Lifestyle Balance, Philosophy

A comfort zone: Should I stay or should I go?

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You hear it a lot: get out of your comfort zone! In order to succeed, you should step out of your comfort zone! You see motivational pictures with circles drawn where your comfort zone is depicted as a small miserable circle and just there – at a just slight distance – is a big bright circle of magic that is supposed to happen the next moment you step out of your comfort zone. Yeah right…

I don’t argue that you need to stretch yourself from time to time and that you do need to face your fears (especially given that most of them are actually nothing but an illusion), and that you do need to step out there and dare to follow your dreams and so on. But what a lot of people forget is that you cannot step OUT of your comfort zone if you haven’t first stepped IN there. That is somewhat linked to one of my previous posts about norms (link) – there is way too much pressure from the outside telling you how you should live. However, people do have different pace in life and different circumstances, different experiences they went through. A lot of people at this very moment are struggling to find their comfort zone!

I was there, I know what I am talking about. When you move to a foreign country, when you change your career, when you just gave birth to your child, and in many-many more situations you feel so vulnerable, you are so damn out of your comfort zone already! And somehow the “big bright circle of magic” is also nowhere to be seen at that moment.

So if you already have a lot falling on you, before you boldly follow Baumgartner and jump from the stratosphere, take a deep breath first and search for your “small miserable circle of comfort zone”. Get in there, get yourself a comfortable pillow and heal a bit.

Give yourself a permission to push the pause button from time to time and take a moment to reflect on who you truly are and what you truly want. And then, and only then, when you are back to being a strong lioness (or a lion) with a shiny, iridescent hair instead of a ragged, tattered kitten, then you can, and then you actually should, step out of your comfort zone and head towards your dreams. But not before. Whatever everyone says.

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15 thoughts on “A comfort zone: Should I stay or should I go?”

  2. I actually saw a video on YouTube, a few months back, in which the vlogger went as far as to say that people who remain in their comfort zones are narcissists! I was astounded by the ignorance of it. As you say, people remain in their comfort zones for valid reasons. They shouldn’t be shamed into doing things they’re not comfortable with, just for the sake of living up to other people’s expectations and misguided judgements.

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  3. As soon as you leave your usual zone- life starts and brings you new opportunities.Sometimes you do it by yourself, sometimes life makes you to do it. But one is for sure: if you stay in usual comfort zone you might miss something interesting.

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