Comfort zones are damaging us. Where we are trapped in

Who decides these comfort zones? You!

There is a lot that doesn’t happen the way we want. We know, you know, it all takes time. It asks time to get things settle down, to have things happen. Perseverance is an added key driving success. But still, having everything said in place, things are not happening.

Success is not happening. Outputs are not reasonable. Credibility is missing. Ideation is out of the picture. Efficiency is ridiculed. Procrastination is often occurring. And people aren’t yet able to figure out why that’s so happening.

You know why is it happening? People don’t understand what comfort zones really mean. More to it, they don’t realise nonconformity is a precondition to talking about bringing a revolution, by the means of innovation!

Life lesson number one: Change is the only constant in life – or so, said some wise men of yore.

However, change is something which a good many of us are not so fond of. We prefer conformity. We take to comfort zones like a fish takes to water. Nonetheless, the hard fact of life is that we sometimes (wait, many a time) have to step out of these arenas – have to do stuff we do not like or are good at.

Ever pondered, what’s that refraining you to speak at an industry conference having an opportunity in hand? The honest answer you get to yourself is really about being trapped in your comfort zone.

Our professional lives, if not our personal, demand this. And this becomes more and more apparent as we wish to climb the ladder of success. We have to learn to do things we do not have an inkling of. At times, we have to even do what makes us vastly uneasy and we are totally out of character doing it.

Learning is important. While learning, moving ahead with adapting our behaviour is significantly important too!

What does one do when such a narrative of future times comes knocking on our doors? We have to quickly come up with a game plan to deal with this situation – of being able to do something we may never even have thought of doing.

We have to learn to think out of the box about how to get all cosy with some concept we never wanted to accept. For this, say some, first and foremost, you have to be honest with yourself. Accept that you do not like or are not good at what you have to do. Ignoring thoughts around your inactions will only add more to the damage that already has been done!

We have to question ourselves time and again, why are our inactions happening in first place? Are we really serious about the thing that we once planned to do with great enthusiasm? Priorities do help us get out of our comfort zones but realisation, analysis and self-introspection will lead us build our future. And of course, never falling off again!

Make this new type of activity your behaviour – albeit in small steps. Take tiny steps in this direction – learn to play with your brain to somewhat start liking the idea of doing this new task. Read up on it. Try to think about it objectively. Make it your friend by learning about it. Ruminate on it and circumvent the various ways of navigating through this. Be positive about it. Break it up into several multi-tasks and get your way around it by doing them one at a time. Take frequent breaks. Reward yourself with every small victory over it.

Finally, take up the last chunk of this activity and plunge headlong into it. Anyhow, you will come out as a winner – you will certainly have achieved what you set out to do and would not even realise when this gigantic pillar was crossed.

Of all the things aforementioned, one of the most serious concerns is why don’t we question ourselves? Rather say, we avoid doing that. Every excuse you make to yourself only gets you trapped in your comfort zones.

Now, my two cents on another question, are those comfort zones really providing you comfort? Well, you have your answers!

Life lesson number two: If everything is coming your way, you are probably in the wrong lane!

This is a statement you just have to understand. Of course, reading it and comprehending it will make you uneasy. Bad news is it is meant to make you uneasy. Everyone likes things coming their way. Did you ever think of it this way – that you are in the wrong lane? Probably never.

Well, this is the harsh reality. Everything panning out the way you had envisaged or planned out, is a sign that you are soon going to fall asleep. You have been lullabied into thinking that it is your time now without you realising that complacency is a precursor to falling back; to idling; to getting sidestepped. Thus, it is best to realise that being in a state of optimal anxiety is better.

The worship of convention will never lead to astonishment, Tama J Kieves once said.

This is the one zone which is just a few steps outside the realm of comfort. It is that status when you are spurred on to perform your best but still are not in an uncomfortable or compromising position when you feel uneasy about what is happening around you.

Of course, comfort zones are spaces which are usually filled with routine activities which do not stress you out. They have very little or no anxiety in them and have no toxic element even touching them from afar. It is a low-risk zone and one is accustomed to its slow and steady pace. We gravitate towards comfort zones and even crave them at times just so that we are comfortable in our own skins.

However, like touched upon before, there come certain points in time, when you need to do things differently, or even do different things. Hence, be prepped up for some proactive action on how to go about peeping out of these comfortable spaces.

If the call of the hour is such, there is little that you can do other than adjusting with this new phase of life!

Never ever let anything take you away from giving away those comfort zones you chose to live in. Because your success and happiness might get carried away for real. Who will you blame then?

(With inputs from Ayush Garg).

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Hey, there? This article has been picked to be republished under the ‘Best of TNT’ series. It is a step further for the content to be contagious to make it counted yet again and for the ones who missed it!