Comfort zone is a situation in which you feel comfortable with your present level of average achievement or non-achievement. There is no real desire to move out of your comfort zone to overcome your inability to initiate or begin something new. As a result, your ability and determination are not being tested and you remain where you are for as long as you are not prepared to take risks.
People in comfort zone typically live a passive existence and refuse to accept responsibilities which involve risks, and having to be accountable. Living in the comfort zone is safer as you need not have to shoulder any responsibility. You move through life aimlessly or involuntarily waiting things to happen rather than taking action to cause change. Accepting responsibilities involves being self-reliant and taking risks.
Since there is no certainty of success in taking risks which involves moving out of your comfort zone, there is considerable reluctance among you to do anything as everything involves risks. However, you need not take unnecessary risks. By taking calculated risks, you are likely to be on course to overcome all your unpleasant emotions caused by the self-perceived threat of danger, pain or harm. Your unwillingness to do something can only change when something happens to you or you make a firm decision to change your personal situation. Something that happens to you must be big enough to jolt you out of your comfort zone. It has to shock you deeply in order to make you act or change, a good example of which is the loss of your job.
It’s a harsh fact of life that you know your lives are not growing or developing, yet you refuse to change out of fears. Indeed, the greatest obstacle to your personal progress is fears, the most common of which are fear of failure and fear of rejection. The fear of failure prevents you from making decisions to get out of your comfort zone. You provide yourself with feeble and convenient excuses to stay put. After all, if you don’t do anything it’s impossible for you to fail, so why do something and risk failure. When you are griped by fear of rejection, your anxiety is centered on the possibility of not being accepted or believed.
Staying in your comfort zone is so entrenched a habit that change to many people is virtually impossible if not already impossible. Your diehard habit ensures you are unwilling to change or give up your ideas or ways of behaving, even when there are good reasons to do so. You would rather remain in the same position and allow the continued existence of the negative and unhelpful circumstances you are in.
When you finally decide in favour of change, treat it with extreme care knowing that change must begin from the inside out. There is no way external events can change you. If someone who has been poor suddenly comes into possession of a million dollars but with a poverty consciousness, they are likely to lose the million through extravagance and revert to their previous hand-to-mouth existence. They have to transform themselves from the inside which in this case is changing their lack mentality towards abundance. This is the only way that they can experience a life of being plentiful or prosperous. Similarly, you already have a poor self-image which you must first modify. In other words, you must change how you see yourself. Gradually, a new personality emerges and you can then think, act and behave in accordance with your new self.
Once you are in the comfort zone, you lack the inspiration to do or want more. Even when you are not happy with your present circumstances, or you need or want something very much, you are unwilling to take risks in order to change them or get what you want. So what is happening here is that you are doing what you have always done and getting what you have always got.
It’s up to you to act now and decisively to free yourself from the comfort zone. Once out of it, you begin to develop, expand and progress until without awareness, you lapse into another comfort zone and the cycle begins. It’s up to you to stagnate, or grow and develop.
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