Know When to Embrace Your Comfort Zone

I’ve been hearing and reading a lot lately on comfort zones. There seems to be a lot of hot air about comfort zones being bad and that people should stay out of them, but, honestly, I think that’s a lot of malarkey!

A comfort zone is where you feel comfortable, duh! 🙂 It is a place that makes you feel safe; as you know, comfort “zones” can be both physical, mental, and spiritual. In essence, they are ‘situational.’ That is, situations in which you feel comfortable and where minimal effort or emotion is required; expectations are neutral, accountability is neutral. It’s your comfortable NOW. Comfort zones are usually our fallback position, our neutral gear, our panic room, our burnout happy place, our “I’m not sure” place, etc. The point is, you feel good in your comfort zone!

Comfort zones, in and of themselves, aren’t necessarily bad. The trick is to know when to avoid your comfort zones and when to embrace them! Comfort zones, as I see it, are just another of life’s double-edged swords, there have both positive sides and negative sides to them. The irony here is that whether a comfort zone is “positive” or “negative” is situational! Actually, let’s just say that comfort zones are NEUTRAL – the positive and negative aspects, being situational, cancel each other out.

For example, books are a comfort zone for me. I am an avid reader and self-proclaimed book nerd. This comfort zone is positive for me as a reward for accomplishing a task or to wind down before I go to sleep or to do research on a project. This comfort zone is negative for me if I am putting off doing a task that I know I should be doing. In that case I’d be running away from my responsibility and making a mad dash beeline to my favorite book. Intrinsically, books aren’t a bad thing; however, they can either support my research or hinder my workflow. That outcome depends entirely on ME, not my books! Remember that!

When to Avoid Your Comfort Zones.

Your comfort zones want you!!! They are constantly calling you!!! They are constantly pulling your thoughts back to them!!! When life gets stressful, many of us tend to want to fall back into our comfort zones – I know you can relate. I bet you can think of an example today of how you thought about retreating to a comfort zone.

The reality of life that I’ve come to learn is that you must push yourself beyond your comfort zone if you want to achieve success and wealth. If you want to achieve any goal there will be a certain amount of leaving that all-too-familiar comfort zone. Stepping out of your comfort zone, as a conscious and purposeful action, is actually kind of fun!!!

The one thing I used to hate was bartering. I absolutely loathed what I perceived as confrontation. The whole back-and-forth thing seemed like one big pissing contest and matching of egos. It was only when I started traveling abroad that I learned the importance of not paying full price for things, and, as a consequence, that bartering is actually fun! It is so much fun! While there is a certain amount of brinksmanship involved, the process is less interpersonal melodrama and more about the stability of market prices.

To me, the time to avoid your comfort zones is in goal setting and receiving the inspiration to achieve your goals. If you want to start a business, change careers, relocate to a new city, contest a will, whatever, there will be things to do that you may not feel ‘comfortable’ with. That is natural, that is neutral. It is a moot point; if it’s not illegal, then you need to carefully consider the steps involved and do it. Just do it!

Guess what? As you grow you will find new comfort zones. You will learn to avoid them as well and continue to grow and find newer and newer comfort zones and outgrow them as well. That is called human progress and growth! You will also learn to enjoy yourself. Looking back on how I used to hate bartering, I just realized that bartering is actually a comfort zone for me now! How crazy is that?!?

Rule of thumb: Avoid comfort zones when they become a temptation to you. Avoid comfort zones when they counteract your progress or hinder your forward motion.

When to Embrace Your Comfort Zones

Comfort zones can also be your biggest asset! Think about it, in your comfort zone, you are usually in a state of flow. Your stress levels are low and your inspiration levels are high. You feel good! Think of the possibilities in harnessing that state of mind and how your comfort zones can harness your success.

Rule of thumb: You should embrace your comfort zones where your SKILLS and TALENTS meet.

For example, another of my comfort zones is the gym. I embraced this comfort zone here on NOW-Power.com. When I first started this blog it was to write about the law of attraction; however, I quickly realized that there is a huge market out there for gym inspiration so I used my knowledge of natural strength training to start sharing with others by writing posts in the field of health and wellness.

If you are contemplating a career change, don’t simply jump ship from your current job into something that you will hate even more. The strategy would be to find a new career path that excites and enthralls your passion in life. That “passion in life” might take its inspiration from a comfort zone of yours!

New comfort zones will be created when you are put into a position to take on a new non-comfort zone sub-task that supports a passionate, preexisting comfort zone task. By doing the ‘necessary evils’ to accomplish your larger goal, some of the smaller tasks will become new comfort zones. They will grow from simple ‘necessary evil’ tasks to necessarily good! It’s like fractal geometry.

For example, I used to research material for academic consumption. I loved and still love researching! I love reading and gathering data, extrapolating data and drawing formative conclusions from data in order to either support or deny a theory. Nerd alert!!! LOL. Well, in that research comfort zone of mine I found that my necessary evil was that I had to publicly present my conclusions and speak in front of people. I dreaded that part!!! I was put into a position to have to do that, but over time that necessary evil of public speaking became a new comfort zone for me! I now enjoy public speaking.

In conclusion, rules of thumb: avoid comfort zones when they counteract your progress; embrace comfort zones when they harness your progress! I think the internet has created this bandwagon fad of comfort zones as inherently bad and I’m calling BS lol. Also, remember that comfort zones are NEUTRAL; we are the ones that make them things to either avoid or embrace!

What are your comfort zones? When have they hindered your progress? When have they provided the inspiration for success?

I hope this article has benefited you! Thank you for reading this article and being a part of NOW-Power!

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