Stuck In Your Comfort Zone?

What Happens When We Stay Stuck In Our Comfort Zone?

 

Stuck in your comfort zone?  Before we move into looking at tips and ideas about getting out of your comfort zone, or expanding it into the realm of possibility, it’s important that we take a closer look at what happens when we stay stuck in it.

When we get and stay too comfortable where we’re at and don’t grow as people for too long, it doesn’t end well. Think of these as negative side effects of staying stuck in the comfort zone. Use them as motivation to get going and stretch yourself. Notice them when they start to rear their ugly head and do something about it. See them in your loved ones and offer help and support so they can grow, get out of their comfort zone and start to feel how wonderful and amazing it is to step into the realm of possibility. In short, use your knowledge of what happens when you get stuck in your comfort zone as fuel to go out there and do it anyway.

Low Self-Esteem And Confidence

As we already discussed, one of the first things you notice when you stay in your comfort zone for too long, is that your self-confidence suffers. With it your self-esteem and how much you value yourself goes down as well. With nothing new and exciting happening and no personal growth going on, it’s no wonder that we start to feel down.

As a speaker, when you stay in your comfort zone, you lose your momentum.  When you stop giving speeches because you are a little afraid of how you will be received, or you are recovering from a difficult evaluation of your last speech, you start to lose your confidence.

When we start to lose confidence in ourselves, we stop taking risks. We stop pushing the borders of our comfort zone even a little. We stay firmly planted where we feel safe and in control. While that may be a comfortable feeling, and fine for a little while, it also causes our self-esteem to drop.  That makes it more difficult to get started again and after a while, we may drop out.

We get a lot of pride and feeling of accomplishment out of trying something new or doing something hard. In short getting out of our comfort zone, even just a little, is good for our self-esteem. Of course the opposite is true as well. When we are stuck in our comfort zone, our self-esteem starts to drop right along with our self-confidence. This in turn makes it harder and harder to step outside the zone.

Break this vicious cycle before you head down towards the next set of negative side effects of being stuck.

 

Depression and Anxiety

Once your self-esteem and your confidence drop lower and lower, you may start to experience depression and/or anxiety. Neither is a comfortable state of mind. You don’t want to get down so low that it’s hard to get out of bed or off the couch. Once depression sets in, it becomes very hard to get out there and approach the borders of your comfort zone. You just don’t have the energy to get out there and do stuff.

With anxiety, you’re in a constant state of high alert. You feel worried and scared, which also makes it harder and harder to have new experiences and grow as a person. While there are certainly medical conditions and other factors that can cause and worsen both depression and anxiety, staying inside your comfort zone is one factor and something that’s well inside your own control.

Go out there and take action. You’ll feel better for doing so.

You’re Missing Out!

The big problem when you’re stuck in your comfort zone is that you’re allowing life to pass you by. You’re missing out on all the fun and exciting stuff. Worst of all, you don’t even notice, because you’re so firmly planted in your own comfort zone that you don’t even realize what’s out there in the realm of possibility.  Remember, the only limits you have are the ones you place on yourself.  Set your goals, get your priorities straight and head out that door!

 

 

 

To expanding your possibilities…

Fran Watson

 

 

P.S.  You can do it…one baby step at a time…