How to get out of your comfort zone 8 effective strategies

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Charles McCarthy
How to get out of your comfort zone 8 effective strategies

Your comfort zone is the space in which you move every day. The comfort zone is defined as the set of beliefs and actions that we are used to and that are comfortable for us. It is a space that can be both physical and mental.

As its name indicates, it is a comfortable space. In it you feel comfortable and safe. Your comfort zone is a job that you have been in for several years and there is hardly any room for surprises or unforeseen events. Your comfort zone is watching the same kind of movies and listening to the same style of music.. Your comfort zone is to buy in the same supermarket and cook the same dishes.

Your comfort zone is a relationship that no longer fulfills you. Your comfort zone is to take the same path to return home. Your comfort zone is to always do the same thing on your birthday. Your comfort zone is to dine in the same place on New Year's Eve each year. Your comfort zone is hanging out with the same friends in the same bars. Your comfort zone is to always practice the same sport. Your comfort zone is to wake up always at the same time.

There is nothing negative about enjoying your comfort zone. All your life you have been working and fighting to create that comfortable space that surrounds you right now. The comfort zone of each one of us develops in parallel to our development as people who occupy a position within society.

During childhood and youth, life becomes a succession of events that will define the foundations of what will be your comfort zone in the future: finish school, finish high school, your first date, your first career, your first job interview, your first girlfriend, your first house, your first child, etc..

However, over the years the number of events in our life decreases compared to our childhood and youth. Perhaps for that reason it is the time of which we keep the most memories. In my case, with the arrival of stability every year it has become a copy of the previous one.

I have always had a great memory to identify any event in my life with the year (even the month) in which it occurred. Since I have reached stability it is much more difficult for me to achieve it.

When I was little I dreamed of being able to one day enjoy the stability I have now. When I was 15, I wrote a kind of declaration of intent on a sheet of paper in which I was urged to reread those lines once I finished my degree and had found a good job. That is to say, I would read that sheet again once I had found what for me at that time represented full happiness

Today I have 28 years  33 years and I have achieved both things, career and work. However I think that happiness was found closer to me when I was 15 than now. At 15 I thought that happiness was a goal. Today I have realized that happiness is a path. At the age of 15, he thought that he would achieve happiness once he finished all the projects he was carrying out. And that thought is what helped me to continue fighting and continue on the path.

Today I have understood that I have to embark on new projects to continue on the path that leads to happiness. I recently heard Punset say that happiness is in the waiting room of happiness.

In order not to deviate too much from the title of this post, I have found a way to stay within my comfort zone (what I craved when I was 15) while trying to include new events in my life (what I miss when I was 15 ).

This is my personal experience and it doesn't have to be useful to everyone. However, if you have been reading what I write here for a while and still keep coming back, you may share some of my concerns. Basically I divide getting out of the comfort zone in the short term and in the long term. I will try to explain both concepts:

Getting out of the long-term comfort zone

Leaving your comfort zone in the long term is embarking on new projects that will take time to finish. In my case, I can give as examples the fact of studying a new career or creating a website that needs updates. When I decided to start running my goal was to finish a half marathon (21 km.) I spent 4 months running until I managed to achieve it.

Once I did, the half marathon became part of my comfort zone. To get out of this comfort zone again, I can set new long-term goals how to reduce the time to finish it or even consider doing a full marathon (42 km.)

Leaving the comfort zone in the short term

In the short term is where we really find the interesting. Without the short term there can be no long term. If one day in particular I had not decided that I would run 20 minutes that afternoon, I could never have finished a long-term half marathon. That day I decided to get out of my comfort zone (go to the gym on a regular basis) and started running, which I hadn't done before.

My advice is that you try to get out of your comfort zone at least once a day. Ask yourself what you would like to change in your life. Would you like to be more sociable? Try to start a conversation a day with a stranger. Do it for 3 days in a row. Surely on the fourth day it costs you less. Get up an hour earlier and prepare something to eat that you haven't done before. Surprise your partner with an unexpected visit to their workplace. Make that phone call you've been putting off for several days.

Without being too technical I will try to give an example related to my work, graphic design. Basically exist 2 layout programs, one of them is called Quark Xpress and I know him very well since I have always worked with that program. The other program is called Indesign and although it has better functionalities compared to Quark Xpress, I had never used it. One day I decided that the next job I received I would do with Indesign, whatever it takes.

I was commissioned to do a job and I did it with Indesign taking almost three times the time it would have taken if you had used the program you already knew. Thanks to that day I decided get out of my comfort zone and I used a program that I did not know, today I have learned to handle it with ease and its best features save me a lot of time compared to the old program.

8 easy ways to get out of your comfort zone

Every day we move in a comfort zone, that is, all those actions, thoughts, emotions, routines that we do daily.

Many people tell me that even though that comfort zone is not comfortable at all It is very difficult for them to get out of it. Many times due to irrational thoughts that appear again and again causing emotions such as fear, anxiety, apathy and demotivation.

“Every day I wake up and see the same thing. My life has no meaning, I just go to work, get home, keep it up to date and fix other people's problems. " I'm worse than wearing, what's more, I don't even know what I'd like to do "

I usually compare the comfort zone with the diet. What if every day we ate the same food? It is clear that we would get sick, imagine that we only ate oranges every day, oranges are very tasty but they do not provide us with everything our body needs.

The same thing happens with the comfort zone. If you do the same routines every day without leaving the plate, you are going to get sick stress, anxiety, depression ... And it is very important that our brain receives daily and different stimulation.

Learning new things, traveling, recovering old hobbies, doing sports, eating, changing daily routines such as your place at the table at mealtime, placing things differently ...

Remember! Increasing your comfort zone does not mean that you change as a person, it simply you grow and develop, you mature. And that is formidable.

I offer you 8 simple ways to get out of your comfort zone:

1. Close your eyes. Come close your eyes.

Now imagine all those dreams and goals that you have always had, imagined but that for some reason you always leave on the way. You got it?

All right now take a pen and paper and write down all those goals, it doesn't matter if you think they are unattainable, those long-term goals think how to transform them into short and medium-term goals. Any goal is worth: buying a kite, skydiving, going to a paradisiacal beach, traveling, buying that blouse, making a family meal ...

Try to make your goals include your family, friends, personal development, nature, money and work, studies or learning, travel.

Now let's set expiration date, Well, if you only put your goals on paper, it is very difficult for them to be met. Choose a single goal to start doing in 1 month, another in 3 months and another in 6 months.

Bravo! You already have 3 goals to focus on, commit to yourself and organize yourself so that each week you can dedicate some time to them.

2. Another way to increase your comfort zone is to score those activities that you like so much and have stopped doing.

Write them on a piece of paper each of them and keep them in a box. Every day or every week you should take out a paper and try to carry out the activity that you have been assigned.

See what emotions you get from doing those activities that you like so much. Do they increase your motivation? Great, motivation is the engine for action, it will increase your self-esteem and self-confidence.

3. Don't forget to do sport

To fine-tune your hormones and reduce stress and anxiety

4. Get adequate sleep

Forget about computers and mobiles at night, and also try to use it as little as possible during the day, they really are a real waste of time and take you away from your reality.

5. Eat properly

This means fewer products that come in packages and more cooking foods that nature offers you: meats, fish, vegetables and many fruits, without forgetting nuts, eggs and cereals (which are not the cereals that you add to milk )

6. Socialize

You will not leave your comfort zone if you always move in the same circle. Recover old friends, meet new people, join an activity and meet your old friends at least once a week..

7. Relax and have fun

Find a time every day for yourself, let go of your hair, reserve that half hour. Did you already write it down in your agenda?

I hope that these resources help you to start your way out of your comfort zone. But to say goodbye, one last piece of advice. Guess what it is?

8. Forget your thoughts negative and irrational

You have no proof that they will happen, so ignore them and prove to yourself that they are not true..

Welcome to the other side of your comfort zone!

Get out of your comfort zone and into the magic zone

From my own experience, leaving the comfort zone is one of the keys to achieve a reinvention of a person.

We are by nature in states of comfort (comfort), our human nature, conditions us to try at all times, avoid threats that may threaten our existence, therefore we always seek to get closer to pleasure, and get away from displeasure.

So unconsciously, we are looking at all times, to stay within something called "comfort zone".

The afraid is the main factor that affects us when it comes to wanting to expand, or get out of our comfort zone, by genetics, we are afraid of the unknown.

This does not mean that staying within our comfort zone is wrong. If you ever want to exceed your expectations and get to improve in an amazing way, you will have to expand your comfort zone, for which you will have to leave it and adapt to new experiences, until you reach the zone of possibilities that I call Magic zone.

The comfort zone is the set of limits that prevent us from moving forward. When we exceed these limits, we broaden our perspective, and we achieve new horizons.

To do this, you must understand the following:

The comfort zone is a state of mind

Staying in a comfortable state of mind can become routine, boring, significantly preventing us from making any progress.. Losing the fear of leaving our comfort zone starts from within. From our thoughts, ideas and feelings.

Understanding that everything we perceive is nothing more than an interpretation that our brain gives us of the universe, allows us to see things differently. And perhaps, after all, that fear that we have to undertake and take action in our lives, be nothing more than a figment of our imagination.

You put the limits

Fully trust yourself, and know that everything that limits you physically and emotionally does so because you have decided (unconsciously) that it should be.. You are the one who defines your limits. It is you yourself who builds the barriers to prevent progress and get away from dangers (mostly imaginary).

The ideal when wanting to get out of your comfort zone, is to question yourself.

You will easily discover if your fears are real, or are simply imaginary, and if they are real, your refuge may be in those people who have overcome the obstacles that you now face as role models..

To experience

Leaving your comfort zone means doing something new, being curious will help you expand your limits, expanding them will be a matter of time.

Everything we do in our life is a habit, which allows us to get out of our comfort zone, it is simple through perseverance.

Try every day to do something new. Try taking different roads, visiting different places, talking to different people, or doing tasks in alternative ways. This little by little will lead you to accept the change and the new.

Constancy

If you do something new and adapt certain activities to your life, which are outside your comfort zone, they will be included in that comfort zone, leaving our comfort zone seems like a infinite cycle.

Only the persistence It will allow us to expand our comfort zone. And that success is a path, not a point of arrival.

Once we exceed the comfort zone we reach the magic zone where there are multiple possibilities, the limit is on you.

If we focus on our objectives, this zone of magic expands and the answer can come from multiple paths because there is more than one path to achieve our objectives..

In my coaching sessions I always tell my coachees that when dreams have wings they become goals and that everything starts with a dream, so what are you waiting for to get out of your comfort zone and achieve your dreams??

Why is it necessary to leave your comfort zone? To continue growing and innovating. Leaving your comfort zone is one of the basic pillars to continue growing and developing..

¿You can think of one more example to leave your comfort zone once a day?


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