By breaking the usual boundaries, doing something differently, there is always a danger that something will go wrong, but without risk it is impossible to experience the taste of change.
Each of us has our own comfort zone in which we feel safe. However, limiting ourselves to the limits of convenience and tranquility does not always benefit us. Sometimes an unusual situation or a new activity makes a person experience fear and uncertainty, which prevents him from developing and moving forward.
In this case, we should think about expanding our comfort zone, and the following recommendations will help us with this.
Success and personal comfort zone: defining the concepts
In modern society, success is understood as a high salary, having a car and a well-groomed body. At the same time, the salary amount is measured in specific figures without taking into account the level of expenses. But these are relative indicators. For example, if a person earns $1,000 a month and spends $1,200, he is poor, unsatisfied with life, and not successful. Anyone who spends 900 dollars out of 1000 is rich, does not experience financial difficulties and, accordingly, is more successful.
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A “successful” body is slim, fit, with a low percentage of fat mass. People who work out in the gym until exhaustion are viewed with approval in society. Overweight people are judged, accused of lying and laziness if they say that they consider themselves attractive without additional work on themselves. Their personal comfort zone and generally accepted ideas about success do not coincide, which can form stable complexes.
Today, the main condition for a person’s success is considered to be his ambition: the more he strives for excellence, the better. It turns out that if a person is comfortable with his level of income, body and business, it is not a fact that he is successful from the point of view of others. He does not receive due respect, recognition and may even be considered a failure. Paradoxical but true. What to do - strive for unnecessary heights or stay in the comfort zone?
To maintain self-respect and achieve only your own goals, you will have to decide on your priorities. It is important to understand what the concept of success means to you personally and what you imagine psychological comfort to be.
If you are satisfied with the course of your life and feel calm, then calls to leave your comfort zone are not for you. But if the time has come to change something, you can and should expand the boundaries of your comfort zone.
Sweet ignorance
You know, it seemed that everything was quite simple. Well, I got up, made breakfast, cleaned, washed. Then I made some soup. The most common one, only ten times larger. There will be food, a huge saucepan too. There will be assistants. Yes, there’s nothing to do. During the breaks I will have time to swim in the warm August sea. It is unknown how this whole story would have ended if not for the intuition of the organizers. At the last moment, they played it safe and took one guy named Oleg to the intensive. He turned out to be a professional chef. I immediately mentally christened him Oleg “Trushny Cook”.
Step-by-step algorithm for expanding your comfort zone
The comfort zone is not the circumstances, but only your reaction to them. If you feel that the time has come for change, but are afraid of it, you will have to learn to adapt and master new things. You shouldn’t rush to extremes, decide to make radical changes and throw yourself out of your comfort zone. Set clear goals for yourself and start moving towards them, gradually expanding the boundaries of what is acceptable, convenient and understandable.
The strategy is simple:
- Set a goal and break it down into individual tasks . You must clearly understand what final result you expect and what needs to be done to achieve it.
- Decide on evaluation criteria. The desired result should be measurable so that you can always determine what stage you are at.
- Job. We need to think through a program of activities. These are the habits that you will introduce into your life to change it. Perform these actions regularly so that they become automatic. Ideally, you should keep a notebook where you write down the results of your work every day.
- Adaptation and rest. When the goal is achieved, you have every right to rest. Get used to the new lifestyle and enjoy your success.
Change is inevitable, and it is better to adapt to it than to hide it in the sand. Your personal comfort zone expands with each new skill you acquire, so it is not necessary to start a new life from scratch and fall into a zone of acute discomfort in order to achieve success in your opinion.
On the other side:
Kitchen life hacks for all occasions
Strict but fair, Oleg “Trushny Chef” taught me a bunch of useful things over the course of a week, starting with how to properly roll a lemon so that you can easily squeeze the juice, and ending with various techniques for cutting vegetables.
The compassionate neighbors in the cottage, seeing how I was suffering with mountains of dirty dishes, taught me the correct technology for washing large quantities of dishes, which I use to this day.
Labor hardening!
I have completely lost my reluctance to do everyday things. I have never plowed so hard before. All remnants of prejudice about working with my hands have evaporated, and after that week I am no longer afraid of anything in the field of household chores.
Smart, kind and bright thoughts
I was finally and irrevocably convinced that any professional in his field is a producer of human happiness. This is exactly what Oleg “Trushny Cook” was like, who saved my butt and fed us amazingly for all six days. I realized that if you want to feel happy yourself, you must first make those around you happy.
And other nice bonuses
Upon arrival in Kyiv, I quit my stupid office-rat job in order to dig out a truly correct vector of development. Would I have been able to learn and experience everything that I learned and experienced if I had not recklessly volunteered as a cook? Most likely no.
Simple exercises and techniques for better adaptability
Man constantly has to explore new territories. If you are afraid of change, practice adaptability constantly. Simple exercises will help with this:
- Change a couple of little things. Make it a rule to systematically change something: your daily schedule, usual routes, food. These changes will gently accustom you to change as such. They will not cause much discomfort, and updating your diet may even make you happy.
- Meet new people. It’s not difficult to start a conversation with a salesperson in a store or a companion in transport on an abstract topic. At the same time, such an action will gently take you out of a comfortable state and expand your communication capabilities.
- Learn a new skill. Do you want a new sweater? Pick up your knitting needles and learn to knit. Cook a new dish or take a guitar class. Choose a hobby you like.
- Change the picture before your eyes. Have a few free hours? Take a bus and go to a neighboring city, walk along its streets, see the sights.
- Freshen up your wardrobe. Buy and wear something that you consider inappropriate in style. The main thing is that it is the right size and looks good.
- Turn to art. Don’t cling to familiar genres, watch a film that is not typical for you, read a new book.
We all need such adaptability simulators. If you apply them, change will not seem scary, and your personal comfort zone will expand as needed - smoothly and without stress.
Harsh reality
Get up at 6.00. The blissful coolness is still blowing, but after an hour and a half, an overweight, lazy heat descends on the village. And all this hour and a half I’ve been running around the kitchen like a lynx wounded in the seat. Let the compote cook. Let the porridge cook. Slice the bread, chop the fruits and dried fruits, put everything nicely on a plate. Don't forget anything! Move the tables, clean everything, lay it down. Place plates, forks, spoons, napkins. Take out porridge, muesli, dried fruits, jams and honey. Heat the milk.
Meanwhile, the people are catching up. The very first ones rake in all the tasty stuff, trample down the muesli, drink cool milk, and completely destroy the nuts and dried apricots. Those who like to sleep come and are indignant: “Uh, where is all our food? Lena, are there any more raisins? Please bring it. But you can still heat the milk, I want it very warm.” And Lena runs around, takes out raisins, of which there are already a handful left, but needs to be stretched out for a couple more days. The milk, when needed, of course, ran out. To get another pack, you need to wake up the old mistress, who alone keeps the keys to EVERYTHING in this cottage. While, hating myself, I stomp around with the hostess to get milk, breakfast time is steadily running out. The master classes begin, and other residents of the cottage come into the kitchen. They push our groceries aside to make room and swear loudly at the pile of dirty dishes already piling up in the sink.
After breakfast everything is sad. Wash all pots, plates, mugs, forks, spoons. Clear tables, stack dried fruits. Wipe the floor. Go to your room to lie down. Crawl to the beach, do a swim. I run back to the kitchen to get ready for dinner. Peel the vegetables, wait for Oleg “Trushny Chef”, make lunch together.
Oleg “Trushny Cook” looks through me. If I do something wrong, he yells obscenities. I feel that I deserve it and am obediently silent. I don’t cut potatoes this way, I need to peel the onions like this, cut the garlic by pressing it with the side of the knife. Forget about the spatula altogether! Everything needs to be mixed, holding a heavy frying pan with one hand and tossing the contents.
The climax was my attempt to cut tomatoes into cubes. Cursing everything in the world, I wielded the knife until I finally cut my finger with the blade. Oleg, not noticing anything, came to read a lecture on the correct cutting of tomatoes. And so I stand and listen to my mentor, while blood spreads across the beautiful light tiles, like a spring flood. For some reason, instead of running to the room and bandaging the wound, I try to cover the puddle with my foot. I am brought out of my coma by the screams of my neighbors who came in and kicked me out to get a dressing. In general, a complete psychedelic.
In the evening, the same ritual as at lunch. Prepare, clean, wash. Then finally lick the entire kitchen and make preparations for tomorrow. Every day ends at two in the morning. And get up again at six in the morning. Every evening I have mixed feelings. Fatigue, anger, shame. My whole body hurts, my lower back hurts, my legs fall off. I don’t want the sea, the sun, or even the kitchen. I want to bury myself in my pillow and sleep until the evening of the next day.
In the morning, in the reflection of the mirror, an emaciated, pale face with dirty shaggy hair sticking out in different directions looks back at me. Spending most of my time in the kitchen, I experienced a persistent aversion to food and only felt hungry in the late afternoon. During the 10-minute swim, the sun didn’t hit me. Again, there is no time to wash your hair. And so I rush to the kitchen again.
Afterword
Today everyone likes to talk in terms of “mine is not mine,” but in reality how? Everything that is outside your comfort first feels like “not mine.” So it turns out that for a person with an extremely small comfort zone, which he has never consciously and purposefully expanded, everywhere you look - everything is “not mine.”
Yes, “not mine” exists, and you probably shouldn’t do something that’s not suitable for you, but equally, the small size of the world also exists. A two-by-two box, from which, no matter where you look, everything is wrong. And it’s very easy to confuse this “wrong” with your “not mine.” It’s as simple as imprisoning yourself in a prison of your own comfort, which, moreover, will become smaller and smaller from year to year. Expansion always requires effort. And in the new, more spacious world, there will immediately be more “mine” activities, and good people too.
Author Olesya Vlasova
Warning
I'm not a fan of glazed hypocritical bullshit, so I'll clarify for those who haven't figured it out yet. Truly stepping out of your comfort zone is frustrating as hell. So, to learn qualitatively, to learn quickly, so that this experience is carved into the subcortex of the brain - this is pain, suffering and humiliation. This is a step into the abyss. This is why many people live their entire lives like boiled flies. They live the same life, boring, without action. Because radically changing something in this life is unpleasant (just radically , and not “let’s paint myself purple”). Because it's scary. And it is true.
And why should we still marry her?
- When we lack experience, but need to do it now, immediately and no matter what, we begin to learn ten times faster.
- When we don't have enough time, we throw everything unnecessary out of our heads and engage in focused work to meet the deadline.
- When we lack strength, we are forced to use all imaginable and inconceivable resources of our body. Just like the night before the exam
- When we don’t have a habit, all we have to do is develop it.
- When we lack courage, there is nothing left but to find it.
And therefore for those who are scared
...to hitchhike instead of taking a train, invite someone to a movie instead of being afraid that you will be cut off, or go to Crimea as a cook to feed 20 people instead of blissfully lying in the sun. Think again.
Think about how hitchhiking is the most universal way of experiencing reality. About the fact that a girl you are afraid to ask to the cinema can make you very happy. And an unsuccessful debut as a chef is the start of something new, unknown and beautiful.
Well, I wish the readers a dynamic and vibrant everyday life! What do you think about leaving your comfort zone? Any stories from your life? Tell me.
