Leaving Your Comfort Zone

Who likes to be uncomfortable? Certainly not me. I like my nice warm shower. I like my nice comfortable bed. I like air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter. Most of us like our comforts. 

So Henry Cavill, most famously known as Superman, and for The Witcher recently put out “Comfort is a drug. It's addictive, give a weak man regular sex, good food and cheap entertainment. And he'll throw his ambitions right out of the window. The comfort zone is where dreams go to die.” 

Now, by no means, am I comparing myself to Henry Cavill. Other than the obvious physical differences, I grew up in the 70s. In the 80s, I had everything that I needed. I grew up in a middle class family, we had air conditioning, we had heat, never missed a meal, did fairly well in school had a couple of older sisters, I had everything that I needed, I had television, and when VCRs came around, we got VCR so that we can start recording things when you weren't home, which was great. I had a great upbringing. The challenge was when I needed to choose a college to go to I wanted to go for mechanical engineering. So I chose a local college not that far from my house. And what I really wanted to do is I wanted to live at home because it was more comfortable, it was a better place for me to be, at least in my mind, what actually wound up happening is I wound up living there, which was pretty scary for me, I get to college, and I don't even know how to do laundry. I'm not even sure how to care for myself in a lot of different ways. And that sounds funny. 

No surprise, that first semester of college, I was home, I think every weekend. And it took until the middle of the second semester, till I started to feel comfortable staying at college, till I started to see the benefits of doing so. I had new friends, I had activities, and I finally got to the point where I liked college, I liked being there. And I felt more comfortable even though I was pushed out of my comfort zone, even to the point, as the years went on, I actually stayed in my college town even for my summers, and then lived with a group of guys for a couple of years after that. 

What's inside our comfort zone? 

Well, first off, we're safe there, we know what we're getting, we're safe, not a whole lot happens outside of the norm, which also makes it predictable. We know what we're going to get. 

It's controlled, we have some level of control in our comfort zone. And probably most important is I'm happy here, I'm very happy in my comfort zone. Why would I leave it? 

What's outside of our comfort zone? Well, just the opposite. 

It's not very predictable, is it? We have no idea what could go on, it does not feel very safe. I don't have those different things around me, that make me feel safe, that make me feel like I'm okay here. 

It's certainly not controlled. When I'm in a non controlled non comfort zone situation, I very much cannot be happy there. 

How much discomfort are we willing to take to protect our comfort zones? 

I have worked with a number of people over a number of years, there are people that invariably you get to a point where they're not real happy with their job. And we'll have a discussion and I'll say, “Well, you have two choices to either accept what's going on and try to make this better, or to go out and get another job.” And the amount of people that will just stick with the discomfort that's at the job. Even if they complain about it all the time, as opposed to having to go out and look for another job is amazing to me, because they're willing to put up with that level of discomfort because going out and finding another job in that whole unknown is just it's too big for them. So they're willing to put up with that level of discomfort, even though they're really not happy. 

What are some typical responses when you get pushed outside of your comfort zone? 

You get angry, this is not what I wanted. This is not what I expected. I don't like this here, we get angry. 

We get fearful. This is really scary. And we try to figure out how to respond. But really sometimes that fear can be very overwhelming. 

Withdrawal. As opposed to being out there and doing the things you need to do you pull back. I know me that is a typical response for me is to withdraw, to kind of avoid it the best I can and to hope in some ways that kind of just goes away because we get pulled into these situations. 

Those responses may in fact have some validity. You get put on the spot where they maybe could have planned it a little bit better, and you wouldn't have had been put on the spot. You weren't prepared. You weren't ready. You know, maybe it's because of somebody else that you're put in an uncomfortable spot. And you go well yeah, had they just planned it better. Had they been, you know, thinking more of me about this whole situation, they wouldn't have put me in this spot. So, anger, fear and withdrawal may be very natural responses to being pushed outside of our comfort zone. 

But those responses aren't always the right response, we need to consent to being uncomfortable, we can either resent it, we can get all angry about it, or we can consent and say, okay, not my choice, but I'm okay with this going forward, there are always going to be things that happen outside the norm. And it makes it very challenging, it makes it very difficult. I worked for a millwork company back in the end of the 2000s, and wound up managing the biggest project that we ever had. And there were times for a number of months, three to four months, I was going in seven days a week, leaving my house at five o'clock in the morning, not getting home till six or seven o'clock at night, seven days a week, just to get this project done. And I will tell you, that was very challenging, but we wound up getting the project done, it was a great project. And I wound being able to do more in the company, because I was able to learn a lot more during that period of time. And I built a number of relationships with a number of really good people during that time that I would not have built if I didn't have that time of being uncomfortable. 

So you may not like hearing this. But our comfort zones are boring and restrictive, for the very reasons that we like them. 

They're predictable, we can always predict what's going to happen, or at least to some degree, we know what's going to happen. There's very little change that happens in us. Because it's predicted and controlled and safe. There isn't a lot of change that happens in us in the comfort zone. Because if everything is predictable, so are we along the same lines, the most important part is growth in our own lives can actually stop. And in some cases, because we're so comfortable, we can actually go backwards, we can actually lose growth, and actually start regressing a little bit in certain ways. All those times where I was pushed out, or people were pushed out of their comfort zones, or opportunities for growth, we got better on the other side of them. Because there's not a lot of growth that happens within your comfort zone. 

Most growth happens when we are challenged. My boys were in Boy Scouts, the growth that they had, when they were pushed out of the norm, and the challenges that they had, and you see them having greater character because of that growth. 

So what do we do? 

I think we have to let go of control. Because we're never gonna be able to control every situation that comes. And we have to just be able to respond to that and know it's going to come. 

I think we also have to do a better job of managing expectations in our life, that we can't expect everything to always be the same way. And I think we really have to recognize that it's those times I'm pushed, those times I'm challenged, is when actually the most growth happens.

For example, if you need to save money, while there's things you're not going to ever spend money on. If you want to eat better and lose weight, while you're gonna be hungry, you may need to get out and exercise. But those are good things because of the fruit that you see from it. 

But I think the more difficult ones is what happens when those situations come about that we can't control what needs to be our response? 

Sometimes our initial response is hard to control, we have to just deal with that. And it's okay to respond. But then we have to learn how to get to the point of at least resigning ourselves, okay, I will do this even better, to consent to that uncomfortable situation that's coming up. Because you know, it's an opportunity for growth. So to be able to get to that point of embracing it and saying, You know what, this is really, okay. I'm okay with this. And we actually in a good way, if we're embracing it become people in some ways that we didn't recognize before, we didn't even know we had it in us, Hey, I did things I never knew I was capable of. How amazing is that? 

It's important for us to take those risks, both the calculated ones, and sometimes the ones that are outside of our calculation, because you never know what's going to happen. 

I know God's got a plan for my life. I don't always trust them. But I take the shot. And there's been so many times that there's been so much growth that have come from those areas, even if things go wrong, you can wind up growing, so does it really wind up being such a bad thing. 

I think the question we all have to ask ourselves is how hard am I fighting to stay inside my comfort zone? Am I spending a lot of energy, just to be in my comfort zone and control it? Because maybe that energy could be better spent. And I think we all have to be honest with ourselves and look at our lives and say, how much energy am I putting towards this? And maybe there's other ways I can do things. Maybe I need to grow, maybe there's things I can choose to grow. And certainly there's going to be opportunities that come that we can't choose. So we have to respond to those well. 

Are you growing? Or are you standing still? Or are you even regressing?