The Safe Havens in Comfort Zones are Actually Dangerous
“….in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
–Benjamin Franklin, 1789
Benjamin Franklin’s list of life’s certainties hasn’t grown in hundreds of years: death + taxes. In this potential history-making moment, I will add one more item: comfort zones. Every human being has made plenty of choices to conform to their comfort zone.
After I checked several psychology dictionaries, I came up with this definition of “comfort zone:”
Comfort zone is a psychological state in which circumstances seem familiar to a person, and they are at ease using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance without anxiety due to expending extraordinary effort or risk.
This definition of comfort zone sounds like a wonderful way to go through life:
- Anxiety-free
- Deal with familiar activities and circumstances
- Count on consistent performance
- Expend ordinary effort and risk
Sounds great! However, it’s a short-term perspective, describing the immediate experience of a comfort zone.
When you reframe this definition of comfort zone to focus on the long-term consequences, the not-so-obvious limitations spell disaster to making significant achievements.
If you confine yourself to living with familiar circumstances, you will resist doing any unfamiliar tasks and fail to adjust to ever-changing circumstances.
If you stick to a limited range of comfortable behaviors, you will never develop new abilities or significantly improve your skill proficiency.
What if your steady/comfortable level of performance doesn’t approach the level required to achieve your vital goals?
From a long-term perspective, staying comfortable can be life-altering. You choose to do what feels comfortable in the immediate moments. Consequently, you don’t do what’s required to achieve vital and challenging long-term goals.
Ruthlessly Honest Questions
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When you choose to tolerate a comfort zone, what are you practicing?
Answer: You are practicing comfort zone creation. - What are the short-term payoffs you gain by choosing to stay comfortable and avoid pressing on with effort?
-
What is the long-term outcome you will produce by staying in your comfort zone?
Answer: In general, you get complacent and limit your choices, actions, and results to the confines of your comfort zone. OUCH! -
What is the alternative to practicing comfort zone creation?
Answer: Since comfort zones are a psychological state that limits choices, you can practice comfort zone demolition to expand your choices. You will be amused to discover the silly trickery behind your own self-limiting choices. You will feel profound satisfaction when you expand your freedom to make unprecedented choices that transcend your comfort zone.
Are you ready to practice comfort zone demolition?
We started with a quote from Ben Franklin. Let’s close with a quote from the creator of transformational models and est founder, Werner Erhard:
“If it’s comfort you want, life is not the place to be.”
Your Heroic Experiment for This Month
In this experiment, you will create a comfort zone demolition in a few minutes.
- Quickly write down a list of situations where you are choosing to maintain a comfort zone.
- Pick just one of your comfort zones and list the short-term comforts you gain right now.
- What are the long-term costs you will encounter months and years from now?
- Now face the moment of truth: Are you willing to forgo comfort in order to do the actions required to produce your desired breakthrough result?
- Do several rounds of identifying the short-term comforts and juxtaposing long-term costs from tolerating comfort zones in your business and personal life.
Acknowledge the courage you display by facing uncomfortable truths you’ve avoided, denied, or been unaware of until now. BRAVO!
WORK WITH ART
1-on-1 Comfort Zone Demolition Coaching to Produce Breakthroughs
I invite you to sample my unique brand of comfort zone demolition coaching. If you’d like to engage with me in a 20-minute complimentary coaching session, please email me artturock@outlook.com. I will send you a set of questions to fill out and send back to me so you get extraordinary value from a brief coaching session and see if you’d like to work with me to produce breakthrough results.
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