Fighting Your Comfort Zone: Finding Growth In Discomfort

Photo Credit: medium.com

“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”
-Abraham Maslow

Many people have heard the saying, ‘Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.’ We have found that there is a lot of validity to this statement. We want others to be transparent with us, but often we are  not transparent with ourselves. What is holding us back? What causes us to worry or experience fear? Why do we overthink instead of just act? We want to dive into the concept of a discomfort zone and how to grow through it. Ultimately, the discomfort or uncomfort zone is the area where uncertainty is felt. More often, it is where the majority of growth and change happens.

Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable:
We operate in 3 zones: comfort, panic/courage and learning zones. Our comfort zone is where we are at ease in our environment and feel in control. It is a good place to be because physiologically, we experience low levels of anxiety or stress, but it can also be very dangerous. It is dangerous because when we are there we aren’t learning how to develop positive coping skills and mental toughness. As we decide to break free from our comfort zone, we transition in the panic/courage zone. In this zone, activities and situations are tough and often times, you don’t know how to approach them, so your anxiety increases. Once you begin to learn how to conquer the challenge, your courage increases, and you start to defeat fear. This is not only temporary, but also necessary as you transition into the learning zone. In the learning zone, you learn new skills and start to develop new abilities. The learning zone is the growing zone. We find that as long as you stay in the growing zone you start to shrink your discomfort zone.

How to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone:
Here are a couple quick tips we use to get out of our comfort zones DAILY: 

1. Read - Reading helps you to grow mentally and intellectually. When you read it in a book, you begin to internalize the message and make changes on your own. 
2. Listen - Listening to positive audios helps you develop confidence and allows you to draw from others’ experiences on how to move forward through various situations. Our daily audios include educational media, podcasts, YouTube clips, Ted Talks and audio books. 
3. Affirmations - Positively affirming yourself, situations and others around you will bring light and abundance into your life. The more you speak about operating outside of your comfort zone, the more you will perform outside of your comfort zone.  
4. Challenge - Do something everyday, even if it is small, to challenge yourself. Those small wins will compound into tremendous victories over time. 
5. Communicate - Communicating your progress with a significant other and mentor will help to not only create accountability but will also ensure progress. It allows someone else to provide a secondary level of support.   

Growth & Self Development:
Growth and change require consistent action, patience and perseverance. First, we must be able to reflect on both our strengths and weaknesses. Second, we must focus on working on developing our soft skills. Next, we must modify our current behaviors towards those that help us grow. Next, you must develop a plan of action that you can stick to daily. Lastly, track and communicate your progress with an accountability partner. 

Growth can only happen if we live a life of progression on a daily basis. When we throw out the programming that we have to be perfect or that we are too afraid, it allows us to not only set higher goals, but actually accomplish them. When we don’t allow fear or comfort to stand in our way, we will surprise ourselves with talents and abilities that we were previously unaware of. Conquering life outside of your comfort zone is all about progress, not perfection.

Keep pushing forward,
Brandon & Amanda