Ways to Reach Your Growth Zone by Coming Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Stepping out of your comfort zone to overcome your fears takes a huge amount of courage and the willingness to grow. It is not an easy road to take but every step you take would take you one step closer to breaking the chain of fear. In life, we get many opportunities to get out of our comfort zone but to grab the right one becomes tough sometimes.

Sometimes, lack of motivation becomes the reason behind living in the comfort zone. For obvious reasons, people do not find it convenient to leave their comfort place when their needs are easily met by being in it. Our mind is the one that controls us and holds us back.

What is the comfort zone?

The term ‘comfort zone’ came into existence in the year 1991. According to the psychologist, Judith Bardwick, “The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk”.

Advantages of leaving your comfort zone?

Out of numerous benefits, I am writing down a few of the major indirect advantages of leaving your comfort zone for your own good.

For the achievement of self-actualization

It is the process of attaining one’s full potential. Self-actualization works as a factor of motivation and pushes one’s self to step out of his comfort zone. It is a step towards our personal growth that we achieve after gaining the basic things in our life.

Having growth mindset

There are basically two types of mindsets, fixed mindset and growth mindset. People with fixed mindsets believe in having fixed abilities to perform a task. In case of any failure, there are chances of declining self-esteem and even it put a stop to further try it for the next time.

But in the growth mindset, there is an increase in motivation after every failure or downfall. The growth mindset believes in achieving great heights and there is a constant motivation. Therefore, leaving the comfort zone becomes a permanent trait of such mindsets. The achievement means a lot to the people with a growth mindset even if it takes to leave the comfort zone.

Quality of being resilient and anti-fragile

Reaching the growth zone helps in the expansion of our comfort zones which helps people to lead an unpredictable life. It prepares us to tackle different situations and accept them and their complications with a positive mindset. The state of being resilient is achieved which helps in developing antifragility.

On one hand, where resilience helps in getting back to the normal state after facing a high level of difficulty, antifragility helps in learning from the same experience. These two states help in building up the person’s capabilities to attainment.

High level of self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is believing in executing the required set of actions towards the achievement of a goal. Being in the comfort zone would never let you experience the feeling of self-efficacy. However, stepping out of it provides a trial run on the efforts you are putting in to achieve the goal. The success of the same process would let you get into the state of attaining self-efficacy

Some useful tips supporting the growing out of comfort zone

Management of stress

There are two terms that are related to stress; anxiety and excitement. There is not much difference between these two. The only difference is of the mindset. We often term anxiety as something bad and excitement as a positive effect. However, both of them have a similar effect on our brain. Being out of the comfort zone can easily turn any stressful situation into the excited one.

Priorities

It is not always necessary to step out of your comfort zone. Some things are best at being in your comfortable state. But there are tasks that are impossible to perform in our comfort zones. So, what we need is to set priorities and think about what needs us to grow out of our comfort zone and what does not.

Taking baby steps

Entering into the growth zone is not about leaving everything behind and performing totally uncomfortably. But there is always an option of taking small steps towards the goal and making sure that you move forward towards working on getting out of your comfort zone.

How to leave your comfort zone?

We all have heard a lot about leaving the comfort zone but how do we do that. Is there any set of instructions or theories written on it? Let’s read further to know more about it.

Change in performing the regular tasks

This is not much of a task actually. In order to get out of your comfort zone, you must begin with performing regular tasks. For instance, choosing the new route to go to your job, taking quick small decisions regarding what to wear or what to eat. These things would not make any difference at first but it would take you closer to getting you out of your comfort zone. The only goal is to start challenging yourself even it is for the smallest of the tasks.

Enhance your abilities professionally

Taking up new things in your professional life helps a lot. This helps you to attain new skills and gain confidence in the workplace. When you feel ready to take up new tasks, you grow professionally as well as mentally. It eliminates the fear inside you and gives you a chance to grow on a continuous basis.

Eating different

The Comfort zone starts with our eating habits also. We have defined our tastes and prefer eating comfort foods. But trying out a new diet can be a challenge for us. It would improve our health as well as our eating habits. The fit body would be ready to take up any challenges and help you grow.

Focus on working out

It is a very common problem when we think of starting an exercise on daily basis or joining a gym for a fit body. But we are never able to comply with our promises to ourselves. So, we should take a break from everything and start focusing on our body by regular exercises.

Be creative

Develop a habit of creativity for reaching the growth zone. For being creative, you can always write a poem or start drawing if sketching appeals to you. Or there are numerous other things like that will dig out your creative side.

Creativity always has an unpredictable result in which failure has an equal opportunity. So, it develops the fear and also helps to overcome it by the power of resilience. So, being creative gets you towards the growth mindset.

Challenging what you already know

We all have a certain set of beliefs. Sometimes, we get too uncomfortable when something goes against or opposite to our beliefs and values. So, to gain growth in that region, we must challenge our own beliefs. For that, you can opt for different options such as talking to someone with different beliefs, reading books on varying thoughts and values, or going to places where you can think in different ways. All these things would challenge your mindset and you can go out of your comfort zone.

Being honest

It does not sound like much of a difficult task but believes me, being honest would drag you out of your comfort zone like anything else and put you in a state where you would grow internally. It does not include writing a journal but talking to someone and telling them the whole truth. Sometimes, we cover up many stories and avoid awkward situations by lying to the other person. But in order to grow out of your comfort zone, you are expected to be honest and face the situation no matter how hard it becomes.

Moving towards the growth zone by leaving your comfort state is not at all easy it takes a lot of effort and hard work but every step you take is worth the end result. You might not be able to grab every opportunity out of fear or anything but that does not mean to reject every possibility coming to you by keeping your fear as an excuse.

It’s always about making a choice and keep choosing what’s good for you. Either you can go for the simple things and make the present comfortable or pleasing or you can go for the complex ones to have a better future.

Then, you will understand that it’s all about the mindset. The growth mindset would always lead you to better things and help you keep accomplishing better things in life.