Today we’re going to be talking about tips for getting out of your Comfort Zone.
Being in your Comfort Zone, is probably one of the most boring and dangerous places where you can be, in terms of making progress in your life. Being in your comfort zone means that you’re not changing at all, you’re quite happy doing what you’re doing and continuing to do what you do. It is more likely that you will start slipping slowly backwards in life instead of making progress in your life.
And the danger increases as soon as you add a toxin into the mix, whether that is alcohol or any other drug. As long as you continue to be content to just sit on the couch, sipping your Beers, drinking your Wine, smoking your cigarettes, maybe having a few doobies every so often, you will continue to constrict your life, in the sense of while you continue to do that same thing, you can’t do something else.
The average life consists of 27000 days. Every day you spend, doing that same thing and every hour you spend out of your face on some drug, is time that you could have spent doing something else to progress your life – doing something that is better for you and for everyone else around you.
I’m not saying that you always have to be in this discomfort zone and you always have to push yourself, onwards. There is a time and a place for everything. There’s a time for pushing yourself and there’s a time for bringing yourself backwards, relaxing and taking it easy.
I’ve been doing a personal challenge to run three and a half thousand kilometres between January to the end of the year and I’m on track to do it but it has been difficult. I didn’t allow for me take any rest days when setting the goal. I thought that I would get out there and do ten Kilometres every day but instead I have had to do fourteen Kilometres some days, to make up for the days when I had to take breaks.
I needed to take those breaks both because I wanted to relax and just do nothing, just sit down, watch television all day, not have to go out of the house and not have to talk to anyone and not to have to do anything – but to just zone in on myself – be with myself or just be with myself and Esther to recharge my batteries.
I’m an introvert and introverted people need to be on their own to recharge themselves. Walking also helps me to do that, so there’s no problem with that, but it’s the actual getting out there every day and doing the 10 kilometres. I am going to achieve the Goal but next year I’m going to reduce the target a little bit, just to take that into account.
There is nothing wrong with you taking a break and saying to yourself, today I’m just going to do nothing, today I’m going to waste this full day just doing nothing, just watching re-runs of whatever show you like to watch or watching old movies or watching whatever, playing video games. Although you have to understand that you’re not going to get anywhere if you do that every day, moderately have your days off and then the rest of the time push yourself, to do the things that you want to do.
So how can you get outside of your Comfort Zone. What are my tips, what would I do?
The thing I’d tell you to do is to regularly try something new. It doesn’t have to be something big. People think that getting outside of your comfort zone entails standing on the edge of a bridge and tying a bungee cord around your ankles and jumping off the bridge, jumping out of an aeroplane, coming down the side of a cliff, going deep sea diving or doing stuff like that, but it doesn’t have to be like, it can be just something small.
Try just eating something different when you go out next time. When I go to the Indian Restaurant I always have Vegetable Biryani, Naan Bread and Poppadum’s. I also have Madras Sauce, no change and I do that for week after week after week. This week I went down there and I ordered something completely different, I can’t even remember what it was but it was delicious. It wasn’t what I normally have but it was delicious.
You can read something new, you can watch a movie that you wouldn’t normally watch, read a book that you wouldn’t normally read, pick up a magazine that you wouldn’t normally look at, you can choose to watch a different TV channel, choose to cook something instead of eating out, take a day where you don’t look at Facebook or Twitter or your email account, take a day when you go completely off line and you refuse to look at the internet at all, take a day where you leave your phone left off.
You can take a day where you go on a different route when you go to work, you can sit in a different place when you go for your lunch, you can talk to somebody new, there are so many things that you can do that will push you ever so slightly outside of your comfort zone, but it’s these little pushes that every time that you take one and you do something new, it pushes ever so slightly against the walls of your comfort zone.
Pretend that you’ve got a bubble surrounding your life, a bubble surrounding you a personal bubble and this bubble is every time you push against it and you do something outside of your comfort zone it expands just ever so slightly and then the discomfort zone which you’ve pushed yourself into is eventually merged into your comfort zone. Your comfort zone takes up that space and gets that little bit wider and the more you do this for yourself the wider and bigger your comfort zone gets.
So, in the long run, you’re doing your doing yourself a really big favour. You building trust in yourself and proving that you can do things without having too much fear about it. Everything is going to have a little bit of fear, but fear is good. Fear is actually the thing that drives you forward.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes and if you’re not making mistakes you must be sitting down on your arse and you’re doing nothing and what’s the point in that. So, that it’s from me, come on over to the website and sign up for our daily newsletter to a video into your inbox every day and some helpful and useful advice.
Until next time…
Stay Safe
Keep the Alcohol out of Your Mouth
Good Luck to You
Take Care of Yourself
Onwards and Upwards!
I totally agree with this message and the need to occasionally experience life out of your “comfort zone”. Over the past few years I have become addicted to bicycle touring. Nearly everyone I talk to about my journeys seem to respond with; “I wish I could do something like that”. The fact is, they can easily learn to do it but the fear of the unknown is often too powerful for them to overcome. When you consider quitting alcohol ingestion, it is the same fear of the unknown that many cannot overcome. They worry about how they will fit in socially as a non-drinker or how they will deal with the stress of life without the escape route that alcohol almost effortlessly provides. And without stepping out of their comfort zone they will never know that they will survive and actually flourish living a life without the crutch of alcohol.
It’s the same with quitting drinking. Cycling is not that difficult to do. You learn how to go further and faster at a gradual pace. You don’t learn how to do those things overnight. You have to build up your stamina and strength. The easiest part of quitting drinking is not putting the stuff into your mouth any more. You control every drop. The hardest part is stepping outside of your comfort zone, learning how to push yourself further away from alcohol and into other things, other more beneficial areas. So the hardest part is doing all of these things while not having the option of taking a drink when the going gets tough.