Live Outside Your Comfort Zone

Your comfort zone is an interesting topic. In some ways, it's an easy topic, because it's easy to understand the idea of going outside your comfort zone. In other ways, it's more difficult to do unless you're conscious of it and unless you have intent in and around it. Then it's very easy to get into a series of repetitive behaviours and actions that you do each day, without giving too much thought to the idea of stretching yourself outside your comfort zone.

One of the stories that I wanted to share with you today is out of the book that I wrote, called Being More Human. I talk about my comfort zone in the book, and I just wanted to share a section with you. So, this story is about when I worked in the humanitarian aid sector, and this was a long time ago when I was about 21. My comfort zone was permanently stretched beyond any recognizable shape. I was living away from home for the first time in another country and working in a professional job for the first time, which happened to be in a refugee camp. Another first, I was thrown into the deep end and was designing a six-week training program to prevent the re-abandonment of refugee families. Followed by setting up a multimillion-dollar aid operation in Kosovo, and then recruiting hundreds of local and expatriate staff from numerous countries around the globe. My comfort zone did not live here. In that example, I was so far out of my comfort zone, that it was arguably too far outside of my comfort zone.

It's an interesting thing with your comfort zone because you won't experience growth unless you step outside of it.

It works the same way with your muscles. If you imagine that you're going to the gym and you want your muscles to grow bigger, then what you do at the gym is work out and allow your muscles to grow bigger. But there's a function of that happening, your muscles have to tear their muscle fibers, and then they repair into the new space. That's what makes you get bigger and bigger. Your comfort zone works the same way.

You might have a comfort zone about not ever wanting to speak on stage, many people are afraid of speaking on stage, and it's the last thing on the earth that they would want to do. But speaking on stage operates just the same as any other skill that you're learning. If you do it once, it's a bit tricky. If you do it twice, it's a little bit easier, but when you do it three times, you're a little less clunky. By the time you have done it 10 times, you're starting to feel very confident about the idea that this is what you can do. So, you can apply that to learning any new skill.

If you take an active step outside your comfort zone, you'll be in the zone of learning new skills. Currently, my son is just learning how to drive, and you can see his mind going through the process of learning, adjusting, becoming consciously competent, and unconsciously competent. Which is the four-step process that you go through when learning.

So, this idea of your comfort zone is very applicable to any area of your life. It could happen in small things in your world. It might be something like buying coffee from the same coffee shop and ordering the same coffee every morning. Well, why don't you go and try somewhere different? Try a different shop down the street, try a different coffee shop provider, walk a different way to work, or drive a different way to work.

There are so many little things that we can do daily for us to go outside our comfort zone and I encourage you to try it today.

One of the interesting things about going outside your comfort zone is that it re-energises you and it brings energy back into your life and what you are doing now. Energy is critical because it is how we all exist through energy. We are all made up of atoms and energy, and we talked a lot about this at our Superhuman Summit, which is currently on YouTube now.