What’s Your Comfort Zone?

Everyone has one! It’s that place where we feel safe, where we know what to do and how to do it without a sense of risk. And we tend to stay inside those mental boundaries because to step outside of it means going into unknown territory. And that often makes us anxious.

In biology it means the temperature range (between 28 and 30 degrees Centigrade) at which the naked body is able to maintain a heat balance without shivering or sweating. That’s a pretty narrow range!

It’s like when we set the house thermostat and then the air conditioner blows full cold until it hits the number we set as the top of our temperature “comfort” range.

So our “comfort” zone is actually our “familiar” zone.

Moving from the physical arena to the psychological arena, we tend to get stuck in particular grooves as old experiences, habitual thoughts, comfortable beliefs continue to “re-present” our past-what we believe we can and can’t do.

And do you see that those “grooves” could be seen as “ruts,” like a grave with the ends knocked out?

Remember Henry Ford’s quote,

If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.

Well, when it comes to our physical well being, we often work out and train our bodies with a certain amount of discomfort in order to achieve the anticipated benefit to both our health and our vanity!

But it seems more difficult to extract ourselves from our “old” thoughts, feelings, and habits. We create excuses or justifications to either procrastinate or to utterly avoid the discomfort of new thinking and new behavior. We become embedded in our conditioned reflex from the past.

We need to break free of that familiar zone. We ordinarily might call this our comfort zone, except it’s not particularly comfortable, simply familiar!

Typically, remaining in this zone contributes to feeling depressed, whereas moving out and beyond our border engages some anxiety. There’s a relationship between anxiety and depression that  reveals our movement-or lack thereof. And once we’re beyond it, the anxiety turns into self satisfaction at having expanded beyond our self-imposed boundaries.

The circle has become a bit larger as we’ve grown a bit. We get that “we can do it!”

To perpetually expand farther and farther into new territory, our “comfort” zone becomes immeasurably larger, and so does our life. We can literally break free of the old orbit.

What have you done to expand your comfort zone?

One of my proudest comfort zone expansions was two years ago, when I asked my younger sister to join me in going to  Tree2Tree Adventure Park in Oregon. It boasts a number of tree-top rope activities. And not ever having been noted for my athletic abilities, I found this quite a challenge.

And having become a woman of  “a certain age,” I figured I’d better do it before I no longer could!

 And I (we) did!

After our orientation and safety lesson, I found myself in front of a couple of boy scouts. After two of the challenges, I stepped back and graciously let the stronger and eager boys go ahead of me. (and I got a short rest!)

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it all the way through the rope challenges. It was touch-and-go for me. (and I wasn’t as graceful as the young gal in this photo!)

I know I’m not up to doing it now. But I’m pretty sure that I was the oldest person on the course then and I did make it through.

And I learned, once again, that I (we) can do more than we think; we can move beyond our self-imposed restrictions, and gain the deserved exhilaration of being more than we thought we could be.

What story can you share?

• Of reaching further that you thought you could go?
• In the areas of health, relationships, finances, work?
• Was it done by reaching out?
• Or was it by letting go of something you didn’t think you could let go of?

Tags: adventure, comfort zone, familiar, Henry Ford