Ahhhh… how comfy our comfort zones are. We know these places so well. We can be on autopilot. We don’t have to expend emotional or physical energy. It’s easy. It’s like riding a bike downhill – all the time.
Ultimately, however, our comfort zones can be our undoing. Too much time there are we become stale, unchallenged, and stagnant. And that is a dangerous place to be in a world in which maintaining the status quo becomes obsolete in the blink of an eye.
Our zones of comfort encompass a variety of components, including our skills – both intellectual and physical – our relationships, our emotional state, and our beliefs and world views.
In all of these components, we have an “edge” to our comfort zone, a place where we can expand by stretching far enough into that place to the point at which we are uncomfortable. The concept of our “edge” comes from yoga; that place where when you notice the stretch but not so much that it hurts. By continuing to lean into our edge, our muscles gradually stretch and we become more flexible. This is a zone of learning. It works with physical, emotional and intellectual skills.
Contrast this to your “panic” zone. This place is sooooo far outside your comfort zone that it induces alarm. You flounder, you are “over your head”, you are highly likely to fail and to be extremely uncomfortable in oh so many ways. Good for adrenaline junkies but bad for learning.
Here is a starting list of ideas to move your out of your cozy little comfort zone and into a place of learning.
- Read something outside your genre
- Just read (if you don’t)
- Join a professional organization (really join)
- Teach something
- Take up a new hobby
- Learn a new sport
- Travel somewhere new
- Mentor someone
- Volunteer
- Journal
- Meditate
- Find a personal trainer
- Volunteer for a project at work
- Travel to a new location and mingle with the locals
- Go to a lecture that you wouldn’t normally go to
- Make a new friend outside your social circle
- Attend a worship service outside your faith
- Say no when you normally would say yes, or yes when you would normally say no
- Have a deep conversation with someone close to you
- Have a deep conversation with a stranger
What else would you add to this list?
