing personal development and achieving our goals is usually by stepping outside this zone and doing something that requires effort.

When was the last time you stepped outside your comfort zone? Or do you do it on a day-to-day basis? Some people are quite good at naturally challenging their usual day to day. Some even find a thrill from it. On the other hand, some people are fearful of what might happen if they challenge the usual.

Living in your comfort zone you will experience lower levels of anxiety and stress than if you were to move outside of your comfort zone. So, it’s understandable why people could choose to live here.

A lot of the time when people are struggling with goals in their lives it can be that they have got stuck in their comfort zone and they don’t know how to move beyond it. Is going beyond your comfort zone as easy as just biting the bullet and doing it? Possibly, yes.

Going beyond your comfort zone can affect many areas of your life. Take for example your current job. You can do your job well and while you do enjoy it, it doesn’t give you the same excitement as it previously did all those years ago. It doesn’t challenge you in the ways that you would like. You feel as if you could do more. A job advertisement is posted and as you read it you realize that you would love the job and that you would also be perfect for it. Staying in your comfort zone in this situation would mean staying in a job that’s safe and easy. Stepping outside of your comfort zone would be applying for the job, going for the interview and possibly starting a new role, which would entail learning new things and starting over again in a new company. The end result of the taking up the new job and stepping outside of your comfort zone would be that you have grown, learned something new, gained a new perspective and grown in self-confidence.

Stepping out your comfort zone can also be seen in the areas of relationships. This could be by starting a new club on your own to meet new friends, asking out that person that you’ve been admiring for quite some time but haven’t had the courage to ask them, or doing something new in your current relationships that you would not have previously thought of doing before. Possibly because you were nervous about changing something in the comfortable relationship.

While staying in our comfort zones is very easy to do, sometimes we might just need to give ourselves a little push and step out of it. The initial feeling of healthy anxiety or stress will all be worth the result of empowering yourself, increasing your self-confidence, and growing in a way that you would not have previously done before.

About the author
Sarah works as a Holistic Life and Wellness Coach and Mindfulness Therapist both online and in Kildare. She is a co-founder of the wellness blog Mandala.ie and writes in the areas of life-coaching, well-ness, well-being, mindfulness and positive psychology. She is passionate about coaching, well-being and living a balanced, happy and positive life.

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