Leaving your own comfort zone. Who wouldn't want to do that? But as is so often the case in life, this resolution sounds extremely easy in theory, while the practical implementation unfortunately involves a lot of challenges. Fortunately, however, the motto „Get out of your comfort zone“ can be learned, practised and permanently integrated into your everyday life. And with the 7 tips in this article, you too will hopefully soon be one of those people whose strengths include flexibility and courage.
The comfort zone model
Before we start looking at ways and methods of getting out of your comfort zone, let's first take a look at the theoretical background. Broadly speaking, there are four main areas of behavior in your life: The comfort zone, the fear zone, the learning zone and the growth zone. You find yourself in all four zones more or less regularly and the specific distribution has a direct influence on your personal and business success, as well as your general satisfaction.
The comfort zone
Here you feel really at home. You have all the resources at your disposal and are always in control of the situation. Their knowledge and skills are well developed and prepared for all eventualities, so that problems rarely or never occur.
If you do what you always do, then you are in your comfort zone. Take, for example, a carpenter who has to make a cupboard and has done every single step hundreds of times. Everything fits and feels good. You could call him at 4 a.m. and he would do the job just as well, even if he was half asleep.
So far, so good, but the big problem in this area of behavior is that there is no personal growth at all. Since problems and challenges hardly ever arise, you only fall back on tried and tested methods. And why should you, because life in this zone is very comfortable and everything runs smoothly. It may not be particularly exciting, but this lack of variety is compensated for by increased comfort. However, there is no way around it: if you want to increase your flexibility and have more choices, you have to leave your comfort zone. Your behavioral repertoire and your personality simply have to grow.
Because growth is one of the basic human needs. If you are not growing, then you are just living for yourself and will find it very difficult to live happily and successfully. So please keep the following sentence in mind as you read the next few paragraphs (oh, preferably for the rest of your life): Your quality of life depends on the degree of growth with which you can live comfortably in the long term
The fear zone
Beyond your comfort zone, the unknown lurks. The fear zone begins and your conscious (and unconscious!) mind tries with all its might to persuade you to turn back. Because you are suddenly at the mercy of new and unprecedented situations, you start to doubt, look for excuses and would prefer to give up immediately.
No wonder, because so much can go wrong, won't work the first time and a persistent inner voice will constantly remind you how little self-confidence you have in this zone. You will often feel overwhelmed because so many new impressions are bombarding you. Your most important task is therefore to resist the temptations of inner resistance and instead consciously take the path of small steps. Embrace uncertainty and transform it into personal growth. And to repeat this as often as necessary until the first signs of success appear.
The learning zone
In this area, many things are new to you and you have to actively look for new solutions and behaviors. For all problems and solutions, you can draw on a wealth of experience and extensive knowledge. Despite many unknown variables, you have the feeling that you can make conscious decisions to determine how you deal with the challenges.
Take again the example of the carpenter who has made a conscious decision to try something new. This could be making a piece of furniture using a completely new process or training in the processing of materials from outside the industry. In this zone, you learn a lot of new skills, acquire new knowledge and convictions, make the odd mistake and grow accordingly.
The growth zone
Shift is the most fun when it goes hand in hand with purpose, fulfillment and balance. And this is exactly what happens in the growth zone. Your self-confidence has now increased enormously, so that you dare to do things that you would never have dared to dream of before. Full of joy and ease, you throw yourself into solving problems, try out new ideas immediately and develop into a role model for those around you. Your new abilities, skills and characteristics are now second nature to you and help you to achieve your goals and dreams as unconscious automatisms.
But something else, much more important, happens as soon as you start to spend a lot of your time in the growth zone. Almost as if by magic, the boundaries of both your comfort zone and your fear zone shift. On the one hand, the comfort zone expands. No wonder, because what seemed completely unthinkable and beyond known rules and standards some time ago has now become a lived reality.
At the same time, the fear zone is also shrinking, because many situations in which you would have reacted with trembling knees and a pounding heart in the past have now become a perfect opportunity for you to grow as a person and gain new experiences. Will the doubts, the insecurity and the Fear ever disappear completely? Of course not. And that's a good thing, as they are the perfect indicator that you are about to do something extraordinary.
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Leaving the comfort zone - meaning and psychology
And, while reading this, have you already made a small comparison as to which area you prefer to stay in? It is important to keep in mind that this is a dynamic model that is constantly shifting in width. If, for example, the area of the individual zones is currently 10 square centimetres, it can quickly grow to 50 or 100 square centimetres as a result of learning, growth and the accumulation of new resources.
In the same way, the boundaries between the individual zones naturally shift. Because what is still completely new and unfamiliar to you today can quickly become normal with the right training and thus shift into your comfort zone, which has naturally become larger by the learning factor. And in the growth zone, this effect is of course much stronger.
Leaving the comfort zone: Examples from everyday life
So whenever you feel a little overwhelmed in a situation, your pulse starts to race and the first drops of sweat start to form on your forehead, you know immediately that this is an important moment in your life, because you have most likely reached the edge of your comfort zone and are about to learn and grow something great.
While for some people this is the case with a short speech at a colleague's wedding, a phone call to a difficult customer or the prospect of a conflict with their boss, others have to seek out such moments and go on adventure vacations, jump over 100 meters from a bridge secured only by a thin rope or keep poisonous scorpions as pets.
Out of the comfort zone - the big dilemma
Now we come to the real dilemma. If it is so obvious that people only get closer to their goals and dreams in the growth and learning zone, then everyone should be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to push their comfort zone boundaries and increase their happiness and success, shouldn't they?
But this assumption couldn't be more wrong, because you can actually observe the exact opposite. People remain in their comfort zone for the majority of their lives and not only give away a huge amount of their potential, but above all the opportunity to achieve what they dream of and what they want to achieve in life. They set up their own golden cage and furnish it with more and more cozy accessories over time.
And then they sit there and dream of an exciting life, their childhood visions and, in a particularly courageous moment, of taking a chance and fulfilling a long-cherished dream. But because the uncertainty is too great, this thought is usually quickly pushed aside and their own comfort zone is made even more comfortable. The security of the known is preferred to the unknown of freedom. And in retrospect, this regularly leads to the aforementioned: „Oh, I wish I had dared...“
Leaving your comfort zone #1: Create a bucket list
What are the hundred most important things you want to experience, own or be before you die? The answers result in your so-called bucket list. This is nothing other than your dreams from the category „I would love to...“. Examples would be your own Porsche 911 in the garage, the position of CEO in a certain company or a trip around the world on a sailing ship.
By creating your bucket list, you have ensured one thing: You have 100 Goals, where you don't have to worry about the necessary motivation. Because the individual points are so enormously important to you. And at the same time, they are all outside your comfort zone.
Leaving your comfort zone #2: Facing your own fears
When it comes to leaving your comfort zone, the following universal rule applies: the changes you fear the most will bring the biggest breakthroughs. And the more often you face your fears, the greater the resulting breakthroughs will be. This will take some effort at first, but will become easier and easier over time. This is mainly because most fears are unfounded and are only huge in your head.
Leaving your comfort zone #3: Saying 'yes' to change
The more often you say AuJa to change, the more often you will find yourself in situations that will stretch your comfort zone and allow it to grow over time. Whenever you are confronted with a new idea, are invited to be part of a new project or simply need to try out new ways of doing things, say yes, even if you don't feel ready, don't have all the skills or the necessary experience. Fascinating things will happen as soon as you leave your comfort zone in this way.
Leaving the comfort zone #4: Many small success stories
It is much more promising if you leave your comfort zone a little bit a hundred times than if you go really extreme just once. On the one hand, the path of small steps leads to the fact that actively engaging in new experiences becomes a powerful experience for you. Habit will. The more often you are out of your comfort zone, the more successes you will celebrate. In this way, your self-confidence will increase almost automatically, which in turn will lead to you daring to leave your comfort zone even more often.
Leaving your comfort zone #5: Traveling to foreign countries
When it comes to „leaving your comfort zone“, traveling is probably the best training method for me. Because every encounter with foreign cultures, languages, customs, habits and peculiarities inevitably means that you have to get involved with something new. Nothing expands your comfort zone as intensively as regular travel. And it doesn't matter whether you are traveling to the other side of the world or just visiting a new region of your home country. One thing is certain: you will be a different person when you return.
Leaving your comfort zone #6: One new thing every day
A habit that I developed many years ago in my job as a Keynote Speaker and Author I have established is as follows: Every day I incorporate something into my work that I've never done before. This can be small things like changing a single word, but also bigger things like replacing a particularly important story in one of my Keynotes. Here, too, the intention is to turn the new into the normal. You should definitely try out this tip. Not only is it extremely powerful, it's also a lot of fun.
Leaving your comfort zone #7: Find a change buddy
As is so often the case in life, leaving your comfort zone is more fun in pairs. It is therefore advisable to find a change buddy with whom you can share new experiences. This will not only increase your motivation, but also ensure the necessary commitment to your plans. A change buddy can be a friend, a family member or even a colleague. The main thing is that your goals are similar and you trust each other.
Out of the comfort zone - a conclusion
Real life and extraordinary success always happen outside your comfort zone. Because that's where unknown paths, crazy ideas and never-before-tried behaviors await you. But the more often you face up to these changes, the more likely you are to grow as a person and become a better boss, a more successful entrepreneur or a happier manager.
The most important success factor is that you don't see leaving your comfort zone as a temporary project, but as a special project. Mindset and a general attitude to life. This will not only make your everyday life more colorful, intense and beautiful, but also more successful. I therefore wish you lots of fun and unforgettable experiences as you try out these 7 tips!
Sincerely,
Yours Ilja Grzeskowitz
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