In this world of personal growth we often hear about getting outside our comfort zones and having the courage and confidence to push through all our fears to be a different, more successful version of ourselves. It is often described as being a challenge, an uphill struggle, we say we need to get ‘comfortable being uncomfortable’ in order to change.
This blog post is going to propose a different way of looking at personal growth. I have developed a strong aversion to this language and have actually found in trying to take this approach I have, guess what, found myself struggling and feeling challenged at every turn. So I asked myself what if there was a different way to change?
Can we grow, evolve and develop without this relentless Sisyphean push to continuously extend ourselves beyond our comfort zones?
I have battled with this idea of getting outside my comfort zone for a long time. Is my comfort zone something I can define with a boundary that I can simply step over every now and again when I feel the urge to push myself? Or is it something more nebulous…a thought pattern that I need to bravely find my way out of in order to elicit some change in my life? Is it a physical place or does it just exist in my mind? Is it possible to feel safe everywhere? If that’s the case then how do I go about finding the edge of my comfort zone? Do we need to push through comfort zones to grow…is that really the only way?
Is there a reason why life needs to be split into zones where we feel comfortable and those where we feel uncomfortable?
I’m not going to answer all these questions in this blog post. I might not answer any of them in fact, mostly because my comfort zone has been an ever-shifting place that morphs itself unexpectedly from moment to moment anytime I think I have it sussed out.
Sometimes the edge feels very clear, where my body says “No!” but my mind says “Come on, we can move through this!” Alternatively there are moments where I find myself way outside of what I thought was my comfort zone actually feeling totally fine.
The point I am making here is that holding on to an idea of what our comfort zone is and then pushing ourselves to cross a specific line to get out of it and scare ourselves sufficiently in order to progress to the next stage of our own personal growth is not helpful if you actually want to get on with your life.
The comfort zone construct actually just creates a barrier between you and what you want. “Stay in your comfort zone and you won’t get what you want. Success happens only outside your comfort zone” is the idea here. Well who says…and why should we be listening to them?
I would argue you don’t need to be listening to anyone else but yourself when in pursuit of whatever success looks like to you. There is no need to put yourself in uncomfortable situations in the name of personal growth if you don’t want to. You can have any and everything you’ve ever wanted by operating effectively within a range of behaviour that feels good and manageable to you.
In fact I would argue even further as to say the only way you will achieve the life you dream of living is by taking action steps that feel manageable and appropriate, not by trying to push yourself to some sort of extreme out of fear to effect change.
So let’s explore another way of looking at this idea, for now drop the idea of pushing outside your comfort zone through fear and instead come with me and let’s look at something much more helpful and way less scary.
If you want to grow, evolve and develop, what you really need is courage in action and confidence in yourself. These are mutually supportive behaviours so when you do one you help grow the other and vice versa. But you do have to do both!
Courage in action is reactive and is something that arises in the moment. You come up against an activity which feels like an edge. It is something that you have never done before, there might be some risk and you have no idea whether you are capable of doing it. You use courage to step up and do this activity. Afterwards you feel relief, you feel proud of yourself and you feel like you have achieved something.
Confidence in yourself is proactive. It involves encouraging yourself, positively affirming yourself and spending time taking care of and nurturing yourself. Building confidence in yourself can be done anytime anywhere all day everyday. We don’t need to do anything scary to build confidence. We can build confidence in ourselves by simply getting to know ourselves better and then acknowledging, encouraging and speaking kindly to ourselves.
The ‘pushing boundaries’ construct is associated with fear and struggle. It is terrifying to step outside of our comfort zone in case we fail but we must do it so that we can grow. But that is because we have not grown confidence in ourselves first. It’s scary because we have no idea what will happen to us moving through this new activity. We are going in completely blind which of course does feel terrifying. Then when we are out the other side we breathe a sigh of relief and then feel happy and have a rush of adrenaline to show us we have successfully done the hard thing. We pat ourselves on the back and feel proud. We then add that activity to the list of things we can now do. Woohoo, we have grown we are now more confident in that thing. In this construct we are using the courage in action to grow our confidence in being able to do that action.
That is fine. But what if we don’t want to feel scared all the time? I personally am done feeling anxious and fearful of new activities. I don’t want to keep approaching any new task with fear, or even seeking things which feel uncomfortable so that I can feel the rush and relief and pride of having completed them.
Growing confidence in this way is very slow. You have to keep finding new tasks and conquering them and then adding that to your list of things you feel confident doing. Luckily, there is another way.
Instead of constantly trying to find our edge or things that scare us, let’s instead build our confidence in ourselves first. Building confidence in yourself first means there are far fewer things that will scare you. Having self-confidence means knowing who you are and knowing that when you approach a new task you will either succeed or not but it doesn’t matter and it is not a source of fear either way. With self-confidence you simply just ‘do the thing’. You don’t have to push through a boundary or climb a wall. The idea pops in for this new task, you say woohoo let’s try this and see how it works out. There is no struggle, no internal dilemma, no anxiety or fear.
Self-confidence is having a voice in you that knows the only time fear is appropriate is when there is a risk of harm or death. Any other task or activity does not warrant fear or bravery all it takes is a yes. Courage in action does not become this big moment of needing to overcome a huge hurdle but instead simply checking in with ourselves as to whether this feels like the ‘right’ thing to do, i.e. whether it is in line with our personal values and beliefs, and then moving forward with it.
As someone who has spent a long time pushing herself outside of her comfort zone through endless fear barrier after fear barrier I can tell you one thing, it is terrifying and did not make me feel more confident. It did not lead me to the life of my dreams, it lead me to panic attacks, depression and cripplingly low self-worth.
The only thing that grew my self-confidence was working on my self-confidence. Constantly doing things that scared me just made me feel scared. Crazy, huh? And yet…that is what we are being told is the only way to grow.
I’m calling BS. You don’t need to be scared to grow. You need to take care of and nurture yourself so that the world feels less terrifying. From that place you will be so much more able to cope with new things and move outside your so-called ‘comfort zone’ in such a way that you will grow and change with ease and comfort.